The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:delete (no need to merge given the other categories on the article). Good Ol’factory(talk) 18:44, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: The association football defender categories do not yet sub-categorise by nationality. Currently, this under-populated and un-parented category seems over-specific. SuperMarioMan 21:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Jared Preston (talk) 10:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per Giant. This is clearly the correct solution. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:40, 18 September 2013 (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:Americans convicted of spying against Iran[edit]
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:WP:OC#SMALL, a subcategorization by the nation, which against they were convicted of spying doesn't make sense with only 8 articles. ArmbrustTheHomunculus 11:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge -- no need to split. I recall a case of some people who strayed over the border from Iraq and were arrested and accused for spying, but am not sure of their nationality Category:People convicted of spying against Iran might be a useful category. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:27, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I see no compelling reason to merge this category. Yes it's small, but small categories are not automatically disqualified. (Note: I just added a 2nd article, about the hikers that Peter alluded to. I also added a new parent cat for US-Iran relations.) I submit that in the case of espionage -- as part of foreign relations -- it is entirely appropriate to specify which 2 nations are involved. And we do, in fact, have quite a few sub-categories of Category:People convicted of spying that do precisely that. I agree with Peter that it would be a good idea to have Category:People convicted of spying against Iran, which would serve as another parent for this category. Cgingold (talk) 13:05, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Good Ol’factory(talk) 21:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Upmerge In almost all cases we should avoid one article categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please note: There are (once again) TWO articles in the category; I restored the article about the US hikers, which had been wrongly removed from the category by the nominator of this CFD. Cgingold (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Does it make sense to put an article on an incident in a category for biographical articles? Even if it did, which I have grave doubts about, 2 articles is not really enough to justify a category. I generally hold articles should actually fit the description of the category. This category should have as its contents biographical articles.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge somehow -- whether per JPL or my suggestion. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:42, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Upmerge per nom & JPL. If we have 200+ countries which could be "spied for" and the same as "spied against" do we really need 40,000+ categories to pair each as we do for bilateral relations (which may actually have real content). Moreover, many people are "convicted" of espionage without any indication in their conviction the "spied for" country. And there are the problems of tribunals that are sufficiently untrustworthy to comply with our BLP requirements. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, since we are categorizing by conviction, not by doing it, it does not matter how accurate the tribunal is. We are categorizing by the tribunal doing something, not passing judgement on the validity of the tribunals claims.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:27, 21 September 2013 (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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:rename for now to Category:Schools in Colonial India. The renamed category may be nominated for deletion to have a discussion that focuses on the arguments for deletion that were set out by some users.Good Ol’factory(talk) 19:36, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale The defining thing about these schools is that they existed in British India. Not that they were in some way "colonial" whatever exactly that would mean. This category should not include schools that were in French India or Portuguese India per its definition. Nor does the current definition suggest that the nature of the schools founder or governance is at issue. This is really just a plain x in y category, so we should name it so it clearly indicates that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:46, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The category header explicitly states that it is for British India.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:31, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The header says that the scope is "British India during the colonial period under the British (18th century - 1947)". However, until the mid-19th century, British India was a smaller area. Why not use the more inclusive term? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 09:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At least, rename to Category:Schools in Colonial India. The nom could be implemented if in fact all the schools were in British territory, not those of other colonial powers (Danish, French or Portuguese) nor those in Princely territories. I doubt many of the schools were strictly "colonial". Peterkingiron (talk) 16:48, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Good Ol’factory(talk) 19:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The title of this category is very very wrong. A quick look through doesn't show me any actual colonial schools (with the exception of Mayo College) but mostly schools that existed pre-independence. It's also a bit odd to have the Doon School in this cat as it is perhaps the exact antithesis of a colonial schools. A colonial schools cat should probably include the three Lawrence Schools, the Presidency Colleges which were prep schools before they grew into colleges, College of Engineering, Guindy and so on. Renaming to Schools in British India seem reasonable for now, if we do have the necessity for French/Portuguese cats we can add them later. While the princely states are almost always considered part of British India, historians do it to a lesser extent when talking about Colonial India. —SpacemanSpiff 14:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Rename per nom -- Unless some one can point to a school that was in Colonial India, but not British India, I see no reason why ther nom should not be adopted. Purge if necessary. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS To be even more precise, the categories should be: Category:Schools founded during Company rule in India and Category:Schools founded during the British Raj. This way, the category names will have the correct names of the Wikipedia articles in them, and, more importantly, double listing will be avoided. More importantly still, if the founding is a part of the category name, editors will be more likely to provide the correct dates. At present, many of the founding dates are vague. The Doon School use to claim on its Wikipedia page, it was founded in 1927, even though it didn't open until 1935 and its so-called founder was long dead by then. As you will see in Company_rule_in_India#Education or in British_Raj#Education, the government of British India itself, or in conjunction with Indians, founded thousands of schools, including hundreds of secondary schools. These schools were in some ways the stars of India's pedagogical firmament. Although some didn't survive, many did and are known today as government schools (see, for example, Barrackpore Government High School, Barasat government high school). They were attended in British days by children from poor or middle class families who showed talent, achievement, or promise (students such as Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Srinivasa Ramanujan). They are, however, poorly funded today and for that reason generally avoided by the Indian elite. For that reason also, they are unlikely to be listed on Wikipedia ((see, for example, Municipal Anglo-Vernacular High School, Abbottabad). If the two categories are created, I will be happy to distribute the schools listed in the current category into the correct new ones. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment These are not categorizing schools by when they are founded, but when they existed. Let me explain why. Suppose we had a school formed in Ohio, that later moved to Kentucky. We would put it in both Category:Schools in Ohio and Category:Schools in Kentucky. That is what is going on here. We are classifying schools by historic period in which they existed. If a schools was founded in Agra in 1650 by people operating under the Mughals, but continued to exist during British rule, it would belong in this category. Likewise a school founded in Hong Kong in 1890, that then relocated to Mumbai in 1920 would belong in this category. We are categorizing the schools by the fact that they existed in British India, if they were founded elsewhere and moved there or founded earlier and still existed then, they belong in the category. Schools are not only influenced by the nature of how things were when founded. A school founded in 1900 in Dhaka, would belong in this category, in Category:Schools in Pakistan and in Category:Schools in Bangladesh.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS I've also posted at the relevant Bangladesh-, Burma-, and Pakistan related pages, since it obviously concerns them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:13, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Definitely needs renaming but to what? The current title emphasizes (in name) the "colonial" aspect of the schools and there can't be many of those around (Mayo, Lawrence?, La Martinière) but, from the discussion above, it appears that the intent of the category is to include all schools in India under the British while excluding schools that were controlled by other European nations. Let me first say that the other European nations issue is not worth discussing because we're only talking about a few, less than a handful of schools. If we're only including schools in areas directly under the British (i.e., excluding princely states), then we're going to exclude some important schools (. What about schools whose medium of instruction was something other than English? Are we only including schools established by Englishmen? Perhaps the easiest is to rename the category to something like Category:English medium schools in India established before 1947 (or whatever category mavens think is the appropriate way of expressing that idea). Straightforward and clear.--regentspark (comment) 19:24, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I'm not sure what this thing is trying to categorise and I do think, like RegentsPark, that we need to define the purpose before determining nomenclature. It is vague at present. - Sitush (talk) 20:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly, the discussion below has not defined the category's purpose. It's not clear whether its about establishment in an era, or existence during that era. It's not clear whether it relates to schools which are emanations of the colonial authorities, creations of religious missionaries, establishments by Indians etc ... or whether it is intended to remain a mishmash of these wildly different types of foundation. Labeling them all as either "colonial" or "British" is deeply misleading. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:18, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
JPL, why don't we just put a date on it as in "established pre-1947"? I don't see the importance of categorizing the establishment of schools by colonial power. --regentspark (comment) 11:39, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If that was the intent, you will need to throw out all the schools that were in the princely states. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:38, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think JPL is misunderstanding the "British India" term. - Sitush (talk) 15:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Rename per nom The proposed title is much more accurate than the current one per the reasons defined by the nominator. Mar4d (talk) 02:59, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
SupportZayeem's suggestion. This makes sense to me. It's bad wording to have "colonial schools in India" instead of "schools in colonial India". It's also true that not all of the subcontinent India was under British rule and a simple rename of Category:Colonial schools in India to Category:Schools in British India will not include all of the schools in India that were not in British-ruled territory of India. LizRead!Talk! 18:12, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This is not an establishment category, it is a location category. The schools are being categorized by location. I am also not convinced we can treat French India, Portuguese India and British India as if they were in any way the same place. Any more than we can treat Ghana and Ivory Coast as if they were the same place in 1920.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:28, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it is a location category, then can we include schools in Mumbai that existed there before the British arrived? Can we include schools in the ancient city of Varanasi that existed there long before Britain knew about India's existence. British India existed in time and space, not just in space. Sorry to put it bluntly, you are showing your ignorance of South Asian history. By persistently obfuscating, you are bordering on being disruptive.Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:38, 23 September 2013 (UTC) Updated with many apologies. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe is time to either move the category to Category:Schools in colonial India or close the move. I've seen this before on Wikipedia, editors who are clueless about Indian historiography who insist on using the expression, "British India" outside its specific usage, in part, I think, because it put's Britain's brand (as it were) on India. Not going to happen, at least as long as I'm around.Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:46, 23 September 2013 (UTC) Updated with many apologies to Johnpacklambert. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment If a school in Varnasi or Mumbai functioned during British rule, than yes, it should be included in the category. I would advise people to avoid insulting others and implying that they can understand what the other person knows. I did not add anything to this category. Now, if the mentioned schools in Varnasi had stopped functioning when British rule started there, then they would not be included, any more than a school that existed in Agra at the time of Shah Jahan, but had ceased functioning when British rule was extended there would go in the category. Thus, as long as a school existed in an area of India under British rule it goes in the category, no matter when or where it was formed. I know lots about Indian's history, I have read plenty on the Mughal Empire and earlier. If a schools was founded in what was then called Bombay when it was under the Portuguese, and ceased to function when the British took over it would not go in this category. However if it was founded during the Portugese period but continued to function after the British took over it would go in this category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:07, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment If users feel that a school in this category was not in British India they are free, and probably encouraged to take it out. The current heading says its contents were in British India, and those things not in British India should be removed. I have put few if any articles in this category, and will not vouch for the accuracy of the current contents. However since British India is clearly a place that we agree existed, there is no reason for us not to have Category:Schools in British India. Things places here incorrectly should be removed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I find the tendency of some people, such as User:Sitush to throw insults very disturbing. I am not the one who put articles in this category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:53, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
New Proposal Rename to Category:Schools in Colonial India and fix the header. I am tired of people insulting me and implying I do not know the history of India. I wish people would stop making assumptions, stop acting in bad faith, and stop assuming they know what others know. Such actions are downright rude and the antithesis of assuming good faith. They are also the antithesis of being a community that encourages further collaboration and cooperation. I also find the communications on talk pages between User:Sitush and User:Fowler&fowler where they insinuate that CfD is dominated by some cabal that seeks to force its will on others by ignoring them to be the antithesis of assuming good faith. This is a truly unfair accusation. On multiple occasions I have spoken against the knee-jerk attempts to merge things like Category:1926 establishments in Pakistan, and I guess Category:1926 establishments in India into a new Category:1926 establishments in British India because such a renaming needs to be done on a global scale, not with just a few categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:17, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment First of all, let me apologize for my intemperate language. I got frustrated because I saw people offering various suggestions, but, at the same time, saw you not budging at all, indeed not even acknowledging what they were saying. Anyway, I've scratched my comments. Please note that I am not saying that the category Category:Schools in British India shouldn't be there, only that the category Category:Colonial schools in India, as defined by what it currently contains (not by what its fine print says), best approximates the category Category:Schools in Colonial India or Category:Schools in India during the colonial period (the latter name, in my opinion, is the more correct and POV-free name, if overlong). If the current category is transferred to Cat:Schools in Colonial India, there will be two advantages: (a) From the instant it is renamed, no school will need to be removed for lack of meeting the requirements of membership and (b) there will be no need for a larger- or super-category. Only the smaller- or sub-categories will need to be made: Cat:Schools in British India, Cat:Schools in Princely States, etc. It is easier to build down, ie. split the listed schools into the two sub-categories, than to build up. Why don't we make a deal? You move the current category to Cat:Schools in Colonial India, and I'll create the two sub-categories mentioned above, and put each school in its correct subcat. Again, apologies. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete (changing my !vote). Having reviewed the discussion, I don't think that problem her is naming this category. It seems to me that the reason this has become so difficult is that the category is conceptually flawed: it is trying to categorise the schools on the basis of a snapshot of historical geography. It is similar to placing Belfast's Campbell College in Category:Schools in Ireland when it was an undivided part of the United Kingdom; and there is no need to do that. We simply categorise it under Category:Schools in Belfast; there is no need to categorise it by each of the 3 jurisdictions it has been part of since its foundation. Similarly with the schools in this category. For example Alfred High School, Rajkot is in Category:Schools in Gujarat and Category:Educational institutions established in 1853, which is quite sufficient. Keeping this category would make sense if we were going to start a whole new set of historical geography categories, but I really really really really hope we don't go down that path. If we did that, then a school founded in Strasbourg in 1850 would end up in a multitude of historical categories, because although the city is now in France, it was twice annexed by various regimes in Germany. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:27, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete BHG has articulated my misgivings about this category very well. It just doesn't make sense to me to have a category for schools that happened to be in existence during colonial times because it is the date of establishment (and disestablishment if necessary) that bounds the existence of a school, not the shifting political entities that it might have lived through. If it is merely a location category as pointed out above, then the current geographical entity in which it is located is the appropriate category marker. --regentspark (comment) 00:01, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The category (howsoever you want to name it) is an important category, not of historical geography, but of Indian history, of the history of modern education in India. Modern education (contrasted with religious education) began in India some 50 years after the British took over governance in 1773 (i.e. in the 1830s). There was no previous history in early modern India of modern subjects (history, geography, science, ...) being taught. As is well-known, for the first 50 years of its rule, the East India Company founded and promoted institutions of classical and vernacular learning, such as the Aliah_University#History (1780) and Sanskrit College, Calcutta. The schools listed in the category are an important feature set of the next phase, ie of the opening of India to missionaries in 1823, Macaulay's Education Minute (1834), and Wood's Education Dispatch of 1854 (the so-called triumph of the Anglicists over the Orientalists and the onset of English-medium education as RegentsPark alluded to in an earlier post) That the Alfred High School is listed in schools in Gujarat or schools founded in 1853 says nothing about its singularly important attribute: it was one of the first high schools established by the British, in this case by a British political agent in a princely state, in India. I wasn't aware of this category until this discussion was advertised on WT:INDIA; I even made a post Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_50#Historic_high_schools_in_India approximately a year ago on WT:India attempting to start some kind of list. Deleting the category altogether is a very bad idea. Call it whatever you will, but keep it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS the one thing you can delete in its entirety is the spurious Doon School subcategory, pushed on Wikipedia a year ago by a cabal of rowdy schoolboys and alums. It is not colonial, it is not nationalistic, it is simply the worst kind of elitist. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:01, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. F&F, I don't think that we should get too hung up about the term historical geography; it can be used in several different ways. I used it to mean that "British India" is used to describe 1) a historical period, and 2) a geographical area which is not the same as contemporary India. My point stands that I am not aware of any precedent for categorising entities in this way. Even if we regard it as a purely historical category, it's hard to see what purpose it has beyond grouping schools that existed in a particular era. It could of course be tightened up to include only schools founded in that era, which be narrower meaning than the present one, and would avoid the horrible prospect of institutions collecting a historical category for every period in which they existed. But even that is misleading, because it appears to create a grouping of "colonial schools". The reality is much more complex, because there are some schools founded by the colonial rulers (e.g. Chittagong Collegiate), while other were founded by religious missionaries (e.g. Scottish Church College and St. Joseph's Boys' Higher Secondary School), or by rajas. Many of the religious foundations were set up almost in opposition to the colony, which missionaries saw as denying education to the Indians. As regentspark noted below, the schools in this category have such a huge variety of origins that it is hard to identify any common theme. I would add that it is worse than that: it creates a misleading impression of commonality between very institutions which have little in common apart from a date of foundation. And for date of foundation we already have categories by date. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:08, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Despite my disagreements with JPL, let me be very clear; British India is not (not remotely) an aspect of Historical Geography, even though it had geographical boundaries. It is always, first and foremost, a part of Indian history. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:10, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think this is more akin to Category:Schools in the Ottoman Empire, than some part of the history of Ireland. There is a sameness in the situation of schools that existed in Lahore, Calcutta, Dhaka, Mumbai and Chennai in 1930, that would be totally not evident if we did not have this category to group such schools together.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:35, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could you explain this further (the sameness)? The variety of schools at that time must have been astounding. Schools set up by Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists for a mix of religious and secular education, schools set up by various missionary and evangelist groups, schools set up by secular Indians, schools set up by the British to generate good civil servants, schools set up by various charitable organizations to serve the poor, schools set up by various rajas and princes, .... Add to this various vernacular language schools that must have existed prior to the arrival of the British (in the Punjab, for example), and you have a veritable potpourri with little in common except the time of their establishment. --regentspark (comment) 20:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent list f&f. Stellar job as always! --regentspark (comment) 12:39, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with regentspark: the list is great work. I do hope that F&F will develop it enough to move it to mainspace, and it could indeed become a featured list if the sources can be found. It's important that the list doesn't end up as WP:SYN, and that there are some existing published lists to underpin it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:05, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see, I didn't think of that. I'm assuming you're saying that even if all the schools listed have their establishment dates etc sourced to contemporary sources, the creation of a table or list ranking them by date of establishment will constitute some form of OR or SYN unless the ranking too has been published somewhere recently. Well, if that is that case, then I'll just have to list them alphabetically with their founding dates in parentheses and let the reader figure it out. I'm assuming I'm allowed that. Right? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:13, 26 September 2013 (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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:merge. If, in the future, there are more than three articles that could be placed in Category:People from Baldwin, Pennsylvania, it may be re-created and then re-discussed at that stage.Good Ol’factory(talk) 19:51, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Per WP:SMALLCAT. Has only 3 entries. ...William 11:04, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Baldwin has a population of 19,000, so it is not a small place. This category is probably capable of expansion. (I started looking for more entries using pages that link to "Baldwin, Pennsylvania", but unfortunately a set of ridiculously huge backboxesnavboxes has spammed hundreds of links, which makes it too hard to find anything. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:10, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I looked for others through all those links and couldn't find anyone but the three. What are backboxes and what if anything can be done about them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 19:40, 6 September 2013 (talk • contribs) WilliamJE
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Good Ol’factory(talk) 19:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Upmerge per nom. If there are more entries in the future, then recreation should be allowed. But for now, deletion is an acceptable alternative. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:39, 24 September 2013 (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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale: Although I see what the intention of this cat is, in practice I find it impossible to decide for many journals whether to place them in this cat or in the mother cat, Category:Political science journals. Many journals publish theoretical treatises, but not exclusively. Others, despite having the word "theory" in the title, also publish non-theoretical treatises. Neither cat is extremely large, so it would not result in an overly large category. Randykitty (talk) 13:59, 17 September 2013 (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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:WP:OC#LOCATION violation; the individual US state that a person comes from is not relevant in conjunction with their LGBTness, and the parent category Category:LGBT people from the United States (which already has several occupational subcategories keeping its size down) is not large enough to warrant the division. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 03:05, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- The US category has something approaching 400 articles. That is quite big enough to split by state. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:56, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
1,000 people or more would be big enough. 380 is not (especially since some of those 380 probably could be filtered down into existing subcategories anyway.) Bearcat (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all. Per Peterkingiron, the parent category is quite big enough to justify splitting by state, as we do with many other attributes. There is good reason to be cautious about which attributes we split by state, because it causes category clutter; but I don't see any justification for the nominator's assertion that the state diferences between LGBT identity and culture is "not relevant". For example, look at the legal framework. A quick scan of LGBT rights in the United States shows that the federal structure of the country creates a huge difference between states. Some offer civil unions or marriage, but most don't; some criminalised same-sex activity until the Supreme Court intervened, and so on. Given this massive variation, it is bizarre to claim that there is no relevance in whether an LGBT person is from Alabama or Vermont. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And all of those variations are temporary, existing only because we happen to be sitting in the middle of a period when things are in flux. It wasn't that long ago that the legal recognition of LGBT people had no variances by individual state, and it's not going to be very long before that becomes true again in some fashion or other — whether that's a court decision that legalizes SSM nationwide, or whether it's the United States somehow regressing into institutionalized homophobia again, any state-by-state variance that happens to exist in 2013 is not going to be a permanent fixture of American life — it's just a byproduct of the fact that the process of evolution is still underway.
There was also a point when the legal status of LGBT people in Canada varied depending on what province an LGBT person lived in, too — there was a point at which a same-sex couple could get married only in Ontario. That lasted all of a month before same-sex couples could also get married in British Columbia. Bam, bam, down fell the dominoes — and within just two years, everything was standardized nationwide again and the state of province-by-province variability was gone forever. It's not a permanent situation that constitutes a WP:DEFINING characteristic of the people; it's just a byproduct of the fact that a process of change happens to be unfolding at the moment.
And even if unequal status from state to state did somehow become permanent, moving from one state to another is not difficult. All it takes for an "LGBT person from North Carolina" to become an "LGBT person from California" instead is to pack up a truck and hit the Interstate; it doesn't require emigration or a change in citizenship status. It doesn't require approval from a government bureaucrat, it doesn't require a passport, it doesn't require a refugee claim — it just requires having enough money or credit to pay for the trip. Which also makes this category bloat, if we have to add a second or third or fifth "LGBT person from Individual State" category every time someone happens to move from one state to another. Bearcat (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. The Canadian example is a red herring; we are not discussing Canada, which has a difft history. Sure, USAnian people can and do move between states, with no legal impediment. If they hop around, that creates category clutter if they have a notable association with each state along the way. That's an important qualifier, and it's a long-standing guideline at WP:COP#By_place that only "notable association" is categorised. However, insofar as this is an issue, it applies equally to Category:American criminals by state and Category:American people by occupation by state.
The crucial issue is whether state is a defining characteristic of an LGBT person. I cited above the example of legal status, and you are right to point out that it has changed over the last 50 years. However, 50 years is a long time in the history of out LGBT people, and during that period there have been enough big differences to make a real difference to people's lives and to LGBT culture, which extends far beyond legal status. The Gay liberation movement was not a phenomenon of Georgia or Arkansas in the way it was of New York or California, and that has historically meant that LGBT lives varied massively between states.
Are you really trying to claim that there is no defining difference in whether an LGBT person is from Alabama or Vermont? Seriously? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:32, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am, because at least by the definition of WP:DEFINING that pertains to whether something warrants a Wikipedia category or not, it isn't. Of course differences exist — I never denied that — but those differences aren't large enough to constitute a defining characteristic of an individual person. And there is no theoretical or actual difference between subcategorizing all LGBT people in the US by individual state and subcategorizing all LGBT people in Canada by individual province, either — in fact, political power in Canada is in many respects more decentralized than it is in the United States, meaning that Canadian provinces have more independent autonomy, more "defining" distinctions from province to province, than US states do. So it's not a "red herring" — but even if it were, it would be so in the opposite direction of the one you intended to suggest, because if anything the logic behind subdividing Category:LGBT people from Canada by individual province would be stronger, not weaker, than the logic behind subdividing Category:LGBT people from the United States by individual state. Bearcat (talk) 00:52, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your statement that the differences are not large enough to be defining is an opinion - not a fact. There are obviously others that disagree with you. Based on my personal, academic, and professional experience and knowledge - I disagree with the notion that there are no differences to your life as a LGBT person between the US states. I would be curious what you can offer as evidence to support that. I would offer this map, this article, and the LGBT rights in the United States as some evidence that which US state you live in has an impact on your LGBTness - as you put it. Also, as someone that has both worked within US govt and consulted for Canadian political elements - I am surprised to hear you say they are more autonomous - again, that is clearly an opinion. I would also support LGBT people from Ontario btw - I recognize that there are variations in Canada - although far less these days than the US, that would not matter for historical articles when it was an issue for that person. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 13:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the decision is here, it can always be revisited. Just as law changes, consensus changes. Personally, I see this as a WP:NOTNOW decision. If the decision is to Keep, I can see revisiting the issue every 6-12 months to see whether the categorization till makes sense. I have issues with CfD folks who say some decision was made at one point and that closes the discussion forever. Decisions happen in a particular time and place and involve a limited group of Editors. The same discussion happening a year later in a different social environment, with different participants could render a different consensus. Personally, I'm not sure what the correct decision is here. I just know that debate is healthy, it highlights what issues are at stake, what policies are relevant, it's important to hear from different sectors of the Wikipedia community. But, unless the drastic action of salting is taken, decisions aren't forever. LizRead!Talk! 01:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep allDisclaimer - I created some of these - obvious bias. Absolutely! This has come up SO many times for me and others I figured it was more out of the magnitude of the problem more than anything else. This is modeled after what was done in the UK - so you can reference arguments for keeping the Scotland, England, etc. categories there. I believe one also exists for Hong Kong, and probably other subnational levels if I looked more. Finally, I can absolutely attest to there being a significant difference between being a LGBT person living in Michigan (where I am) vs. Maryland (where I have previously lived). Also, why wasn't I notified that these were being nominated for deletion? Bearcat - I certainly appreciate your maintenance work - but I think a heads up to the editors that did the work creating the categories is due diligence. Speaking of due diligence, I am confident this will keep coming up again in the future, so the outcome should be posted on the relevant talk pages. I will also go ahead and notify the editors that created the other categories as I respect their input. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 8:20 pm, Today (UTC−4)
Scotland, England and Wales are not equivalent to states of the United States; although they are also part of a common entity, each of them is a full-fledged country in its own right, not just a federated state. The closest functional equivalent to states in the United States would be the counties of the UK (Berkshire, Aberdeenshire, Monmouthshire, etc.) — they're not a perfect analogue to US states, but they're a closer match to it than England, Scotland or Wales themselves are. And Hong Kong is an autonomous special territory of China; while it isn't a fully independent country, it's not equivalent to Michigan or North Carolina either. Bearcat (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A better measurement, in my opinion (and where my examples fit better than some flawed technical definition) is that the laws of each of the states is independent from the federal government. Unlike Canada and many other places with territories - in the US, things like marriage, liquor laws, adoption laws, statutory rape laws, most discrimination laws, etc. are not decided by the federal government, but by the individual state governments. The UK analogy, while technically arguable, is practically a far better one than you want to acknowledge - used regularly in political science (each state has its own military, govt, constitution, laws, courts, leader, identity, etc. - and some started as sovereign nations...Texas thinks it still is sometimes... - and like Scotland they do not have individual rep in the UN, their own foreign ambassadors, they must participate in a federal govt, etc.) - and it fits the traditional history of the states. Anyone that wants to argue that living in one state in the US is no different for an LGBT person than living in another state is not fully appreciating the nuances and impact of the US legal structure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Varnent (talk • contribs) 13:32, 18 September 2013
@Bearcat:, your comparison of US states to UK counties doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. UK counties have no constitution, can be reorganised at central govt's wishes, have no legislative powers, no criminal jurisdiction, no direct control over police, etc. Even |Wales has far less autonomy than a US state. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I said right up front that it wasn't an exact or perfect analogue. The political structure of the United Kingdom — a sovereign country whose primary constituent entities are also considered to be countries in their own rights, not states or provinces — is completely unlike the political structures of the United States or Canada, so there's just no easy or natural comparison available. While comparing US states to UK counties may not stand up to much scrutiny, it's still more accurate than deeming California or Ontario as being in any way equivalent or analogous to England or Wales or Scotland — a "constituent countries" level of the political structure does not exist in either Canada or the United States, and a "states or provinces" level does not exist in the United Kingdom, but comparing the states or provinces of North America to the constituent countries of the UK is entirely false. The shires aren't a great analogue either — I admitted that right up front — but "California = Berkshire", as weak as the fit may be, is still a more accurate comparison than "California = England" is. Even if it doesn't have full autonomy over its own affairs separately from the United Kingdom as a whole, England is still considered to be a country in its own right, while California is not. Bearcat (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, it's not "entirely false", and in trying to discuss these matters it would be helpful if you would read what was written and try to discuss it, rather than just declaiming your view as an absolute. Both Varment and I have illustrated our reasons for pointing to a rough similarity, and if you want to reply then it would be helpful if you would engage with those points. Yes, the two structures are differently labelled and have very different histories and functions. But there are also some similarities: Scotland and California are all second-level national subdivisions, with law-making assemblies, and their own criminal justice systems. In both Scotland and California, there is a third level of government, called counties in California and council areas in Scotland: e.g. Aberdeenshire and Orange County. Their powers differ, but they have a lot in common. In England, there is no second-level authority, but the English counties have much more in common with American counties than with a US state. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:10, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep AllCategory:LGBT people from the United States (LGBT-US) doesn't have 389 articles, it has thousands, of which 389 aren't diffused out to one of the subcategories. Just take a look at Category:LGBT writers from the United States, which tops a thousand on its own. Within that category is Drew Barrymore, who is listed in nine different LGBT categories, many of which are branches within the LGBT-US structure, but which don't appear among the 389. Not only is an organization by state an effective means of organizing these thousands articles, but the fact that attitudes and legal status differs dramatically between states such as Massachusetts and Mississippi is further justification to retain this structure. In terms of the specious argument that "the individual US state that a person comes from is not relevant in conjunction with their LGBTness", I believe that Matthew Shepard might well be alive today had he been living in Wisconsin rather than Wyoming. Alansohn (talk) 04:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep All The parent category is sufficiently large to need subcategories for navigation. Dimadick (talk) 12:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and discount the parent category is too large arguments. The rest of the subcategories are based on ethnicity. Simply stated we don't need a breakout by state and by ethnicity. The correct solution is to fully utilize the better established ethnicity subcategories. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:44, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the main problem is that the majority of the US population today, and even more so historically, is part of ethnic groups that we have not chosen to sub-divide this category by. Also, don't ERGS rules say that we should not create bottom rung divisions by ethnicity, and this would in general apply to other ERGS categories. It is just essentially the same to treat African-American Roman Catholics as not part of the general body of Roman Catholics as it is to treat African-American novelists as not part of the general body of American novelists. Just to make things fun, there are some people who draw inspiration from certain ideas advocated by Malcolm X who actually would argue in favor of this set-up. They would argue that being African-American is a proto nationality. Considering how many times I had to rethink placement of mention of Jay-Z being African-American the thought "African-Americaness is a nationality" does not seem to have many followers among Wikipedia editors, and in reality people like Mia Love, Clarence Thomas, Allen West and maybe even Martin Luther King would have to be excluded from African-American categories if we went the nationality route, but it might well explain why we have way more African-American categories than any other American ethnic categories, even though Hispanic and Latino Americans outnumber African-Americans. Of course, that also has to do with the fact that Lucy Arnaz and many other Hispanic and Latino Americans have complex ethnicities. It also may be a result of many Hispanic and Latino residents of the US being in Category:Mexican expatriates in the United States or a similar category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:47, 25 September 2013 (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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:no consensus to delete. Good Ol’factory(talk) 19:39, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale:WP:OC#LOCATION violation, which fails both of the tests by which subcategorization by individual country is ordinarily warranted: the intersection of LGBTness with nationality has no bearing on a scientist's career, and the parent category Category:LGBT scientists is not large enough to warrant subdivision. As per numerous past CFDs, the established practice is that "LGBT occupation by nationality" intersections are ordinarily permitted only where Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT has explicitly established a consensus that they're warranted in that particular case, and are not to be created if that consensus has not been sought (as it wasn't here). Upmerge all entries back into the appropriate Category:LGBT scientists + Category:LGBT people from (Country) pairs and delete. Bearcat (talk) 02:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep All - First of all, the parent category includes about 100 articles, which is more than enough to warrant subdividing by nationality. Secondly, the assertion that "the intersection of LGBTness with nationality has no bearing on a scientist's career" is just that -- an assertion. Try that out on a Russian or Polish scientist and I suspect it would evoke a snort of laughter. Lastly, I would NOT support sub-categories for specific kinds of scientists, i.e. chemists or biologists; that would indeed be taking things too far, whereas these more general categories seem perfectly reasonable.
As for the notion that an editor is required to ask permission of WikiProject LGBT before he/she may create such catgories, I say rubbish. Since when does any WikiProject have the right to assert such unilateral control over the creation of categories?? That is way too authoritarian for my liking -- and certainly not in keeping with the generally accepted norms here on Wikipedia.
Lastly, I was appalled to find that the creator of all 9 of these categories -- who obviously put a great deal of work into populating them -- was not even informed of this CFD. I think that is shameful, and would never be permitted if these were articles. This really needs to change. I took it upon myself to notify the editor that this CFD is taking place, and I hope he will join the discusssion. Notified Category creator using {{cfd-notify}} Cgingold (talk) 12:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that by the way - I was a little surprised I was notified earlier. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:14, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
100 articles is not large enough to warrant subdividing by nationality. Five or six hundred might possibly be, a thousand or more would definitely be, but 100 is not. And as I've explained below, LGBT categories present a completely unique set of BLP concerns far greater than any other categories for people ever have to actually deal with — which is why the LGBT WikiProject has always insisted on striking a balance between having enough LGBT categories for the tree to be useful, while not having so many categories that the tree becomes impossible to monitor for BLP compliance.
Very nearly all other category trees are straightforward and uncontroversial, with little room for dispute about what belongs or doesn't belong in them and virtually no latitude available for the trees to be misused as a form of vandalism. Filing somebody in "People from City" for a city they're not from is nothing more than an innocent error, but filing somebody in "LGBT people" who hasn't come out as LGBT can be a homophobic attack — and for that matter, can still rightly or wrongly open us up to a libel suit if we can't monitor the tree carefully enough to remove it right away. Which is why the LGBT project has a unique responsibility to put a lot more work into monitoring LGBT categories for policy compliance than almost any other project ever has to take on — and thus why its own assessments about what types of categorization are or aren't useful, its own decisions about what volume of work it is or isn't willing to accept responsibility for monitoring and maintaining, need to be respected. Bearcat (talk) 17:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
ReplyBearcat's claim that this about subdividing 100 articles is nonsense. By the time he posted that, I had already posted below noting that CatScan2 shows 739 articles which are in subcats of both Category:Scientists and Category:LGBT people. Why would a good faith editor base his argument on an assertion which had already been demonstrated to be false?
As to the BLP arguments, Beracat has posted the same set of BLP arguments at length in two places in the same discussion. I will reply to them below, because they are misplaced. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This comment seems more appropriate elsewhere - it does not seem to pertain to this specific issue. The need to clean up the category seems to favor the notion of going through and categorizing them further and harms the argument that one big category is working best. Can we please not split this discussion and post that point elsewhere? Probably on WikiProject LGBT talk page. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's no category clutter to clean up; you're misunderstanding the point. BEG cited a machine-generated list to prove that there were 700+ articles affected, not just the 100 or so that were actually in the category — but my point is that the machine generated a bad list which included a large number of topics that wouldn't belong in any iteration of the category regardless of whether it was divided or undivided. Bearcat (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, the list has flaws. Thanks for spotting that.
One glitch I have seen so far is that Category:Gender-based violence is a subcat of Category:Victims of anti-LGBT hate crimes, which is wrong. There may be other such glitches, and some digging is needed. However, it's clear from the list that although the 739 figure is an overestimate, we do have articles on a lot more than 100 LGBT scientists. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:04, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Try that out on a Russian or Polish scientist and I suspect it would evoke a snort of laughter. Well, no, here's the thing: being an LGBT person from Russia or Poland is obviously going to have a distinct bearing on a person's life — but there's no discernible or encyclopedic way in which that affects scientists differently than it affects people in any other occupation. Being an LGBT scientist from Russia or Poland is different from being an LGBT scientist from Canada or the United States only in the sense that being an LGBT anything from Russia or Poland is different; the "scientist" part is irrelevant to the distinction. To be a WP:DEFINING characteristic rather than an intersection that runs afoul of WP:OCAT, all three elements — "LGBT", "scientist" and the nationality — all have to factor directly into the distinction. "LGBT people from Country" and "LGBT scientists" are both legitimately defining characteristics on their own, certainly — but combined as "LGBT scientists from Country", it's just an intersection of unrelated traits that doesn't constitute a new defining characteristic in its own right. Bearcat (talk) 00:59, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, there is a huge distinction between LGBT in a country where those attributes ate protected against discrimination (such as the UK) and LGBT in a country such as Russia, which are not exactly LGBT-friendly. Are you seriously saying that this doesn't have an impact on their careers, and hence on the opportunities for them to practice science? Seriously? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:36, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- WP has lots of locational categories, many of which are about places that peop[el are from. 62 in the US category is enough for a worthwhile category; 10 for UK is small, but not ludicrously so. It might be worth merging most of the rest into Category:LGBT scientists from continental Europe (with a headnote saying this it covers Europe except UK or Category:LGBT scientists from Europe, with the UK category as a sub-cat. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:02, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all. The US category contains over 60 articles, and the UK one has 10. Both ae clearly big enough to be viable. Whether the others are viable remains to be seen, but CatScan2 shows 739 articles which are in subcats of both Category:Scientists and Category:LGBT people. I they are categorised under Category:LGBT scientists, then we will definitely need some sort of a subdivision by nationality. I also strongly endorse CGingold's complaint about the nominatror's rationale, which is a severe case of WP:OWNERSHIP by the WikiProject. He is demanding that CFD gives a weird sort of pre-emptive veto to the LGBT project, which no other project seeks. Sure, WikiProject input is great, and should be ecouraged; but most articles fall with in the scope o many different projects, and claims at ownership are a recipe or conflict. In particular, it is curious that the assertions are WP:LGBT ownership are always made by the same editor, and are unsupported by any evidence of WP:LGBT consensus. It would be helpful if the nominator could remember that all Wikipedia consensus-forming processes are a discussion between all interested editors, and refrain from trying to dictate outcomes. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:16, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As I've pointed out before, LGBT categories present a unique form of WP:BLP sensitivity, the likes of which no other WikiProject ever has to deal with. In particular, they are still quite regularly added to non-LGBT people (or people who might certainly be LGBT in private but cannot be properly sourced as such in reliable sources) as a form of vandalism or attack editing. (For example, I regularly see Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson being inappropriately added to LGBT categories; Anderson Cooper also used to be a regular addition before he came out and thus became legitimately categorizable as such; people whose sexuality is subject to public dispute because of private actions that might conflict with their public statements of identity, such as Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, regularly get editwarred back and forth; and on and on, etc.)
Accordingly, the LGBT WikiProject's practice has always been to strike a balance between having enough LGBT categories for the tree to be useful, while not having so many LGBT categories that the tree becomes impossible to properly monitor for that kind of thing — and one of the restrictions that the project has settled on is that "LGBT occupation by nationality" intersections are only warranted in a few specific cases where the intersection is itself defining, and not where it's just fragmentation for the sake of fragmentation. And that has been the consensus for years, fully established and well-supported by extensive past discussions on the WikiProject's talk pages and by prior CFD discussions as well. I know how deeply you love to assert that I'm acting all rogue and stuff, but I'm quite simply not. I actually disagree with the WikiProject's consensus on several branches of the LGBT category tree, but the consensus is what it is and my personal opinions are irrelevant.
The bottom line here is that the LGBT WikiProject has a special responsibility, above and beyond what any other WikiProject ever actually has to deal with, to monitor its related categories on a regular basis for BLP issues — and so if the WikiProject has to put in more work than any other WikiProject does, then it gets to have a rather large say in how much work it is or isn't willing to do and how many categories it is or isn't willing to take responsibility for. Instead of having one "LGBT scientists" category to monitor, we now have eleven of them — but is there any genuinely useful reason why we need eleven of them? Bearcat (talk) 17:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. Bearcat, this is supposed to be a consensus-forming discussion, rather than an opportunity for you to lecture others. You based your nomination on numbers, and I have provided evidence to the contrary. 11 categories is actually a rather small number to divide the 739 articles which should be in Category:LGBT scientists, and will be once it is fully populated. Would you be kind enough to respond to that, rather repeating this claim of "fragmentation for the sake of fragmentation"?
As to your BLP argument, it is fatally flawed in several respects:
Any article can have an LGBT attribute added to it in many ways. A vandal doesn't need to add Category:German LGBT scientists; they could just edit the article's body text. Any worthwhile monitoring system which looks only for category additions will fail.
The idea that the LGBT project is some sort of thin blue line acting alone to hold back the tide of BLP vandals is also silly. Any such vandalism will be most readily spotted by the regular vandalism monitors, using tools such as WP:HUGGLE, whether or not categories are involved. The idea that only the LGBT project will spot such vandalism makes no sense, and if you want to pursue that claim, let's see some evidence of the project's special monitoring program.
I never said that the LGBT WikiProject was somehow the only line of defense that we have against BLP vandalism — but it is a necessary one. For starters, the HUGGLE vandalism patrol is an important task force by all means, but they do not catch everything — stuff most certainly does fall through the cracks and sit in LGBT categories for days, or even weeks, before somebody at the WikiProject level catches it while reviewing the category. Just in the past three months alone, I've caught at least ten articles that were added to LGBT categories as pure vandalism but somehow escaped the Huggle patrol — and I can only speak for what I've personally caught. I can't speak for what other people have or haven't found, and I can't guarantee that there aren't still some articles that nobody's caught — I can only attest that I've personally caught enough stuff to know that as important as Huggle patrol is, it doesn't solve the problem all by itself without anybody still having to monitor things at the wikiproject level. Bearcat (talk) 00:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, there are currently 540 sub-cats of Category:LGBT people. The ten under discussion here are less than 2% of that total, and so it's silly to claim that their retention or deletion is a significant factor in the ability of anyone to monitor the whole, if anyone is doing it.
Nor do I share your presumption that one particular wikiproject has such a significant role in monitoring as to merit the veto you seek over this type of category. These articles also fall within the scope of many other projects, whose members will also be watching them. No such claim has ever been made by anyone from WP:CRIMEPROJ, and the crime categories are every bit as much of a BLP hazard.
You have a point that BLP monitoring is easier if there are fewer categories which could be used maliciously. But as is often the case, you have massively exaggerated and dramatised it. A little less hyperbole would earn you a more sympathetic hearing.
Also, the only editor who appears at CFD to make these LGBT project demands is you. If you really are speaking on behalf of the project rather than just of Bearcat, you should link to some evidence that there is a project consensus for your views, and that BLP monitoring of these categories is actually co-ordinated through the project rather than just being done by you. At the moment, this looks rather like Bearcat pushing his own preferences using the project banner, and that's not a good apperaance. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 11:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And once again you lapse into accusations of bad faith editing. I certainly have my own opinions about some things — a fact which doesn't make me any different from you or any other Wikipedian — but I have never, not one single solitary time in over ten years of editing Wikipedia, imposed a "personal preference" by calling it a consensus that didn't actually exist. The LGBT WikiProject has had extensive past discussions over the years about which types of subcategorization were desirable for LGBT people and which were not, which types of subcategorization met WP:CATGRS and which violated it; CFD has frequently held discussions about LGBT people categories which have resulted in the same conclusions about which subcategories were desirable and which were not. So whether you agree with it or not, the consensus that this is very often not a useful or helpful level of categorization, that it's usually a violation of WP:OC#LOCATION and WP:OC#NARROW that doesn't have a compelling reason to consider it one of that guideline's valid exceptions, is already established and is not just my own unsupported or tendentious "opinion".
We've had, for example, LGBT comedians by nationality, where the CFD consensus was that "LGBT + occupation + nationality" was not a desirable or useful level of subcategorization — and that was nominated by User:SatyrTN, not by me. We've had CFD discussions which have found that actors, radio personalities, television personalities and fashion designers, among others, did not warrant the "LGBT + occupation + nationality" level of subcategorization, and I wasn't the nominator for any of those either. The consensus is quite well-established that "LGBT + occupation + nationality" subcategorization is only warranted in a few specific cases — i.e. where it genuinely constitutes a defining characteristic in its own right, and not where it's just serving as subcategorization for the sake of subcategorization — and I've not seen any evidence that "scientists" fall in that class, or that this tree is serving any genuinely useful purpose that would constitute a good exception to WP:OC#NARROW or WP:OC#LOCATION.
And I've pointed all of this out to you before, to boot, and just for the record I'm well and truly sick and bloody tired of you constantly asserting that I'm acting out of arbitrary or tendentious personal preference, rather than established consensus, every time you happen to disagree with what the consensus happens to be. And also as I've pointed out to you before, once a consensus is established I put my own personal preferences aside and respect the consensus whether I agree with it or not; I have frequently supported the deletion of content that I personally thought should be kept, and the retention of content that I personally thought should be deleted, if that's where the consensus landed. I don't, for instance, believe that the case for Category:LGBT musicians by nationality is any stronger than the case for Category:LGBT actors by nationality is — they should either both exist or both go — but the general consensus favoured one and opposed the other. So there is simply no legitimate case to be made that I have ever acted on the basis of personal opinions that violated existing consensus, because I consistently respect and uphold consensus positions even if I personally still disagree with the consensus.
So if you feel these should be kept, then kindly argue on the basis of how "LGBT scientists from Specific Country" should be seen as genuinely defining, not on the basis of my editing skills. Especially since your comments elsewhere in this thread appear to imply that you believe the entire tree should potentially be deleted anyway — other than taking issue with anything I nominate just because I'm the nominator, what value could there possibly be in keeping "LGBT scientists by nationality" subcategories if you don't even think we should be keeping "LGBT scientists" in the first place? Bearcat (talk) 18:34, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, please try to clam down. This is a consenus-seeking discussion, and if you put forward an argument it may be challenged or countered. That's what happening here, and I am not going be bullied into accepting arguments which appear unfounded.
I did not accuse you of bad faith editing. What I did point out was that your claims about BLP monitoring were exaggerated, that your demand for a WP:LGBT veto had no parallel elsewhere, and that you had provided no evidence to support your claim that the position you were advocating represented an LGBT project consensus rather than Bearcat's own ideas. You may well be sick of me pointing this out to you. If so, then solution is for you to stop doing it.
And please stop this silly game of claiming that I criticise you because I "disagree with what the consensus happens to be". On the contrary, I criticise you repeatedly because you repeatedly make dogmatic assertions about what the consensus is, without backing it up with evidence.
Look again at what you wrote in the nomination: " the established practice is that "LGBT occupation by nationality" intersections are ordinarily permitted only where Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT has explicitly established a consensus that they're warranted in that particular case, and are not to be created if that consensus has not been sought". No ifs, no buts.
So, by your own evidence, at least one of the planks of your nomination is bogus. What you call established practice turns out to be nothing of the sort. CFD does sometimes keep this type of category, and in neither case above did it defer to the LGBT project.
And I still await evidence of this LGBT project consensus you mention. Once again, rather than simply asserting it, please provide the evidence of it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:38, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for starters you could start by not misrepresenting what I'm saying in the first place.
I specifically gave CFD 2012 Nov 8: LGBT musicians by nationality as an example of where the consensus was to keep it. In fact, even more specifically I cited it as an example of how I respect consensus positions even if I disagree with them — I may not think subcategorizing LGBT musicians by nationality is any more or any less useful than subcategorizing LGBT actors by nationality is, but the consensus to keep the musicians and kill the actors was already established by the WikiProject and backed up by CFD, and so my own personal opinion on the matter is irrelevant. I specifically cited it as an example of how I leave my personal opinions out of these things, and thus how you can't accuse me of imposing personal opinions in a tendentious manner.
And I gave numerous examples — comedians, actors, radio personalities, television personalities, etc. — of where CFD specifically established a consensus that subcategorization by nationality was not useful or desirable. And I gave the same numerous examples the last five times you falsely claimed that I never give any examples, too.
Whether you agree with it or not, there is a consensus in place that triple-intersecting LGBT occupational categories by nationality is not always useful or desirable; the precedent is that there are some cases where it's considered useful and therefore gets kept, and other cases where it's not considered useful and therefore gets deleted. The consensus is well established that "LGBT occupation by nationality" intersections are considered to violate WP:OC#LOCATION and WP:OC#NARROW in most cases, and thus get deleted unless there's a compelling reason why they're needed in that particular instance.
But you haven't given a reason why LGBT scientists should be in the "subcategorization by nationality is warranted" class with politicians and writers, rather than the "subcategorization by nationality is not warranted" class with comedians and actors and radio personalities and television personalities. Rather, just like nearly every other time that you and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of an issue, instead of giving a reason why these categories should be considered useful you've engaged in ad hominem arguments against me instead.
I am, just for the record, not known around here as a person who takes offense lightly, or as a person who's incapable of collaborating productively and civilly even with people I happen to disagree with on stuff. So if I perceive that I'm being attacked when you reply to me — something which I almost always perceive when I'm talking to you, and almost never perceive when I'm talking to pretty much anybody who isn't you — then it's your responsibility to consider that maybe I actually do have a valid point about the way your writing tone is actually coming across, that maybe you're the one who needs to adjust your writing tone if a personal attack isn't what you're intending to communicate.
So again, here's my question. We have a few "LGBT occupation" groupings where CFD has decided that further subcategorizing them by nationality is considered useful; we have many more where CFD has decided that it isn't. It's not something that CFD always keeps; it's something that actually gets deleted more often than not. I believe that scientists fall in the "should be deleted" camp. I've explained my reasoning; I've given comparable examples. So do you have an actual reason why they belong in the "should be kept" camp instead? Bearcat (talk) 22:26, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, I have asked you several times for evidence of this consensus you claim that the LGBT project gets some sort of veto on the issue, and instead of producing it, you complain about being challenged. Now you are complaining again about my tone rather than providing the evidence. That's your choice, but if you want to prolong this attempt to defend unsubstantiated assertions, don't be surprised if they get challenged. (The unlinked items you mention above show that some such categs are kept, but others are not; you have provided no evidence either of a pre-existing project consensus about them, or that there was a CFD consensus to defer to the project rather to accept substantive arguments).
Perceive that as an "attack" if you like, and go seek redress if you want to. I am quite happy for this to be scrutinised; in fact, I'd be delighted for more eyes to be cast on the way you have tried to dictate to a consensus-forming discussion on the basis of principles for which you repeatedly refuse to provide evidence.
Now, if you want to drop the bluster, we can get back to discussing the substantive arguments for and against keeping the category. Your call. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for starters, I have pointed you to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Categories before. You can keep jumping up and down and insisting that I've never done so all you like — but I have done so more than once, and it's not my responsibility to keep politely nodding in apologetic supplication every time you decide to claim otherwise. That's not even the sum total of all the discussions that the project has ever had about how to determine which categories are warranted and which aren't, either — you can find various other one-off discussions in the WikiProject talk archives, and even the CFDs themselves sometimes served as the platform as LGBT WikiProject members were sometimes the only people participating in the CFD discussions at all. But the WikiProject does not believe that all possible LGBT-related categories should necessarily exist — it fully supports their deletion at CFD in many cases — but rather has always tried to maintain a consensus to distinguish LGBT-related categories that are useful and should be kept from those that aren't useful and should be deleted.
But the project does maintain the view that some types of LGBT-related categorization are warranted and others are not, the process of establishing that consensus about what's useful and what isn't is documented, I have shown it all to you before, and I have given you numerous examples — actors, comedians, radio personalities, television personalities, and on and so forth — which confirm that CFD has agreed that just because such a category grouping is possible doesn't mean that it's always useful in any given instance. "LGBT occupation by nationality" categories actually get deleted far more often than they get kept, in fact, and I have yet to see a reason why "LGBT scientists" belong in the "should be intersected by nationality" camp.
And, for the record, you'll kindly notice that even in the discussion I just linked to at the beginning of this comment, I argued against several groupings that consensus ultimately favoured keeping, and in favour of several that the consensus went against. And I even argued in favour of a category that I've since changed my mind about, to boot. But no matter what my own opinion is, I respect the consensus. So that discussion also proves, yet again, that I do not act on the basis of tendentious personal opinions.
I'd be more than happy to get back to the substantive arguments for and against keeping the category — if you've got a substantive argument to make, by all means I'm more than happy to hear it. You're free to feel differently about that than I do about how useful these categories might be, but it would be a lot easier to consider your reasoning if you'd actually provide some. But just for the record, I'm not the one who distracted us from the meat of the matter in the first place. You are. Bearcat (talk) 23:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, this is very silly. If this wasn't part of the meat of the matter, why include in your nominator's rationale? If you find something distracting, don't bring it into the discussion.
I don't recall whether you pointed me to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Categories in some other discussion. Maybe you did, but that's not this discussion, and it was wrong to assume either that I remembered it or that other editors had ever been made aware of it. If it underpinned your rationale, why not link to it in the rationale? And when you were challenged, why take four rounds and screeds of text before posting the link? What sort of game-playing is that?
So, fine. The project did have some discussions on this 5 years ago (Sept 2008). Some of what is set out there seems helpful, and some of it may have stood the test of time. Please point editors about to it as background, but it's silly to suggest that it is binding on CFD when you don't even link to it.
Substantive arguments for keeping the category? Just read my "keep" !vote at the start of this thread. The US and UK categories are clearly viable, and breaking out the two biggest national groups helps navigation. I'm not sure about the others, but I think there is potential for populating them.
Anyway, it's kinda funny that you post walls of text rather than one link, and then complain about the lack of a substantive keep argument. It was there in my initial post, but you chose to ignore it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if one or two countries having subcategories that were themselves potentially justifiable on size grounds alone were all that it took, then comedians and actors and radio personalities and television personalities would have to have been kept — because their US and UK subcategories were just as large as, or even larger than, they are here. But the parent categories weren't deemed to be large enough to warrant subdivision, no other country had enough entries to warrant its own separate subcategory, and the intersection wasn't considered to constitute a defining characteristic in its own right.
In the cases of writers and politicians, for example, breaking down by nationality clearly aided navigation, because undifferentiated categories would have been populated in the thousands. But it doesn't particularly aid navigation to comprehensively break down a category that's only populated in the one, two or three hundred range — that just fragments the tree in a way that isn't useful if the breakdown is just a triple intersection and not a genuinely defining characteristic.
"The US and UK categories are clearly viable, and breaking out the two biggest national groups helps navigation" wasn't a good enough reason to actually warrant subdividing LGBT comedians or LGBT actors or LGBT radio personalities, even though it was no less true in those cases — so what is it about LGBT scientists specifically that makes it a better reason here? If it's not the size of the parent category and it's not the definingness of the grouping, then what is it about LGBT scientists that makes them more like writers or politicians where the division by nationality was absolutely needed, and less like the numerous other LGBT occupations where the division by nationality wasn't considered to be valuable or helpful? That's the question I keep asking and not getting an answer to. Bearcat (talk) 02:27, 25 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No - you just do not like the answers people are giving you. Again, please stop presenting yourself as the final authority - these are your opinions - you do not like the arguments presented - discounting them altogether is poor form, in my opinion. As has been pointed out, many people do feel that being LGBT has an impact on many careers - something that is as public as scientists (with publishing work, etc.) certainly included. Are there studies or essays backing that? For scientists specifically? Probably not, but I do not need an essay to apply logic and experiences to see that being LGBT in that field can have an impact on your work, approach, etc. Nationality impact has also been stated, down to the field level. The point that a LGBT scientist in Russia is likely having a wildly different experience in their field than a LGBT scientist in Israel. Again, I am repeating what has already been said here, but since you did not think any arguments on that issue had been made, I felt a refresher may help. You may not like those examples and feel eager to attack them, fine, but claiming they the arguments are absent is not a fair statement. --Varnent (talk)(COI) 12:30 pm, Today (UTC−4)
Upmerge per nom. I find Bearcat's arguments quite compelling. --Randykitty (talk) 18:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep allDisclaimer: I created these - so I have an obvious bias. I agree the subcat overlap should be cleaned up, but would suggest that approach vs. deleting these categories. I am a participant in WikiProject LGBT and I am familiar with the discussions mentioned here - but did not consult any entity when deciding to create these - so those comments are fair. However, I agree with Cgingold that editors should not have to consult the WikiProject on this. I think it is fair to ask them to weigh in on a conversation, but prior approval seems a bit far. I also agree with Cgingold that the intersection value is subjective, and appreciate the example offered. I created them because I was looking up LGBT scientists from the US and Germany for a particular purpose and was surprised it did not already exist by that grouping. I would not have wasted my time creating them if I felt they presented no value to anyone - in this case I felt they did as I had an immediate use (it pertains to some mentor work I am doing - I will not bore you with details). --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:14, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PS. I love that in the discussion about US states, you say that LGBT people in the US having occupation categories helps manage its size - yet here you want to remove one. When I setup the US one - I was able to remove often 1 and sometimes 2-3 other categories to better consolidate large ones. A number of LGBT scientists in the US were contributing to the problem of LGBT from the US being so large. Can you explain your thinking behind these seemingly conflicting comments? --Varnent (talk)(COI) 00:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Quite easily; there's no conflict. The fact that occupational categories can serve as a way to manage the size of a parent category does not mean that every occupational subcategory that could possibly be created is actually justifiable. Bearcat (talk) 01:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all no one has come forward with reliable sources that LGBT scientists do science differently than their straight counterparts. Per WP:CATEGRS these categories cannot stand. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. Per WP:CATEGRS, the test is not the narrow one of whether they do science in an LGBT way. The guideline says that such categs should exist "only where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created." I am not sure about this instance, and had been considering a broader deletion discussion of Category:LGBT scientists and all its subcats. There are certainly some individual scientists who are notable for being LGBT scientists, such as Lynn Conway and Alan Turing. I am less certain that "LGBT scientists" is a "distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right", so there may be a case for deletion. But that would be better considered in a separate nomination which focused on deletion, rather than the narrower question of subcategorisation addressed here. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:32, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There was a deletion discussion on this subject back in January. The determination seems to have largely turned on the assumption that just because we can create LGBT Scientists and have multiple reliable sources to the article, we should ahve the category. I am not convinced that we need to have every inter-section have an article that people have taken note of.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2013 (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.
