Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 July 29

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July 29

Category:Canadian politicians of Iranian descent

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. As noted in the discussion, this may require a broader discussion at relevant venues. ℯxplicit 01:29, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Several more categories for Canadian politicians subcatted by individual country of ethnic origin. For about the millionth time, this is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic in its own right -- a person's individual ethnicity is not relevant in conjunction with being a Canadian politician, because Canadian politics does not treat people of Iranian descent differently than it treats people of Pakistani or Syrian or Lebanese or Iraqi or Afghan or Yemeni descent, nor does it treat people of Chinese descent differently than people of Japanese or Vietnamese descent. Per WP:CATEGRS, this is simply not a relevant basis on which to categorize people — the defining attribute in regard to politics is at the level of being broadly Asian or Middle Eastern, not at the level of what individual Asian or Middle Eastern country the politician's ancestors happened to hail from. Bearcat (talk) 22:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep most -- Ethnic origins are likely to colour the politicians's outlook on foreign affairs. The possible exception is the Punjabi category, which should be split so that Hindus and Sikhs are merged to India and Muslims to Pakistan. If not kept, merge to Category:Canadian people of Iranian descent. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:04, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment the problem is really in the existence of Category:Politicians by ethnic or national descent, it's not a specific Canadian issue. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:58, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. WP:CATEGRS suggests that that ethnicity + occupation is a pretty common categorization on WP, so we should be slow to lose the information stored in these categories without a good reason. Bearcat seems to be arguing that our category structure is has the wrong categories for the Canadian context. That's perfectly plausible, but browsing through the articles in these categories, I don't see any references to "first Asian councillor" or "first Middle Eastern MLA", but many uses of "first Chinese councillor", etc. If you want us to make the change, then write the article on 'Middle Easterners in Canadian politics' using RSs and then we can recategorize accordingly. Peterkingiron raises an interesting issue about Punjabis, but note that these are supposed to be ethnic, not national, categories (the relevant nationality here is obviously Canadian!). Browsing through the entries suggests that "Punjabi" is being used here as an alternative (even a euphemism?) for "Sikh". I know the UK courts have ruled that Sikh identity is ethnic as well as religious (like Jewish identity), but our article on Punjabi Canadian suggests that the bond between those terms isn't so strong in Canada, so I'd leave the Punjabi category alone. Matt's talk 18:59, 4 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The important takeaway from CATEGRS is not "categories of this type sometimes exist" — it's the reasons that determine whether any such category is allowed to exist or not: namely, whether the grouping represents a WP:DEFINING intersection in its own right, or merely a "list" of everybody who happens to meet two discrete and otherwise unconnected characteristics. These are of the latter type, not the former. Bearcat (talk) 19:02, 4 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment -- I merely said 'possible exception'. If others think we should keep the Punjabi category, I will not dissent. The difficulty is that Punjab was split at partition, so that it is not clear which successor country is appropriate. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I understand the point that ethnic origin isn't automatically relevant in conjunction with someone's job. However, I'd be uncomfortable with deleting the Canadian politician category tree but not addressing Category:Politicians by ethnic or national descent. I think the discussion needs to take place at a higher more general level to avoid the outcome of this discussion being used as a precedent. Sionk (talk) 13:11, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Descent categories are generally enough. Descend+nationality+occupation is generally seen as a bridge too far.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:09, 14 August 2017 (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.

Ancient periods by continent

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: option B. ℯxplicit 01:29, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Option A example; the full list of option A can be found on the talk page.

Nominator's rationale: option A is an upmerge of the continental year and continental decade categories of ancient history to centuries. This option is essentially a housekeeping nomination because in this discussion, this discussion and this discussion we have already decided to bypass the ancient continental year and decade categories (as we merged directly from country to global).

Option B example; the full list of option B can be found on the talk page.

In case of BC categories (i.e. earlier in time than in this example) also merge/delete the continental millennium categories
Nominator's rationale: option B goes a bit farther than option A, as it not only upmerges the ancient continental year and decade categories (as discussed before) but also the ancient continental century and millennium categories. This option would be a logical next step but it has not explicitly been discussed before. Note that while removing the continent layer, we are still keeping the country categories at century and millennium level, so it's not like this option is going to lead to chaos of any kind. We will just have the century categories of Egypt, Greece and China as direct siblings. Also note that the current continental divides are pretty anachronistic when applied to ancient history, a more common-sense subdivision of the ancient world would for example contain Middle East/Mediterranean as one entity, while this spans no less than three current continents.
Pinging editors who participated in earlier discussions @Oculi, Tim!, Nyttend, Peterkingiron, J 1982, Neutrality, Inter&anthro, Le Deluge, Laurel Lodged, and Dimadick: feel free to comment on this new nomination too. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:22, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
procedural discussion about tagging of categories has been resolved
Procedural issue: in this earlier CfD discussion administrator User:Xaosflux intervened by waiving the requirement of tagging all categories with a CfD template, due to the enormous amount of categories involved and the expected limited benefit of tagging in a case like that. Unless being told otherwise I assume the same applies to this nomination. User:Fayenatic london, who closed the three earlier discussions, may want to give input to this procedural aspect as well. In any case I'll leave a notice at the WikiProjects talk pages of Years, History and each of the continents and any further suggestions for advertisement of this nomination are welcome. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:47, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not assume that waivers should apply. I'm about to be offline for the day, so haven't reviewed this specific listing - feel free to ask at WP:AN. — xaosflux Talk 13:03, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural oppose. A nomination based on huge numbers of untagged categories is not a valid nomination, regardless of the perceived merit of the proposal. Nor is a nomination in which the categories are not listed at the CFD page. One of two individual admins have previously turned a blind eye to such failings, but there has never been any consensus decision to create such an exception.
If would be happy to use AWB to do the tagging, if the nominator helps me to identify the categories involved. I suggest that it would be best to post any such info on my talk page, to avoid cluttering this discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:19, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have contacted User:BrownHairedGirl on their talk page about the tagging. Apart from that, it is important to stress that the full list of nominations is available, I've merely put them on the talk page in order to not put a burden on the loading time of this page. If there is an important reason to have the entire lists on the main discussion page, I'm more than happy to move them. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I have tagged all of the previously untagged categories in the nomination. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:18, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Option B In dealing with ancient history, we are not gong to get enough content on dis/establishments to make a split by continent worthwhile or one by period less than a century, but anything related to a year should be in the category for that year (which should be left with no subcategories). In this period, we know nothing detailed of Africa, except Egypt and the Mediterranean coast, little of northern Europe (except Roman Empire), and almost nothing at all of America. I also oppose splits by millennium, as no centuries category is likely to need more than one page. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Either - I'm tempted to say just get on with A as the "easy" option and then worry about B later. In general I think a lot of early history is WP:OVERCATed, so reducing the number of cats is A Good Thing, particularly when it comes to continents which by their nature are WP:SMALLCATs in some cases. I take the point about keeping the country cats, whether they are modern or ancient countries, but it may be useful to keep the continent cats as catch-alls. Even in somewhere as well documented as the UK there are battles as recent as the 16th century where noone really knows where they were fought, in the depths of Africa it will be even worse. In some cases you will have historical evidence that will tie an event to an ancient country but not a modern one, whereas archaeological evidence can tie something to a modern country but not an ancient one. So a catch-all may be useful. I don't really work on such articles, so I'm happy to give way to someone with more direct experience. Le Deluge (talk) 22:50, 21 August 2017 (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:Communities in Nova Scotia named after a veteran

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. – Fayenatic London 21:59, 27 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: WP:SHAREDNAME violation. The fact of being named after war veterans is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic that unites these places as an encyclopedic grouping; it's just a naming choice of no more inherent significance than being named after politicians or merchants or other places. Bearcat (talk) 01:14, 29 July 2017 (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.
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