Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 July 5

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: procedural closure, categories have meanwhile been deleted per WP:G5. (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 20:50, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:20th-century American male comedians (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Also:

• Category:21st-century British women comedians
• Category:20th-century British women comedians
• Category:21st-century British male comedians
• Category:20th-century British male comedians

Nominator's rationale: I see no reason why we would be doing this. Per WP:CATGENDER, I'm not sure it's advisable that we create these gendered categories. The misguided editor behind this has created many other such categories; a mass-revert may be in order. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:51, 6 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.

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 (except where already in sub-cats). – Fayenatic London 14:28, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:21st Century synthpop songs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: Overly specific, arbitrary category Adabow (talk) 22:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Category:Synthpop songs. The category contains 33 pages, so it clearly isn't too narrow. However, synthpop is only 40 years old, so it is pointless and daft to divide it by century. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:57, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. snapsnap ^(talk) 03:35, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per BrownHairedGirl, or delete if all articles are already in another subcategory of Category:Synthpop songs. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:50, 19 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.

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: redirect templates and delete categories (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 04:39, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:1890s Western (genre) film stubs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  
• Propose deleting Category:1900s Western (genre) film stubs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: These stub templates do not warrant their own stub categories, which have no hope of being populated. The categories should be deleted, and the templates redirected to the parent categories. Fortdj33 (talk) 20:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Recat the templates to Category:Western (genre) film stubs and then delete these. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:11, 6 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.

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:00, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Proverbial People (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: It's not clear what this category means: People who spoke proverbs? People whose name has become a proverb? People who didn't exist? StAnselm (talk) 18:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Recently created category populated by a single editor, evidently with some POV perspective. None of the articles in question mentions anything about proverbs or about anything being proverbial (let alone anything sourced). Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

did u read Hatim al-Tai article, Stories about his extreme generosity have made him an icon to Arabs up till the present day, as in the proverbial phrase "more generous than Hatem" (Arabic: أكرم من حاتم). --ސ ޚ ލ ٰ ا (talk) 18:10, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

there is some people , real or fictional, in Arabic an persian language who used their names in proverbs. maybe your language is not to old and literally for understanding what is Proverbial People. --ސ ޚ ލ ٰ ا (talk) 18:13, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as a trivial characteristic. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as WP:NONDEFINING. Without the explanation, I would have interpreted this not as "real people whose names have been used in proverbs", but as "theoretical people who exist as concepts rather than flesh and blood individuals", along the lines of Joe Blow or Jane Doe. And no, that isn't because my English language skills are somehow lacking — it's because the phrase itself is objectively ambiguous. Bearcat (talk) 22:40, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as WP:NONDEFINING and lacking clarity. Eperoton (talk) 23:08, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Perhaps listify; certainly delete -- In any event, "more generous than Hatem" is not a proverb. A lot of the people seem to have Arab names. Do we have a mistranslation from the Arabic WP? Peterkingiron (talk) 23:21, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. No matter how you define the term, it would appear to be nondefining in terms of categorization. Kbdank71 13:48, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete; the creator's rationale makes it appear that this is for people who formed the basis of proverbs, and that's really not a good topic on which to have categories. Nyttend (talk) 02:47, 10 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.

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: keep without prejudice against a fresh nomination with a wider scope (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 04:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Robots of Hungary (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT —swpb^T 17:50, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural keep. Several members of Category:Robots by country (of which this one isn't a member) have just one article. Either keep this one because it's part of a by-country series, or delete this one and several of the others because of SMALLCAT. But either way, we shouldn't delete this one while leaving the others. Nyttend (talk) 11:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The entire category tree currently consists of small categories. This one was not even properly parented in the category tree and could not be populated. Dimadick (talk) 14:55, 10 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.

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. – Fayenatic London 14:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Eight-wheel drive (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT —swpb^T 14:02, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment this may be a case of the smallcat exception rule, as part of an established tree together with siblings Category:Six-wheeled vehicles etc. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:04, 19 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.

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, not that there is a strong consensus to do so, but the category's creator has apparently already moved the contents into a replacement category Category:American lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law. I will merge the category page history, to make it as if there had been a rename. – Fayenatic London 20:24, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:People admitted to the practice of law by reading law (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: Trivial categorization. No one is notable for this practice and doing so does not define a career. TM 13:34, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (as creator), since this category is needed for completeness and for maintenance purposes. Virtually all lawyers now enter the practice of law by graduating from a law school, and are categorized by the law school they attended. It is important to be able to discern which articles are missing this information. Without a category for those who became lawyers without going to law school, the list of lawyers needing their law school added becomes impossible to parse. If necessary, make it a hidden category. bd2412 T 13:38, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment: does this category actually mean "United States lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law"? Or is it global? The article Reading law appears very North America-centric, with the statement " In 2013, 60 people became lawyers this way as opposed to 84,000 via law schools." In USA? In world? PamD 14:37, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The concept of "reading law" is unique to common law countries, and has always been particularly U.S.-centric. I can't remember the last time I saw an example of a person outside the United States who was admitted to the bar (in a jurisdiction requiring bar admission) without receiving instruction in a formal institution. Note that in some countries, the phrase "reading law" is used to literally mean attending law school, as opposed to the traditional sense of merely studying the law under the supervision of an attorney. I have looked for examples in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India, and found none. bd2412 T 16:14, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
• If kept, make it a hidden category (unbolded, per later vote below) though I don't quite understand yet why it should be kept as it does not seem to offer a solution for non-US lawyers. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see why it matters whether the category offers a solution for non-U.S. lawyers. Our Category:First Amendment scholars doesn't offer a solution for scholars of free speech in other countries. What is wrong with categorizing U.S. lawyers in accordance with a U.S.-based characteristic? bd2412 T 19:00, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that non-US lawyers may remain uncategorized so the category does not guarantee completeness. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:08, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • It certainly makes it easier. The common law practice of admission to the bar was already established at the time that the United States was formed. Therefore, every person who has ever legally practiced law in a court of the United States has done so either by getting a law degree from an accredited law school, or by reading law. Every article on a lawyer should therefore either indicate which law school they attended, or that they read law. It is true that there are many articles that do not contain either kind of category, but the absence of categorization is exactly why we need this option, so that it can clearly be seen that the reason a given article is not categorized by the subject's law school is that there was none. bd2412 T 20:00, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Delete per discussion below. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for the sake of completeness, although since it sounds like a maintenance/tracking thing, make it hidden. I don't quite see why readers would be searching it (thus making it hidden), but it makes complete sense to have all US lawyers categorised by where they went to law school, and "didn't go to law school" is a good filler, because otherwise the members of this category look like they've been forgotten or like they've just not been handled yet. With this category, BD2412 and any collaborators have a smaller workload, since they know to handle only the lawyers that don't have any school-related category. Nyttend (talk) 11:52, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, or rename for clarity. Struck this !vote. New one to be added below As it stands, this category means in American-speak "lawyer who didn't study law at university" , whereas in English-speak or Irish speak it means the exact opposite: someone who did study law at university (3 sisters went to college. Sinead read law, Roisin read geography, and Mairead read golf course management.).

This guarantees that the category will be populated with articles which don't meet the creator's intentions. Unless the category can be renamed to do what it says on the tin, it should be deleted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:14, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The name of the category tracks the name of the article, reading law. If there is confusion, then it stems from the maintenance of title consistency between the article and the category. That said, something like Category:People admitted to the practice of law in the United States by reading law or Category:American lawyers admitted to the bar by reading law would suffice to alleviate any confusion. bd2412 T 00:11, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: either of those would be an improvement. My only concern is that a Petscan check of articles in this category which are not in Category:American lawyers shows 142 articles out of a current total of 862. The set of non-murcans includes Canandians such as Jérémie-Louis Décarie, the Englishman Sir Francis Bernard, Bt, the town of Newville, Ohio (wtf?), the Dutch Malaccan Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk, the Norniron judge Sir James Andrews, Bt, a house in Ohio (wtf?), the Kenyan-Canadian Miguna Miguna, plus lots of American lawyers who are not otherwise categorised as such. The current ambiguous name has clearly been interpreted in widely variant ways by editors. (Tho I do like the houses which became lawyers. I wish my house would do that, and then go earn lots of money for me.)

So a simple renaming would create lots of miscategorisations. Any suggestions what can be done about that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:54, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Well, the category was initially populated by cross-referencing from articles linking to reading law, so to the extent that non-U.S. subjects are described in their articles by reference to that article, they also need to be fixed internally. In any case, that's a cleanup project I'm glad to undertake. bd2412 T 03:59, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

It's a big job. But I'm not clear what you propose for the non-Americans. And given the obvious ambiguity of "reading law", I am beginning to doubt that any title which relies solely on the phrase "reading law" will be sufficiently unambiguous, even with a geographical prefix.

After posting, I checked one more article: H.K.S. O'Melveny. He's American, but the article says nothing about how he learnt law, let alone offering a source for the assertion, so he should not be in the category; we should categorise ppl only by sourced attributes. I see that the categ was added by you using AWB[1], but there doesn't seem to have been good checking of the article in that case. That prompted me to go back and look at the Joseph and Rachel Bartlett House, which I see was categorised by you using HotCat[2]. That doesn't look good.

So at this point, I'm leaning towards delete. I have a lot of sympathy with User:Namiba/TM's view that this is non-defining, because this appears to be the normal way for lawyers to enter the profession until the late-19th/early-20th century. When I add in the ambiguity and the miscategorisations I struggle to see that there's anything worth keeping. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:09, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize if I have failed to convey that this categorization scheme is necessary to parse out those lawyers who are indeed missing law school information, a task I have undertaken for years, and which would be seriously disrupted without this alternative. The average reader may not know that there was ever a time when it was normal for lawyers to enter the profession in the United States without obtaining any kind of formal degree, and there is a distinct period in American history where the law school tradition had taken hold, wherein there is no question that having read law would indeed be a defining characteristic - see Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States#Educational background. I reiterate: this category is not just a matter of convenience, but is necessary for the maintenance of the substantial number of articles that are legitimately missing the subject's law schools and law school categories. bd2412 T 14:01, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412:: I think your last post raises two separable issues.

On definingness, I am unpersuaded. I think we agree that here is a period when "reading law" was the norm, and undefining. Then, as the law school thing took hold, there was a period of transition until reading became a rare and defining characteristic. I suggest that the latter group would be best accommodated by intersecting the "reading" characteristic with notable posts, so that for example we could have "USSC justices who read law" (bad title but I hope the purpose is clear).

For the other lawyers, what you describe is a valuable maintenance task of identifying which lawyers should categorised by law school but aren't. That is a tracking issue for which there should be a hidden {{tracking category}}.

As to the job of alerting readers to the fact that law school isn't only path to qualification, that's something to include in the body of an article. Categories exist to provide navigation, not to convey facts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:50, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The point of the latter is that readers expect subjects in educated professions to be categorized by their educational background, without thinking to look at the era in which that profession was practiced. The vast majority of people who have ever practiced law in the United States are those who have practiced since the mid-Twentieth century, and virtually all of them have attended law schools - Category:Harvard Law School alumni alone contains nearly 3,000 entries, more than three times the number in this category, so notable lawyers who entered the practice be reading law are indeed rare and surprising (bearing in mind that it has been possible to enter the practice of law by getting a law degree for almost the entire time that law has been practiced in the United States). In fact, we could quite plausibly have subcategories for people who attended some law school, but were admitted to the bar by reading law. As for parsing this category into subcategories by profession, I would guess that a substantial majority of members of this category served either as a United States federal judge (up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court), or a U.S. state supreme court justice, since those are the articles with which I have primarily been working. bd2412 T 15:03, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Note: By parsing out Category:United States federal judges admitted to the practice of law by reading law, I have cut this category by more than half. I expect that similarly parsing out state supreme court justices and federal legislative branch and executive branch officials would dispose of almost all the rest. bd2412 T 15:58, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

(ec) @BD2412: Sorry, but I'm not persuaded by that. How far back do you want this logic to go?

For most of recorded history, people entered the professions without going to the universities, which usually looked down on professions other than the clergy. Law, engineering, medicine (esp surgeons, who were regarded as inherently dodgy), science; all had non-university pathways. That was the norm until the 19th century, when the universities began to expand to expand their scope.

Expecting people from previous eras to have the characteristics of the present is an anachronism and we don't usually categorise people from previous eras in that way. We don't have categs for auto-didact scientists and economists, or for surgeons without degrees, or for 15th-centry independent politicians (political parties as we now them now didn't exist back then). In act there are many precedents for deleting categs by absence of a property: see for example User:Good Olfactory/CFD#Remainder categories.

If readers expect lawyers to e categorised in this way, then their expectation is mistaken. The articles should explain how they trained, and it may be appropriate the add notes to container categs pointing out that law school is not a universal characteristic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:05, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a remainder category, nor is it autodidactical, since reading law requires the supervision of an established lawyer and the passage of an examination - even if this examination is as basic as a judge or a group of bar members asking a dozen questions to insure the applicant understood legal terminology. This, therefore is a category for persons who followed a specific course of action, regulated by tradition, to enter a specific profession. If we rename to clarify that this is limited to practice in the United States, which itself only came into existence in 1787, by which time this was a well-established course of entry into the profession. bd2412 T 16:13, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

No it's not a remainder categ, but a significant part of your argument for it is as a remainder categ.

And while United States only came into existence in 1787, there was law well before the constitution was adopted, hence lawyers. Petscan is down at the moment, or I would find the pre-1776 American lawyers.

For lawyers pre some point in the early 19th century, this is not defining: it's just "lawyers who became lawyers by the path through which all lawyers wee trained at the time". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. In most cases, this appears to be a non-defining characteristic. There may be merit in having some variant of the current category as a {{tracking category}}, but it would need a less ambiguous name, and the current contents are too polluted to be worth renaming. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:11, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or make hidden. It's non-defining and strange to non-American ears, but if we need it for maintenance, use it as a hidden category. StAnselm (talk) 18:22, 19 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.

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, so merge to Category:Politicians of Iranian descent, within Category:Politicians by ethnic or national descent, as this is the most relevant comparable hierarchy that I can find. This is broader than "office holders"; if someone thinks that the latter makes a notable intersection, then the thing to do is to create a list. – Fayenatic London 15:09, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Iranian diaspora political office-holders (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: Non-notable intersection. TM 22:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• This is not as easy as it seems. At first sight the nomination rationale makes perfect sense. But then Category:Iranian diaspora political office-holders appears to be a child category of Category:Iranian political people and the political office-holders in the nominated category are Iranian political people indeed. So, at most, Category:Iranian diaspora political office-holders should be upmerged to Category:Iranian political people, but what would be the benefit of doing that? It raises the more general question whether we should categorize political people by their nationality at all, or should we (just) categorize them by the country in which they are active as a political office-holder. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:04, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename somehow -- There is a genuine category here, for politicians outside Iran of Iranian birth. Perhaps Category:Politicians among the Iranian diaspora. Since politicians who do not get elected are in principle NN, limiting this to "office-holders" is not necessary. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:33, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as it is based on useful and specific defining characteristics. Rename if the name has a problem, I have no suggestion for a new name though. Pahlevun (talk) 18:11, 9 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.

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: relisted, see here (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 06:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose merging Category:Network protocols to Category:Communication protocols

Nominator's rationale: Per network protocol redirecting to communication protocol. Alternately, make this a subcat. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I am not an IT expert, but it seems to me that there is merit in retaining a distinction beween networking protocols, and other types of communication protocol such or Bluetooth.

So I wouldn't support this change of scope unless we had input from the relevant WkiiProjects that they though it appropriate. @Koavf: Have any such projects been notified? ---BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

• • @BrownHairedGirl: Not by me. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:31, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • For info, this discussion is listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing, since the category talk page has a wikiproject tag. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:21, 19 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.