Contents

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 24

October 24[edit]

Category:Women of color[edit]

The result of the discussion was: rename as nominated for now. There is consensus that the category needs to be renamed. Several other name options were discussed, so this close is without prejudice to a new nomination to rename the new category. And of course any articles aren't appropriately in the category can be removed from the category. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Category:Women of colortoCategory:Organizations for women of color

Nominator's rationale: Mismatch between name and stated scope. According to the category description, this was intended for "organizations and other topics that are related to women of color", and was not meant to contain individual women of color — however, individual women of color is exactly what a category named this way would be expected to contain, and indeed I just had to remove several individual women of color from it. As currently constituted, it's mostly organizations, with one book and one speech mixed in, but that's an uneasy mix of topics that don't naturally belong together in the same category. So my preference would be to rename this as Category:Organizations for women of color, while finding alternate categories for the book and the speech — although I wouldn't be opposed to an alternate name, if anybody's got one to offer, which keeps the book and the speech here while still moving it out of the way of the "looks like it's supposed to contain names of individual women" problem. Either way, some rename is necessary because of the mismatch between how it's named and what it was intended for. Bearcat (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Alternate Rename Since these look like mostly of and for, how about Category:Women of color organizations. If that proposal doesn't gain traction, then rename as nominated. RevelationDirect (talk) 21:39, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree with RevelationDirect. "Women of color organizations" sounds like "Women associated with 'color organizations'". "Women-of-color organizations" would be clearer, or the nominator's idea; of course the rename is necessary. Nyttend (talk) 23:04, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • More importantly than disagreeing with me, you agree the category should be renamed. I'm fine with the hyphens since the phrase serves as a singular adjective. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:02, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Suggest Category:Organizations for visible minority women instead. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:22, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Visible minority is primarily a Canadian term. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:43, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, it was suggested to contrast with invisible minorities, and to include groups in countries where the majorities or pluralities are non-White. So "color" here is problematic for countries where non-Whites are the majority. "visible" meaning of visible contrast to the majority population works rather well. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 07:09, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom. The current name suggests articles about individuals. Dimadick (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• DeleteorPurge a feminist bookstore staffed "mostly" by women of color - are we now going to categorize businesses on who they employ? Is Google a white male organization? Ought it be categorized as such? Unless these organizations are strictly for women of color (perhaps, and perhaps in violation of nondiscrimination laws?) or is it just for those so focused, like American Birth Control League apparently started to keep women of color from reproducing; then let's clear out the "Ilikeit" cruft. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:53, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages[edit]

The result of the discussion was: delete. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:07, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages
• Propose deleting Category:Holy Roman Empire in the Late Middle Ages

Nominator's rationale: delete per WP:OVERLAPCAT, while these categories may once have served a purpose, they currently do not have any added value since the contents is also in Category:Centuries in the Holy Roman Empire‎. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:49, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I don't know. It looks like this allows for having Category:High Middle AgesorCategory:Late Middle Ages as a parent. That said, we could cut out this middle step and just upmerge the nominated cats to the parents. - `jc37

  There is no point in upmerging because the contents of the nominated categories (i.e. the five century categories) are already contained in another branch of each of the parents' trees as well. Insofar you consider keeping the nominated categories, could you indicate what you find the key difference between High and Late Middle Ages in the history of the Holy Roman Empire that justifies keeping them apart? Marcocapelle (talk) 07:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not opposed to deletion, because (for example) Category:11th century in the Holy Roman Empire is a subcat of Category:11th century in Europe, which is a subcat of Category:High Middle Ages. However, Holy Roman Empire is slightly a special case, and so those subcats should also directly be in Category:High Middle Ages. See also WP:DUPCAT. And this is probably why these nominated cats were created. However, as I mentioned above, we probably don't need this extra tier, and the subcats can be placed directly in High and Late, as appropriate. - jc37 07:43, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Virtually empty categories. Dimadick (talk) 12:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - dublicate "centuries in the Holy Roman Empire".GreyShark (dibra) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Albania(n) sport(s)-related lists[edit]

The result of the discussion was: merge to Category:Albania sport-related lists. Category:Albania sports-related lists was mentioned as a possibility; that category does not exist, but this close is without prejudice to proposal to rename it to that. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:46, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Category:Albania sport-related lists into Category:Albanian sports-related lists or vice versa (?).

Nominator's rationale: To amalgamate duplicate categories. Note that overall for the parent category Category:Sports-related lists by country a majority seems to favour the noun (eg Albania) over the adjectival form (eg Albanian). Re "sport" or "sports", there is probably a majority for “Fooland sports-related lists” over “Fooland sport-related lists” but there are quite a few of the latter. Hugo999 (talk) 13:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge everything (imagine someone opposing merger totally!) to "Albania sports-related lists". I don't see why we'd want to use "Albanian" when, as you note, noun names are the significant majority, and when the parent is "Sports-related lists by country", everything should use "sports" except for WP:ENGVAR cases. Albania not being a major English-speaking country, let's use the parent category's usage. Nyttend (talk) 23:02, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Reverse merge to Category:Albania sport-related lists per Nyttend, per convention, and to avoid the confusion and POV issues which come with national demonyms. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:25, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Pyrenean-Mozarabic languages[edit]

The result of the discussion was: no consensus. Ricky81682 (talk) 23:02, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose upmerging Category:Pyrenean-Mozarabic languagestoCategory:West Iberian languages of Spain

Nominator's rationale: upmerge per WP:SMALLCAT, only two languages in this category with no potential for growth. Besides neither of the two articles provides any detailed information about why these two languages would be particularly closely related (one is a medieval language across Muslim-occupied Spain, the other is a modern regional language). Marcocapelle (talk) 13:35, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Upmerging These are Romance languages, not related to Arabic. Dimadick (talk) 12:14, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as these are shown as a separate branch in both Ethnologue and Glottolog; see Talk:Western Romance languages#Category:Gallo-Iberian languages. – Fayenatic London 00:27, 31 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Hopefully someone is going to react on this talk page. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:50, 31 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I left a note at WikiProject Languages asking for participation in the discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 16:37, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Printworthy redirects[edit]

The result of the discussion was: Keep. In its present form, this nomination cannot result in deletion, as the nomination was not done correctly: the category pages were not tagged. If that were the only consideration, I would tag them and re-list this discussion to allow it to run for a full week from now. However, there seems to be no point in doing that, as it is a WP:SNOW keep anyway, with everyone except the nominator opposed to deletion, and with the nomination apparently based on the mistaken assumption that the only consideration is Wikipedia as a whole being printed, but printing particular sections of Wikipedia, either for personal use or for publication, certainly does take place. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:16, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Printworthy redirects (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  
• Propose deleting Category:Unprintworthy redirects (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, but a digital encyclopedia project. It would fail WP:CRYSTAL to assume that Wikipedia, as a collective, will be viably printed.

WP:RCAT and all of its components allow for a much better editorial determination of printworthiness than can be provided by attempting to include every redirect in one of these (or a subcat thereof, which will still be more specific and therefore more self-evident).

Category:Unprintworthy redirects was nominated and kept five years ago. Since then, the scope of Wikipedia has skyrocketed, and it is simply unfeasible to attempt to maintain these categories on their own. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw), 03:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Even when used in a digital format, these are highly useful as metadata: someone using a partial or total database dump might decide to exclude everything but printworthy redirects or to include everything except unprintworthy, for example. Or imagine someone who's printing a small portion of Wikipedia, e.g. a few dozen articles that include essentially everything we say about a certain topic. Since there's nothing original about the text in question, the text could be compiled with a computer, and if we're paying attention to printworthiness, we could have the computer add lines for all printworthy redirects while ignoring the unprintworthy (e.g. with a collection of articles about baseball stadiums, it would have an entry for Jacobs Field. See Progressive Field, but it wouldn't have Progressive field. See Progressive Field), or otherwise treat the two types differently. Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - And speaking of projects, is no one here aware of the 1.0 project?... - jc37 16:56, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not. RevelationDirect (talk) 17:19, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. - jc37 21:49, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:05, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong keep per Jc37 and Nyttend, and the fact that unprintworthy redirects indicate redirects of forms that are not suitable as primary terms. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption[edit]

The result of the discussion was: delete; if the articles about the women need to be categorized as Freemasons, they can be placed in the appropriate subcategory of Category:Freemasons by nationality. I checked, and the majority of the articles are already so categorized, and the ones that are not probably should not be categorized as Freemasons at all. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:51, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: OVERCAT, pure and simple. MSJapan (talk) 03:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. What is a Masonic Lodge of Adoption, a Masonic lodge of adoption, a Lodge of adoption, or a Lodge of Adoption? Categories can be purely descriptive (the dictionary definition is sufficient to explain the contents), or based on a proper-noun subject with its own article, or have a partially understandable name with highly relevant descriptive text. This has no text, no relevant article (as far as I can tell), and bringing in the dictionary definition of "Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child" obviously doesn't help. It's really not possible to determine what goes into this category, so it needs to be trashed regardless of whether it's OVERCAT or not. Nyttend (talk) 04:00, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Question What does "of Adoption" mean in the category name? RevelationDirect (talk) 08:22, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The purpose of the category is to categorize the members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption within the Freemasonry. The Lodges of adoption are mentioned in articles of Freemasonry here, such as in Freemasonry, Freemasonry and women, Women's Grand Lodge Of France, Rite of Adoption, (and of course, if you Google, you will find results outside Wikipedia:[1]), and though I am not expert, I know the phenomena of Masonic Lodges of Adoption are known within the subject of Freemasonry, even though the links are at present red on Wikipedia (which they should not be, and that can be adjusted). They were especially common during the 18th-century, and while the regular Freemasons did not include women, the so called "adoption lodges", which were "adopted" by regular Masonic Lodges, did accept women as members.

The women in this category has been members of such lodges. I believe such a category is of interest, even if the adoption lodges are less well known than the regular Freemasons. There are discussions whether such lodges are to be counted as Freemasons at all, and therefore, their members can not be included in the "Category:Freemasons", though associated with them. It can not be regarded as "overcat", because the members of these lodges can not be categorized by "Category: Freemasons".

If the category is deleted, then it would be much harder to find women who were members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption. However, I am not an expert nor is English my native language, so perhaps the category should be renamed? I don't know which name would be most suitable for this purpose, of this name is not good for an English language user, so I can not protest if a change of name is seen as necessary. "Category:Members of Women Masocin organisations" may also be useful for this category of people, I suppose. But the members of these organisations should have a category on Wikipedia, otherwise they would be much harder to find. --Aciram (talk) 12:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Thank you for the clarification of why you created the category. I added the women in this category to the respective Freemason by Nationality categories (mostly Category:Swedish Freemasons) if there was any mention of being a mason in the article. The Joséphine de Beauharnais, Bathilde d'Orléans and Hedvig Eleonora von Fersen articles don't even mention this topic (sourced/unsourced, defining/non-defing, nothing). RevelationDirect (talk) 17:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your welcome, and I understand (those articles should mention it, and I may even add the information in them myself eventually) - but I'm afraid its not possible to use Category:Freemasons for them, because the members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption are seldom accepted as "true" freemasons by those interested in the topic: in any case, it is very controversial, and the reason to why the category was created, was that other users was not prepared to accept that members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption were categorized as freemasons - so how are wee to solve that issue? --Aciram (talk) 18:00, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of Masons don't accept that the Prince Halls accept black members. So what? They do so they're Masons. If you're having problems with editors inappropriately purging biography articles for women, escalate that nonsense to an admin. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:50, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete & Upmerge Contents to the "Real" (aka Previously All Male) Categories/Rename if Kept When the Freemason categories were re-established, the argument was that these would only be used when there were reliable citations and where the Masonic involvement was more than a casual membership. This category fails both standards. (Alternatively, if kept, the name is obscure and the Adoption lodges allowed both men and women. Category:Female Freemasons would be much clearer if we think sex/gender is important here.) RevelationDirect (talk) 17:46, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The memberships in the case of Josephine, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte and Balthilde was not a mere membership, as they were grand masters of their lodges: this is, I think, of some importance within the subject of women in freemasonry. It is not a question of gender in itself (I myself generally oppose gendered categories), but it is a question of categorizing members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption, who in most cases, but not all, happen to be female, because women members of the freemasons in the 18th-century were not made members of a "real" lodge but only an "adopted" lodge. And: users have not been prepare to accept that such members are categorized as freemasons - that would be objected and considered very controversial, and this category was created because users objected to them being categorized as "real" freemasons in the first place. I have no problem in adjusting the name, but to name it "Female freemasons" would not solve the problem that members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption are not always considered to be "real" freemasons, and that category would therefore be controversial. There were and are also women members of the "main" freemasons as well, and it would be confusing to have the same category for them. There were also male members in some adoption lodges, and gendered categories should be avoided in possible. So, you see, this is not a question of gender in itself, but a question of categorizing members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption. Gender do not need to be mentioned. Perhaps the title is confusing for those not familiar with the subject of freemasonry and its history, but is it a bad name because of this, if it is correct? --Aciram (talk) 18:00, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are 3 challenges here:. 1.) The articles could use improvement. If three biographies that made no mention of Freemasonry yesterday were actually Grand Masters, then it would be great if they can be updated with sources. At that point, those article should be added into Category:Masonic Grand Masters just like any article about a male Freemason would be. 2.) Category names should either be clear to lay readers or, at least, have a main article so readers can understand the terminology. Note the confusion, above, when this nomination started. 3.) Even though it's rated as a good article, Freemasonry and women does a real disservice by framing the English Freemasons as orthodox and every other Masonic organization as heretical. There's no basis for that dichotomy and I'm not the first one to raise this issue on the talk page. RevelationDirect (talk) 05:03, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - Aciram, you are missing the point. A category is not on Wikipedia so people "accept that these women were Freemasons." If that is your reasoning, you are using Wikipedia to make a point. Meanwhile, we have a category with <10 entries, three of which don't even mention their membership. The name of the category also has nothing to do with it. A category is designed to link people with a defining characteristic, and by and large, fraternal groups don't count, because most people, even Grand Masters, are not notable for being such. Harry S Truman, Paul Revere, and Benjamin Franklin were all Grand Masters, but that's not why we have articles about them here on Wikipedia. What we have here is a category that doesn't even have supporting material to explain what the category is about, much less why the category meets the definition of such. Also, there are no female members of the "main" Freemasonry - the various Masonic streams simply do not recognize one another, period. MSJapan (talk) 22:33, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @MSJapan; No no, You misunderstand me. I appologoze. I have not said that I have created this article to make these women accepted as freemasons, I have just said that the members of Masonic lodges of adoption should have separate category, because the category:freemasons are not accepted for them: that is all. I have not expressed a wiev that they should be considered freemasons at all, and I don't know why you would think that I have that agenda. English is not my native language - being a Swedish woman - and I have no confidence in my ability to make myself understood in the language, and I can see that you have misunderstood, and I apologize: this is because I speak very bad English. I will make en effort to try to speak better. This makes me a little unhappy, but being depressive, I dont know if I can make myself understood, though I beleive it is my duty to do so, this being a categoury I have created. I have no agenda: I am simply interested in history, and my sole purpose, was to make it easy to find people being members of Masonic Lodges of adoption, period. I first thought they could be placed in categoryFreemasons, but this was met with great controversy because members of masonic lodges of adoption are not regarded as freemasons. I have no wiev as to wether they should be reagred as freemasons or not: it is not important to me. Th only thing important to me as historically interested, is to have some sort of category which could be usefull to find members of masonic lodges of adoption, wethere they are regarded as freemasons or not. But, I must appologize: I regared it as my responsobility to epxlain this, as this was a category I created once, and one I still believe is usefull. However, English being not my native language, I do not seem to make myself understood, and I must also confess, that as I am somewhat frail - I suffer from depression - communication on the internet may not be the best thing for me at all, as people are somewhat more inclined to be a little less patient: I am simply a little to frail not to regard the assumption of an agenda from my part as aggressive, which of course is wrong of me, but it is a part of my current health. I will leave it for you to to do as you se fit, and wathever hapens, I will not protest. I created it in good faith, with no agenda or ill harm, and beleive it to be usefull for the purpose of wikipedia - to make information more accessible - but I must confess I am simply to frail for conflicts and it seems this might become one, but I hope my this will not affect how the category is regarded. I repeat that I had no bad intent or agenda, and appologize if it seemed to be so. Best greetings, --Aciram (talk) 00:07, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with MSJapan that too many people are included in the Masonic categories when the person is notable strictly for other reasons. I strongly disagree with both Aciram and MSJapan that women should not be categorized within the main Masonic categories. Aciram and MSJapan disagree with each other on whether this category is a suitable compromise. We almost need a Venn diagram for this discussion! RevelationDirect (talk) 12:13, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Broader Masonic Categorization Issue There are variety of Masonic organizations with different membership requirements: the Women's Grand Lodge Of France was exclusively female, Yellow Rose was coed, while the Shriners just had women's auxiliaries. Similarly, the Prince Halls admitted African American members while many others did not. The real issue here is that we comingling members of the overall Masonic movement when there is a lot of variation between the different Masonic organizations as far as who they allow in. The current breakdown by nationality just obscures that real distinction.

Instead, having subcategories by organization would move use to firmer footings about whether people are objectively in a specific Masonic organization or not, and take us away from subjective conversations about who is a "real" Mason and whether or not that definition is sexist. RevelationDirect (talk) 05:11, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Artistic incompetence[edit]

The result of the discussion was: delete. There were a variety of proposals of ways the category could be salvaged, none of which gained a consensus. This close is therefore without prejudice to users creating a list of some sort, or maybe even creating a category with a different name and defined criteria for article conclusion. A newly created category should not be identical in content to this category. If users have problems with any new category that may be created, it can of course be nominated for renaming or deletion. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:37, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Artistic incompetence (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: I nominated the template Template:Poetasters for deletion and would like to invoke that as precedent for this category. It's one thing to have a category for incompetence, the category of which this is a child category; there are indeed concepts for which competence & incompetence are very clearly defined (i.e. some things clearly work and others clearly don't, and can be categorized as such), but to say art can be so easily defined is, at best, a hugely debatable issue and, at worst, outright wrong. This is a category whose inclusion criteria are almost entirely WP:POV-based. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 02:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep after removing most of the contents: remove Leona Anderson, Cherry Sisters, Tommy Cooper, Ecce Homo (Elías García Martínez), Florence Foster Jenkins, Fozzie Bear, Neil Hamburger, Hot Problems, William Hung, Mrs. Miller, Sondra Prill, and Wing (singer), and retain Doggerel, Museum of Bad Art, Museum of Particularly Bad Art, Poetaster, and the Vogon poetry redirect. Whether or not the various attempted-artists are incompetent and whether or not the works themselves are incompetent (and whether Fozzie is an artist in the first place) are questions that cannot be answered without expressing a point of view. However, doggerels, poetasters, and Vogon poetry are indisputably artistically incompetent. The point-of-view issue is that of defining whether something is a doggerel or a poetaster (and the only possible point of view on Vogon poetry is that of the author, who specifically said that it was incompetent), and while the issue of whether or not something belongs in the museums is a POV issue, examining the concept of artistic incompetence is the whole point of the museums. Nyttend (talk) 03:08, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  The question then arises as to whose criteria to use. Some of these museums might regard one piece of art one way, while others regard it differently. To me, that just opens up a new can of worms. And no, I don't believe any of them would be "indisputably incompetent", that's a circular argument. I might have made a small concession had this applied to, say, music, but you also applied it to poets & so forth, so I can't really agree with it. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 16:07, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Rename? I see what Nyttend is getting at. William Hung and Mrs. Miller are asking the audience to laugh with them; Sondra Prill and Hot Problems are unintentionally being laughed at. I think the category should also be renamed if we go the purge route though.RevelationDirect (talk) 18:35, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Zeke, can you explain how a doggerel or a poetaster is not incompetent? The latter article's intro says "Poetaster, like rhymester or versifier, is a derogatory term applied to bad or inferior poets". How can there be any room for dispute? Once again, there's room for dispute over whether this term should be applied to any specific work, and we must not classify any specific work as a doggerel or a poetaster, because that's advocating a specific point of view about that work, but doggerels and poetasters, by definition, are incompetent. A museum's inclusion criteria are irrelevant here: it's collecting works that it deems incompetent, and its raison d'etre is artistic incompetence, so we'd include it because of that, not because we're agreeing with its decisions. Nyttend (talk) 21:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Can you explain to me how they are in the same way that you can say force is indisputably the product of mass & acceleration? No, because it's labels we ourselves apply to people. Do we even know what these people were trying to accomplish through their work? It might not even be what we thought it was. Your logic is circular - you're basically saying, "A poetaster (or doggerel, or what-have-you) is incompetent because Wikipedia's article on the subject says so." Find me a psychiatric evaluation of anyone in that category that shows any hard-wired evidence that they're bad at art, and then that there is any concrete notion as to what art is or is not, and I might change my mind. Furthermore, how many museums have to agree that a certain work is bad, or what academic standard should they live up to? These have not been established, and in my view they could never be - yes, some art is more universally reviled than others, but that doesn't mean its badness is a defining characteristic of that art. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 23:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  I should also point out that a museum that catalogs bad art is not in and of itself an "artistically incompetent" place, and therefore should not be categorized as "artistic incompetence". Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 02:28, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  It isn't, but it would belong in the category as it still very much falls under the topic, as an institution dedicated to its study and exhibition. This would be simple to reconcile as long as the scope is properly defined. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 07:38, 03 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep for the same reason we have pages such as List of films considered the worst, List of films considered the best, and entire category trees for individual "best" and "worst" awards. Yes, artistic competence and incompetence are largely subjective opinions, but that need not preclude us from using this category for articles which neutrally report on those opinions. That is, the inclusion of any one article here is not an endorsement of any particular opinion about it. If a particular artist or work is famous largely because reliable sources tend to describe them as incompetent, and to discuss that incompetence in detail, then the corresponding article belongs in this category. Regardless what we and other readers and editors may personally think of them, Mrs. Miller and Ecce Homo (Elías García Martínez), for example, clearly meet this criterion. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:59, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  The difference here is that a category labels an article according to a characteristic that defines its topic. Being perceived as awful might be a widespread reaction with well-documented support in reliable sources, but that does not mean it defines the topic - it only defines the reaction to the topic. There is a reason those articles contain the word "considered" in the title - one would be hard-pressed to find any negative reactions from noteworthy sources to them. As for the awards argument, I would argue in return that the awards, being given by prestigious, hugely-noteworthy organizations, are not so much categories based on recognition but rather on something very pivotal that happened to the topic in its lifetime and perhaps had a huge impact on the path it took thereafter. They are also generally given once and not withdrawn; they are therefore events that occurred to the topic at one point in time, not an ongoing POV-based reaction. Listifying the category might be more appropriate, but keeping it as a category is not. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 16:07, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure that the "defining characteristic" aspect to categories works the way you say it does. Consider Category:Christian saints, for example. The only testable observation we can use to classify someone as a saint is the widespread reaction of the Christian community, or some sufficiently notable subset of it, as evidenced by documentation in reliable sources. Whether or not any given person is a "saint" is therefore purely dependent on a point of view. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:26, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Sainthood is more objective than that. There is a certain test that saints must pass in order to be called saints, and while it is fairly subjective, it's far less open to interpretation than art. Religious traditions generally have standards of good & evil, and treat them in objective terms; art, on the other hand, has and can have no such dichotomy. Religion is about getting it right; art is about expressing it. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 15:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- The whole thing has the feel of a POV category, but it may be worth keeping a heavily purged category for where someone else's judgment (not that of any WP editor) is the criterion for inclusion. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:58, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Delete Per WP:SUBJECTIVECAT and WP:BLP. "Hot Problems" may indeed be a terrible song but so is every songbyWings, at least in my opinion. Since art is subjective, what this category really captures are things that critics think are bad in their opinion. If someone--probably in a prison or mental institution--is jamming to "Live and Let Die"or"Ebony and Ivory", we can feel sorry for them but their taste is not objectively wrong. RevelationDirect (talk) 18:28, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Classic example where a list is preferrable to a category. A list's members' membership can be explained and, referenced, which is not possible in a category. So with that in mind: Listify then delete - incredibly subjective inclusion criteria. - jc37 21:57, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Why must the criteria be subjective? If we limit it to articles whose subjects are about incompetence and exclude articles whose subjects are incompetent, e.g. keeping the poetaster article and getting rid of the Neil Hamburger article, we have clear criteria. Nyttend (talk) 22:43, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Then the cat name (and thus, the inclusion criteria) really needs to be clearer. - jc37 23:34, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  No objection to the category you're describing. What should we call it?: Category:Intentionally bad artistry. (That sounds--unintentionally--terrible.) RevelationDirect (talk) 02:11, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Your proposed name doesn't work, because not all incompetent art is intentional. If a category about artistic incompetence (but not including specific examples) is to be kept, then the best title is the current one. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete purely subjective. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:55, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - totally subjective; BLP concerns. Neutrality^talk 21:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Neutrality and Carlossuarez46: Even if the category is depopulated of specific examples? As Nyttend and I explain above, the category also includes a number of articles which neutrally discuss the general concept of artistic incompetence, or genres of it. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes. I think the concept is rather ill-defined. I would be OK with Category:Intentional bad art. And of course I'm OK with narrower, well-defined cats such as Category:Ironic and humorous awards. I don't think a category for unintentionally bad art is necessary. It would be quite small anyway. Even if we did have such a category, I would prefer a more straightforward cat name: Category:Bad art. Neutrality^talk 01:05, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Streams[edit]

The result of the discussion was: merge all to new "Rivers and streams of FOO" categories. (The "Rivers of FOO" categories will be renamed to "Rivers and streams of FOO", to retain the edit histories of these older categories, and then contents of the "Streams of FOO" categories will be merged into the new categories.) As mentioned, these renames will probably prompt future nominations to rename other rivers categories for other places, but I agree with YBG that these should be approached as full discussions, not as speedy changes. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:58, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose merging Category:Streams of AlabamatoCategory:Rivers of Alabama
• Propose merging Category:Streams of CroatiatoCategory:Rivers of Croatia
• Propose merging Category:Streams of DenmarktoCategory:Rivers of Denmark
• Propose merging Category:Streams of IndianatoCategory:Rivers of Indiana
• Propose merging Category:Streams of KentuckytoCategory:Rivers of Kentucky
• Propose merging Category:Streams of MarylandtoCategory:Rivers of Maryland
• Propose merging Category:Streams of MississippitoCategory:Rivers of Mississippi
• Propose merging Category:Streams of OregontoCategory:Rivers of Oregon
• Propose merging Category:Streams of TexastoCategory:Rivers of Texas
• Propose merging Category:Streams of Webb CountytoCategory:Rivers of Texas

Nominator's rationale: Membership for these "streams of PLACE" categories is not clearly defined. When is something a stream, and when is it a river? There's no clear dividing point, and the problem is exacerbated by our traditional application of a river name all the way to its source, when it's quite small (consider the Mississippi River near its source, for example), and sometimes a "river" can be a good deal smaller than a "creek" just a short distance away: compare the Allegheny River when it's near its source with one of its minor tributaries, Sinnemahoning Creek, just a few miles away. We might as well categorise the Mississippi and the Allegheny as streams instead of as rivers! I've not yet looked at all of the categories, but at least Alabama's is a subcategory of Category:Rivers of Alabama. Perhaps I've used the wrong template; I'd like the contents of each category to be merged to the "Rivers of" category for the same place. Nyttend (talk) 02:01, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

PS, the Webb County category should probably be deleted and its contents moved up to Rivers of Texas. If we don't delete it, we'll need to rename it to Category:Rivers of Webb County, Texas, since US county categories always include the state name. Nyttend (talk) 02:09, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I added the merge destinations to the proposal; I hope this is okay. --TimK MSI (talk) 13:43, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (except Webb County) MergetoRivers and streams of X - I created the ones for Kentucky and Indiana. While there may be a way to better explain these in the categories, a river is a stream with particular characteristics (and named 'x River' because of that), but not all streams are rivers. I created the ones I did because creeks and such were being categorized as rivers when they are not. At any rate, this CfD really calls for geography experts, and I am willing to reconsider my !vote based on such expert review. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:07, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - In both states, there are multiple examples of streams named "creek" that are larger -- in some cases significantly larger -- than streams named "river." That a stream is named "X River" because it has "particular characteristics" seems to be a widely-held misconception that I think our categorization schemes shouldn't reinforce.--TimK MSI (talk) 14:00, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • After reading much of the discussion, I now agree with the emerging merge consensus. I also hope this will be applied to all "Rivers of X" categories. Surely almost nobody thinks of a small creek as a river, so that at least this solution avoids that. And as others have pointed out, there are smarter ways to subcategorize. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:07, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Support merge Support merge to "Rivers and streams of X" per Jokulhlaup below. A distinction between "rivers" and "streams" based on the physical size of the feature is too subjective and inconsistent to be the point on which the appropriate categorization could be applied. A distinction based on nomenclature (whereby "Foo River" is in a rivers category and "Foo Creek," "Foo Brook," etc., are in a streams category) (which appears to be the process that has been applied to populate most or all of these categories) has the effect of segregating physically similar landforms in the same geographic area in separate categories, based on names that were assigned arbitrarily, without coordination and according to no standard. An example from Indiana (one of many that could be cited): Wildcat Creek is 84 miles (135 km) long and drains an area of 804.2 square miles (2,083 km2). The Little River is 22.6 miles (36.4 km) long and drains an area of 287.9 square miles (746 km2). The present situation of having Wildcat Creek in the "streams" category and the Little River in the "rivers" category on the basis of their names does not serve readers well. --TimK MSI (talk) 13:43, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand this rationale, but why shouldn't we just call them all streams then? After all, I think for the common person on the street, they don't think of little creeks as rivers, but all of them, from the smallest creeks to the largest river, are forms of streams. Shouldn't we go for precision here? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment -- I am reluctant to vote here, as in my country a creek is a tidal inlet, not a bigger stream. I therefore put the question to those who know: is there a robust definition that distinguishes a stream from a river from a creek? If not, they should all be merged: we replaced towns, villages and cities by populated places: I would suggest the same for rivers. I would suggest that rivers is a NPOV term for them all. The fact that it covers various different sizes can be dealt with in a head note. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I've been a longtime fan of the distinction. The line drawn for Category:Streams of Oregon is that everything called "river" is in the river category, and all the creeks (and one fork) are in the streams category, and rivers are a subcat of streams. It would be impossible and silly to categorize them by physical size. The categorization is based entirely on the streams' official names (per GNIS). Webster, contradicts itself vis-a-vis the definition of "stream", with both "a body of running water (as a river or brook) flowing on the earth" but a summary of "a natural flow of water that is smaller than a river" [emphasis mine]. I think the official definition of "stream" and the current common understanding are at odds. I believe the term "stream" encompasses "river" but judging by this conversation, the common understanding of the term is that a stream is a small river. As for !voting, I'd defer to a geography expert per above. Note Oregon has 104 Creek entries, and would suggest Category:Creeks of Oregon as a subcat of rivers if the stream cats are upmerged. Rather than hairsplitting (of which I may have been guilty in the past) we need to think about how to make these categories the most useful for our readers. Valfontis (talk) 16:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • For background, here is some ancient history. Me asking about how to deal with the Oregon cats. This was back in 2008. And here is a more recent discussion. Another old discussion here. Consensus in these unpopular discussions seems to be that the general reader would be confused by the academic definition of "stream" (whatever that is) and that upmerge and appropriate hatnoting makes the most sense. Meanwhile...See also: List of longest streams of Oregon. Valfontis (talk) 01:57, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you for providing this historical background. I note (1) in the 2008 discussion, Valfontis proposed Rivers and streams of Oregon; (2) in the 2011 discussion Kmusser mentiones the difference between general and technical usage; (3) in the discussion below, jc37 is concerned about this discussion moving into WP:ENGVAR territory. My conclusion? Rivers and streams of X provides a neat way to avoid satisfy all WP:ENGVAR problems including popular usage and technical nomenclature. YBG (talk) 03:03, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the discussions linked by Valfontis

Date	Participants	Discussion
2008	(Valfontis, Markussep)	WT:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 1 § Categories
2015	(Gilliam, Valfontis, Finetooth)	{{Section link}}: required section parameter(s) missing
2011	(Hmains, Bermicourt, Kmusser)	WT:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 3 § Rivers and streams

YBG (talk) 06:28, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural comment @Nyttend: I just realized that none of the category's creators have been notified. I would like to request that this be done for the sake of courtesy. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:51, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep When there is no consensus even in the academic world about how to define what a river is, one should not expect there to be one here on Wikipedia. That is completely backwards. That being said, then why not just a merge then? Because some "water-streams" (meant in the most general way) are clearly not rivers, when they are no more than 2-5 feet across and caries almost no water. Overall I think it is a waste of time, trying to impose a consensus on Wikipedia, when there is none in the real world and there is nothing wrong with categories with blurry edges. Nothing at all. RhinoMind (talk) 17:42, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do think the academic world is in widespread agreement that there exists a class of landform characterized by "a stream of water that flows in a channel with defined banks," to use the Encycloypedia Britannica's definition of river; that some are large and some are small; and that they have been assigned a variety names according to no defined standard.--TimK MSI (talk) 19:20, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That is really strange post from Encyclopedia Brittanica. Really strange. In contradiction with the academic world. Just read the Wikipedia article on river, that is the easiest way. But thanks for ref-ing. RhinoMind (talk) 12:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC) (PS: It is not the first time Encyclopedia Britannica is out of sync with realities)[reply]

An even quicker ref: [2] (See entry 17) RhinoMind (talk) 13:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that approximately all of the articles in the categories "Rivers of Foo" and "Streams of Foo" are "streams of water that flow in a channel with defined banks" (Britannica, "river") and "natural flowing watercourses, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river" (Wikipedia, "river"), and "linear flowing bodies of water" (GNIS, "stream"). All three definitions encompass streams that "are no more than 2-5 feet across and carry almost no water" (the example you cite as something that is "clearly" not a river.) The GNIS link (thanks for providing it) would seem to reinforce my contention that segregating "Rivers of Foo" and "Streams of Foo," on the basis of any of the names applied to the physical features in question, would be inherently arbitrary. --TimK MSI (talk) 13:59, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, but maybe consider doing something to regularize the category hierarchy. (Original opinion 19:42, 24 October 2015 (UTC), revised now YBG (talk) 00:07, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge but to Rivers and streams of X per Bermicourt below, eliminating the confused hierarchy. YBG (talk) 00:07, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Undecided. See below for an explanation (mostly because of size of merged categories) YBG (talk) 03:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• MergetoRivers and streams of X and subcategorize geographically or by navigability if categories are too unwieldy. (detailed explanation below) YBG (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hierarchy	subcategory & page count			Regions ('X')
	BOW of X	Rivers of X	Streams of X
Bodies of water of X Rivers of X Streams of X	11C + 1P	2C + 14P	0C + 2P	Denmark
Bodies of water of X Rivers of X Streams of X Streams of X	7C + 3P 4C + 1P 6C + 4P	10C + 51P 7C + 109P 4C + 40P	0C + 14P 1C + 17P 0C + 3P	Alabama Maryland Mississippi
Bodies of water of X Rivers of X Streams of X Rivers of X	4C + 0P 4C + 0P 5C + 3P	3C + 37P 4C + 40P 6C + 156P	1C + 45P 1C + 52P 1C + 104P	Indiana Kentucky Oregon
Bodies of water of X Rivers of X Streams of X	7C + 3P 5C + 9P	7C + 54P 11C + 235P	0C + 1P 2C + 34P	Croatia Texas
Streams of X	--	--	0C + 6P	Webb County

YBG (talk) 19:42, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I've counted the number of pages in each category, I am less convinced and so I'm changing my vote to 'undecided'. More to come. (Is there a prize for changing your vote the greatest number of times?) YBG (talk) 03:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've rethought this once again.

Reasons for merging:

1. The term 'Stream' is confusing as it is both a specifc term (a small linear flowing body of water) and a generic term (any linear flowing body of water)
2. The basis for categorization isn't clear (is it the size or the name that matters?)
3. Both classification schemes fail to be completely Clear, Unambiguous, and Meaningful.
   • Byname: YClear, YUnambiguous, ?Meaningful
   • Bysize: NClear, ?Unambiguous, NMeaningful -- A definition could be made, but it would be arbitrary and require explanation.

I use Clear, Unambiguous, and Meaningful as I've defined them elsewhere:

• Clear. The criterion for division should be easily explained
• Unambiguous. It should be (relatively) obvious which category each element fits into
• Meaningful. The categories should have significance more than just dividing for the sake of dividing.

There should be enough within-group similarity and enough between-group dissimilarity so that each group could be the subject of a separate encyclopedia article.

Reasons for not merging:

1. Long-time use in specific projects has created a project-level affinity for the categories
2. The combined categories would in some cases be very large and make it harder to find a particular item

I believe the reasons for not merging can be overcome by providing better subcategories under Rivers and streams of X, either by subcategorizing geographically or by subdividing as follows:

• Navigable rivers and streams of X: Any R/S that has (or had) commercial traffic over a part of its length
• Non-navigable rivers and streams of X: Any R/S that has never had commercial traffic over any part of its length

This overcomes my previous concerns with merging, and so I am once again changing my vote. YBG (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Change to "Category:Rivers and streams of Foo" --Bermicourt (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Quick note The US government's geography definition people, the United States Geological Survey, supply a list of geographic terms that they use in their GNIS database. One of them, "stream", is a "Linear body of water flowing on the Earth's surface", and it's applied to bodies called "anabranch", "awawa", "bayou", "branch", "brook", "creek", "distributary", "fork", "kill", "pup", "rio", "river", "run", or "slough". If you want to use just one term, you could do like they do, although it seems a little silly to me to use "stream" for everything. Nyttend (talk) 21:17, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  Ahh, references. I love to see references : ) - jc37 00:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More refs for the ref-lovers: [3] (See entry 17) RhinoMind (talk) 13:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge but to Rivers and streams of X, per above. Let's not get into a discussion over who named what a "river" : ) - And because I have a feeling we'll be crossing into WP:ENGVAR territory soon : ) - jc37 00:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Note to closer I just notified all the creators of these categories, in case they didn't already know. I asked the nominator to do this 28 hours ago, but with no notification occurring. Please consider holding this open a bit longer to allow for fair participation by all stakeholders. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:52, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: I think an average Wikipedia reader looking for a large body of flowing water would naturally go the river category; and if a reader was interested in a small flow he/she would go to the stream category. By merging the two categories we force the average reader to sort through twice as many articles to find what they are looking for. If we demand crystal clear definitions for every category within Wikipedia, categories will get more generic and begin to lose their utility. I think two categories (even if they are not perfectly defined) will serve the average reader better than a single big one.--Orygun (talk) 21:39, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: What is the standard for inclusion in one vs the other? Is it that a small creek with "River" in its name should be categorized as a "river" no matter how small it is, and that a much larger stream with the word "Creek" in its name should be categorized as a "stream" no matter how large it is? Or some other method? --TimK MSI (talk) 23:23, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Another relevant source [4] (see entry 17) RhinoMind (talk) 13:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Here are four articles affected by the split between Category:Rivers of Kentucky and Category:Streams of Kentucky, all located in the eastern half of Kentucky:

Name	Length	Drainage area	Category
Little Sandy River (Kentucky)	85.4 miles (137.4 km)	724.2 square miles (1,876 km2)	Rivers
Elkhorn Creek (Kentucky)	18.3 miles (29.5 km), with a north fork (75.4 miles (121.3 km)) and south fork (52.8 miles (85.0 km))	499.5 square miles (1,294 km2)	Streams
Tygarts Creek	88 miles (142 km)	339.6 square miles (880 km2)	Streams
Red Bird River	34.3 miles (55.2 km)	195.7 square miles (507 km2)	Rivers

Given that we're dealing with a class of physical landforms in geographical proximity to one another, could somebody defend this arrangement? Categories are groups of articles on similar topics, right? --TimK MSI (talk) 11:51, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looks to me like anything named "X River" is in "Rivers of Kentucky", which is a subclass of "Streams of Kentucky", and everything else is directly in "Streams of Kentucky". That is to say, the similarity is in how these linear bodies of water are named; any similarity in their nature is dependent on a consistency in how they were named. YBG (talk) 04:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is what was done, despite the absence of consistency in how the linear bodies of water were named. Could somebody explain why it is good to prioritize inconsistently-applied names over the physical characteristics of these physical landforms, in assembling coherent groups of articles on similar topics? --TimK MSI (talk) 10:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See what I've added above about Clear, Unambiguous, and Meaningful. YBG (talk) 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge but to Rivers and streams of X, as explained above by TimK any division of these is always going to be arbitrary. I find the EB definition, saying that river and stream are synonymous quite compelling. The merge also helps retain the usefulness of the ‘all included’ tag on the US States River cats, and hopefully would reduce further discussions on streams vs rivers cats in the future...Jokulhlaup (talk) 12:12, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• MergetoRivers and streams of X. Thanks everyone for the thoughtful discussion. Valfontis (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• question If the categories so far listed in this discussion are changed to 'Rivers and streams of x', does this imply that the change can and should be applied to every sub-category in the Category:Rivers category without further discussion? If not, why not? Hmains (talk) 16:00, 31 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  I wish it were so, but I don't think so. If I were an editor active in {{Rivers of Elbonia}}, and happened to have a strong opinion about this issue, the change would occur without my having an opportunity to comment. I suggest that if this one closes as it is expected to, that a new cfd be instituted, referring back to this one. This cfd was to resolve the problem of confusing categories, the new one would be to solve the problem of consistency of category naming. YBG (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge but to Rivers and streams of X, as even the U.S. Geological Survey admits "There's no hard and fast rule that I know of" differentiating between the two.[5] – Gilliam (talk) 01:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Members of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor[edit]

The result of the discussion was: delete. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:29, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose Deleting Category:Members of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor

Nominator's rationale: Per the spirit of WP:C1, an empty category.

Wikipedia doesn't have even a single article about someone who is a member of this organization. The one article currently in the organization is about an employee of a hospital founded by the organization. Even if the article could be updated to show that that person was a member and that this was somehow defining, the IOTKDT was a small organization so the growth potential is limited. - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Notified Chicbyaccident as the category creator and this discussion has been included in WikiProject Organizations. This is a follow-up to @MSJapan:'s earlier nomination. – RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Given the organisation's close relationship to the hospital and his prominent place in the hospital's staff, surely he was a member, but (1) without something specifically saying so, we shouldn't have him in the category, and (2) even if we come up with the "something", it's just one entry. He could always be moved to the parent Category:International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor (it would only have three articles, including him), and we could delete this category without any problem. No prejudice to recreation if we find more people who belong in the category, unlikely as that is. Nyttend (talk) 02:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - OVERCAT, SMALLCAT. Trivial intersection of otherwise unrelated individuals. I'd note that the org itself is very difficult to source, so the membership is even more difficult. MSJapan (talk) 02:40, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- I had to investigate that International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor was. The article names two people, a founder and a reviver of the organization, but both have red-links. The category for the organization is just about viable, but barely so. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:48, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete trivial; non-defining. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:55, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Members of the Knights of Columbus[edit]

The result of the discussion was: rename and purge. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose Renaming Category:Knights of Columbus peopletoCategory:Supreme Knights of the Knights of Columbus

• Propose Purging Category:Knights of Columbus people of all articles except those on this list: Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus

Nominator's rationale: Per WP:NONDEFINING and personal regrets

I created this category back when I was young and foolish and thought a desperate plea in the hatnote would prevent this category from being abused with every lying obituary that claims people who haven't been to mass in 30 years were somehow active members of a Catholic group. I hereby stand corrected. My proposal would shrink the category from 27 to 13 articles which I can handle for the closing admin if this nomination is successful. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The creator is hopeless but this discussion has been included in WikiProject Organizations. – RevelationDirect (talk) 00:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - OVERCAT, SMALLCAT. If it's simply rehashing a list article, we don't need a cat, especially when there are only 13 of them who seem to serve decades-long terms (and their articles are atrocious, by the way). I don't like having fraternal member cats, because they're too hard to maintain (and control). For most folks, fraternal membership is not a defining characteristic, but a biographical footnote. People like James T. Mullen, Frank S. Land, and Albert Pike (who all founded or made substantial contributions to fraternal groups) are the exception rather than the rule. That, incidentally, is the restriction put in place with the Freemasonry category wrt members. MSJapan (talk) 02:47, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Having a main article is usually a selling point for a category! The categories for heads of organizations (e.g. Category:National Commanders of the American Legion and Category:Presidents of the National Rifle Association) seem to hold up better than general membership ones. RevelationDirect (talk) 09:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support -- I recommend implementation as I have suggested for Orange order (below). Peterkingiron (talk) 15:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete trivial and non-defining. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom. I note that we already have a list: List of Knights of Columbus. Neutrality^talk 21:24, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Members of the Orange Order[edit]

The result of the discussion was: rename and purge. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:46, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose Renaming Category:Members of the Orange OrdertoCategory:Grand Masters of the Orange Order

• Propose Purging Category:Members of the Orange Order of all articles except those on this List of Grand Masters

Nominator's rationale: Per WP:NONDEFINING

The Orange Order is an Irish Protestant/Unionist fraternal organization. While this organization is absolutely defining for some leaders, simply being a member of a lodge generally is not. My proposal would shrink the category from 212 to 16 articles which I can handle for the closing admin if this nomination is successful. - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Notified Ardfern as the apparent category creator and this discussion has been included in WikiProject Organizations. – RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - This sort of creep is absolutely typical of these types of categories, and limiting it to those who have made a substantial contribution is in line with what we do with noting membership in Freemasonry. MSJapan (talk) 02:48, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support -- Though in theory is it discouraged for an article to have both parent and child categories, it will probably make it simpler for the closing admin if the target is created and populated, so that the admin can do a plain delete. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • That may be easier. Or maybe I should have just created the subcat and nominated the parent category for deletion. RevelationDirect (talk) 18:37, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom. A list (rather than a cat) would be fine. Neutrality^talk 21:25, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Bahamian American Freemasons[edit]

The result of the discussion was: delete. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:44, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose Deleting Category:Bahamian American Freemasons

Nominator's rationale: Per WP:NARROWCAT and WP:OCEGRS

This category is a triple intersection of nationality, ethnic origin and membership. I guess we could upmerge this to the parent category but the only article in this category, Estelle Evans, is there because of an unsourced statement that Freemasonry is her "religion". - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Notified Nisha1636 as the category creator and this discussion has been included in WikiProject Organizations. – RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - C1, actually. The statement, being unsourced, was removed from the article. Therefore, there is no basis to include her in the cat, so I removed her from the cat. There's nothing else in it, so that should be that. MSJapan (talk) 02:51, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Monarchs who were Freemasons[edit]

The result of the discussion was: listifytoList of monarchs who were Freemasons & List of state governors of the United States who were Freemasons and delete. For the record, I have also just speedily deleted (WP:G4) Category:Freemasons who were President of the United States which was created by Blueboar a few minutes after I closed the last CFD on Category:Presidents of the United States who were Freemasons. – Fayenatic London 00:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also for the record, the State Governors list was later deleted by consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of state governors of the United States who were Freemasons. – Fayenatic London 13:08, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose Listifying Category:Monarchs who were Freemasons
• Propose Listifying Category:Freemasons who were Governors of US States

Nominator's rationale: Per WP:NONDEFINING

Per the recent consensus at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 1#Category:Presidents of the United States who were Freemasons. - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Notified Blueboar as the category creator and this discussion has been included in WikiProject Organizations. – RevelationDirect (talk) 00:26, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or leave as-is - The visibility of a list article is going to cause a huge vandalism problem; every conspiracy site out there already thinks every President and monarch already is a Freemason, and per WP:V, if a site says it, it can be added, and I'm not interested in constant RS fights over this. MSJapan (talk) 02:58, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete/listify per my rationale in the previous discussion about U.S. presidents; I think the same basic considerations apply. I am surprised that the category for U.S. governors was created shortly after the category for U.S. presidents was deleted. Shouldn't the discussion have been a sign that maybe such categories are not a good idea, rather than the reverse? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Question - Why is sub-categorizing Freemasons by nationality (American, French , Italian, etc.) considered DEFINING, but sub-categorizing them by occupation (Presidents, Governors, Monarchs... Actors, Authors, Businessmen, etc.) considered NON-DEFINING? Blueboar (talk) 13:15, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Reply @Blueboar: It's not so much a matter of the combination being defining, as it is keeping the categories to a manageable size like with Category:Hong Kong businesspeople and Category:American writers. Conversely, I'm not sure if some of the 1 article Freemason categories aid navigation, although different edtors read WP:SMALLCAT differently. The real problem is that true dynamic category intersection has been on hold for the last decade. RevelationDirect (talk) 18:50, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• @Blueboar:, I would just add to the above comment. As this discussion addressed (you may remember because you were the nominator)—we should not categorize people for being Freemasons simply because they were Freemasons. We should categorize people as Freemasons because they are notable as a Freemason or made some conspicuous contribution to Freemasonry, for example. Those people may be categorized and then subdivided by nationality to reduce the overall category size. However, once we start subdividing Freemasons by occupation, we start to get situations where we are categorizing people who are primarily notable for their role in the occupation, and not because they were Freemasons—in most of these cases, their participation in Freemasonry is a notable fact about them but not so much the reason they are notable. Their other occupation (being a monarch, a U.S. president, or a governor) is the reason they are notable. We don't run into this problem with the intersection of being a Freemason and nationality, because no one is notable because they are American, or British, or any other nationality. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I get what you are saying ... and if we could successfully limit the main cat to just those who are notable for being Freemasons I would be much happier... (the majority of people in the cat are NOT notable for being Freemasons .... they are almost all people who are notable for other things - people who happen to have joined a Masonic lodge at some point in their lives).

If we could indeed limit the main cat to those who are notable for being Freemasons, there would probably be no need for sub-categorization. It would not be a huge cat.

Unfortunately, every time I have tried to limit the the main cat, it grows again... our editors don't understand the limitation. so let's assume that limiting the cat will fail... let's assume we do need to sub-categorize... the next question becomes: HOW?

Sub-categorization by nationality makes little sense for this topic area... There is no defining difference between an American Freemason and an English Freemason or a Brazilian Freemason (etc). So can anyone suggest a sub-categorization that would make sense? Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From what you've said, it sounds like ideally, we don't need any subcategorization. Maybe we need to suggest upmerging all of the subcategories into Category:Freemasons and only categorize those who are notable because of their participation or contribution to Freemasonry. I can definitely sympathize with your struggle to so limit it in this way, though—in a few areas, this is a perpetual problem. In some cases, the solution has been to not categorize by that characteristic at all and to delete all of the categories as being more trouble than they are worth. But I think that's an extreme solution and usually not the best option. Maybe other users have some ideas? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Listify and delete per nom. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:27, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Listify and delete -- Since the organization does not publish membership lists, RS issues are significant. The list(s) should be required to cite RS. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Reply - this is already done in the List of Freemasons articles, and these are just drawing on the same info pool. MSJapan (talk) 22:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Fair enough, although it would be helpful if someone would take the effort to convert these articles to tables so that you can find relevant info (year of birth, nationality, occupation etc) in a much more structured way. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:51, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete The intersection of holding an office and being a Freemason is non-notable. Membership in Freemansonry is not a matter of public record, so these categories should be pruned. At one point they were deleted, and I think they should be again. Freemansonry is not a religion that invlves complex affiliation and public affirmations, but a society that while at some level presenting itself as a broad unified group is actually a dispirate movement with huge changes in all its aspects over time and place, so the category besides having hard to verify contents and often categorizing people for what was just a short event in a long life, also give an impression of sameness where there is none.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, despite all the claims of conspiracy theorists, membership in Freemasonry is a matter of public record... at least in most countries. Most of the Masonic Grand Lodges around the world maintain membership lists, and such lists are made available to the public upon request (indeed in some countries, maintaining such lists is mandated by the government). As far as notable historical personages are concerned, there are numerous scholarly papers and books which can be used to verify membership claims. If you take a look at our List of Freemasons article, you will see that every single entry is sourced. Blueboar (talk) 13:50, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.