Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 January 3

January 3

Category:Lists of statues of presidents of the United States

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 Timrollpickering (talk) 19:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose renaming Category:Lists of statues of presidents of the United States to Category:List of sculptures of presidents of the United States
Nominator's rationale: Per parent article, List of sculptures of presidents of the United States. All statues are sculptures, but not all sculptures are statues. ---Another Believer (Talk) 16:05, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Randy Kryn (talk) 09:19, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nomination. --Woko Sapien (talk) 21:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support — good observation.
    William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:47, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, as consistent with article. --Mvqr (talk) 11:13, 10 January 2023 (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:Films set in farms

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 Timrollpickering (talk) 19:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: The clear common usage is on a farm, not in a farm. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:53, 3 January 2023 (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.

Academics in Europe

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 1 (Academic staff). There was weak consensus for academic staff over academic personnel. (non-admin closure) Qwerfjkltalk 20:02, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The amended list of renames as implemented is at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 January 3. – Fayenatic London 09:02, 12 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural nomination for renaming categories previously discussed at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_October_3#Academic_personnel_in_Europe, for all categories of academics in Europe excluding UK and Ireland.
I found consensus in favour of "academics" rather than "faculty" or "academic personnel", and closed that discussion as use names beginning "Academics of", e.g. Category:Academics of Aleksandër Moisiu University, inserting "the" in specified cases e.g. Category:Academics of the University of Paris.
Following that close I implemented renaming of countries beginning with A, but suspended implementation as the CFD close was taken to review at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2022 October. That review partially endorsed the close and called for a further discussion to choose between Option 1 – Academics of Foo University, following the accepted format for UK and Ireland; or Option 2 – Foo University academics.
Examples for Option 1 – Academics of Foo University
  • Propose keeping Category:Academics of the Agricultural University of Tirana
  • Propose renaming Category:Belarusian Agricultural Academy faculty to Category:Academics of Belarusian Agricultural Academy
  • Propose renaming Category:University of Paris faculty to Category:Academics of the University of Paris
Examples for Option 2 – Foo University academics
  • Propose renaming Category:Academics of the Agricultural University of Tirana to Category:Agricultural University of Tirana academics
  • Propose renaming Category:Belarusian Agricultural Academy faculty to Category:Belarusian Agricultural Academy academics
  • Propose renaming Category:University of Paris faculty to Category:University of Paris academics
The full list of nominated categories (showing option 1) is at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 October 3. This now includes relisting those for Finland, as the result of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 July 30#Faculty by university or college in Finland was overturned by the subsequent CFD & this was upheld by the Move review. – Fayenatic London 13:38, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: It should be taken as read that Alumni categories will be nominated to match in due course. – Fayenatic London 16:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jc37, Piotrus, Peterkingiron, Necrothesp, Renata3, UnitedStatesian, Place Clichy, Oculi, Sharouser, David Eppstein, Marcocapelle, Oculi, Justlettersandnumbers, Santasa99, SeoR, Joy, Timrollpickering, Waggers, Jonathan A Jones, and 4meter4: ping as contributors to previous discussions. – Fayenatic London 16:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1, "Academics of ...", per previous discussion. Option 2 would perpetuate the recurring problem of the missing closing comma where the name of the institution already contains one, as in Category:Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb academics (which to be grammatically 'correct' should read "Category:Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb, academics", and that, unfortunately, is just nonsense). For a comparable blue-linked example of the problem, please see Category:Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb alumni. And yes, many of those will need to be renamed too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:34, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Refuse to participate as both options sound entirely UK-centric to me. As an American, to me "academics of University X" means the scholarly work and teaching performed at University X, as distinguished from its other activities such as sports. It does not have the intended primary meaning of "people who work as professors" to me. As such, I do not feel competent to judge how a Brit would properly order the words of American-exclusionary wording. "Academic personnel of ..." would be less ambiguous but has not been given as an option. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:44, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I mostly side with David here, I'd go with academic personel. Academics is too ambigious. We will be back fixing this issue here again. Sigh. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:38, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Outside English-speaking domain, "academic personnel" could, and in many places indeed does (in Serbo-Croatian: osoblje fakulteta/akademije), include entire staff and all servicing personnel, from doormen and genitors to deans. ౪ Santa ౪99° 14:30, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It would be better and less ambiguous to use "academic staff". ౪ Santa ౪99° 14:41, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not meaningful, because osoblje is likewise translated as "staff", and the word order matters - the term akademsko osoblje would preclude such an interpretation. In any event I don't think all this is too relevant to this discussion because we don't need the English readers to automagically get some sort of a cross-Indo-European understanding of all related terms and phrases :) we will make plenty of progress if we just avoid automatically confusing them with two meanings of "faculty" in the same context. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In fact, "staff" is a worse choice, because in US-based academia, employees are largely distinguished into "faculty" and "staff"; "staff" is the word used for those employees of a university who are not professors. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, this was commented before, that's why "academic staff" was the least controversial variant. I'm not sure if I can imagine an American reader having a problem with seeing e.g. "Category:Academic staff of the Heidelberg University" on a German professor's article. Esp. if one day there's "Category:Academic staff of the Heidelberg University Faculty of Law". --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:34, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you can't imagine it, try harder.
    I think a reader familiar with American academia would be very confused with that category name and wonder "Why is there a category for the professors' secretaries, department managers, and other people who work on the academic side but are not professors themselves? How are any of these people notable?" That would be the default meaning of "academic staff" for an American. Alternatively, if they have more familiarity with other systems, maybe they would wonder "why is German nomenclature so very very British? Don't Germans use their own nomenclature?"
    My perspective on this whole discussion is that far too many participants are taking the approach "I would use this phrasing, so we should all use this phrasing" without any awareness that the phrasing they are use is very specific to the dialect of English that they use. I am not seeing a lot of effort at understanding the wide variation that goes into these kinds of names and at finding commonality in phrasing that we can all understand. I am seeing even less input from people who are familiar with the specific national European academic systems under discussion and how they organize themselves. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:48, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, it seems I missed this comment before. In the meantime I responded to the comments below, which addresses a lot of this. In another subthread I just posted info about other locations where English is used. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:38, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1, "Academics of ...", per previous discussion. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:49, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But per the discussion below I would have no objection to "Academic staff of " as an alternative. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 18:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the present 'Foo faculty' which has on the whole been perfectly acceptable for many years without any objection to the vast majority of the individual subcats. Mildly oppose 'foo academics'. Oppose 'academics of foo' with vehemence. Agree with David Eppstein that this is UK-centric (both in wording and word order). It's ridiculous to roll out the same unnecessary change to the vast alumni tree. Cfd is cfd - all options are up for discussion - reviewers are no more entitled to impose restrictions than nominators. It is also true in the UK that 'academics' does (also) mean scholarly work: see eg Manchester University Academics and is thus no less ambiguous than faculty. Oculi (talk) 17:53, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was certainly willing to relist the UK & Ireland categories in this nomination. If any more participants consider their current names ambiguous or inferior, then I am willing to add them, despite the restriction against relisting them stated in the Move review. But as you have vigorously defended their current names in the past, I suspect that this is not what you intended to convey!
    If you mean that we should reject the restriction to only two options for renaming Europe excluding UK & Ireland, then I agree. Participants should feel free to state "Option 3…" etc if they prefer any other form of words.
    May I suggest that you state your preference as "Option 3, Foo faculty" in case this gains support, as it could then be used to rename Albania, Armenia, Austria & Azerbaijan back from "Academics"; and to rename Finland, most of Ukraine and the parent categories (speedily renamed) back from "Academic personnel". – Fayenatic London 18:27, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In the category tree of this large of a size, it's way too easy to claim that there wasn't any objection to the vast majority of the individual subcats, because most people don't deal with changes in category names, and the system is way harder to change that the more conventional aspects of Wikipedia like article content. The objections to this naming are by now reasonably well documented, and I don't think it's fair to dismiss them out of hand like this, especially in the context of Europe where most of the objections seem to have been coming from. It's a bit silly to keep hearing about UK-centricity when a US-centric naming has been used for so many years without a real rationale in this context. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:20, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    As we write about education in all countries, not just US or UK, I find @Marcocapelle clear explanation that in most countries "faculty" refers to institution not professional individual academic status valid. ౪ Santa ౪99° 14:38, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It is also true in the UK that 'academics' does (also) mean scholarly work... Not in common speech it doesn't. I've worked at a British university for over twenty years and I could count the number of times I've heard it used like that on the fingers of one hand. So no, not ambiguous at all. When we refer to "academics" we mean teaching and research staff. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:59, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just repeating from the previous discussions: the word "faculty" is ambiguous in most countries, often referring to an organizational unit rather than to people, e.g. here is a link named "faculties and schools". "Academics", "academic personnel" or "academic staff" is far less ambiguous and equally common. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:01, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is a fine example of the problem of trying to standardise notation for worldwide entities. In the UK "faculty" refers to either the organisational unit or the body of people within that unit, but not the individuals making up that body, who are the academics or the academic staff (not normally the academic personnel, though that term is perhaps starting to appear). Sometimes inconsistencies should just be left alone because all alternatives are worse. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 10:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, Category talk:Faculty by university or college#Request for comment on naming produced "staff" as an alternative, though to the chagrin of a couple of American editors, so it was not applied universally. I don't have reason to believe that there would be objections to the word staff being used in the container category in the context of Europe, but it was omitted for no real reason in some previous CfDs and we now keep spinning in circles :) The word "personnel" was criticized by two people in that discussion, but "academic staff" saw no objection, so I say let's go with that because it seems reasonably descriptive and generic. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:26, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm going to extend the pings to include all those people who responded to last year's RFC: @Robminchin @ElKevbo @Shadowssettle @Czar @Asmodea Oaktree @Sea Ane @Carlossuarez46 @Firejuggler86 --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1 – in any case, use the genitive construction "Academics of X" (or "Academic personnel/staff of X") since it's more formal than "X academics", avoids awkward naming when X is a long construction, and is WP:CONSISTENT with Category:Presidents by country, and pretty much everything in Category:People by country. Strong oppose getting back to "faculty", which is alien to most European countries in this meaning. Neutral as to the "Academics" vs. "Academic personnel" vs. "Academic staff", either title works, as long as it's mostly consistent within the larger group. No such user (talk) 13:59, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1 – "Academics of Foo" (or "Academic staff of Foo", but certainly not "Academic personnel of Foo"). I also add strong oppose to getting back to "faculty", which is alien to most (European) countries and languages (in most Slavic languages there is of course synonymous but no direct translation which refers to individual professional status of an academic - direct translation "faculty" to "fakultet", in Serbo-Croatian for instance, refers only to institution, a school. As for "Academic personnel" vs. "Academic staff", later works and is less ambiguous: outside English-speaking domain, "academic personnel" could, and in many places indeed does (again example in Serbo-Croatian: osoblje fakulteta/akademije), include entire teaching and admin staff and all servicing personnel, from doormen and genitors to deans.--౪ Santa ౪99° 15:04, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1, with the suggested alternative "Academic staff of X". I think academic staff is less confusing in American English, where academics has a different meaning: Cornell called me academic staff when I worked there, so clearly that is a phrase the does work in both British and American English. There's no point relitigating faculty – it doesn't work, for all the reasons given previously, and people should forget it (i.e. strongly oppose this option). Using academic staff then pushes us strongly to option 1 as "Academic staff of X" works fine while "X academic staff" just doesn't sound natural in English (even with just academics, option 2 sometimes sounds less natural, but this is stronger with academic staff). Robminchin (talk) 15:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    As I wrote above, "staff" is again a horribly US-exclusionary choice. In US academia, "staff" means university employees who are not professors (building maintenance workers, secretaries, department managers, accountants, and the like). Per MOS:COMMONALITY, we should be looking for opportunities to use language that is as widely understood as possible, not pushing to make our choice of language as UK-specific and anti-US as possible. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, you can make that argument about just "staff", but the proposal above is "academic staff". How likely is it that there's a large contingent of English readers who will see a category of European professors and be astonished that they are referred to as academic staff of their respective university/faculty? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:41, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    "Academic staff" are the subset of staff (building maintenance workers, secretaries, department managers, accountants, and the like) who work on the academic side of things. People hired to advise students on what courses they should take, people who manage academic affairs, that sort of thing. They are not people who teach. In American English, people who teach are "faculty", people who work for the university in non-scholarly roles are "staff", and "academic" does not mean a person who teaches but rather "related to teaching and research", so "academic staff" would obviously mean "people who do something that relates to teaching and research but is not of a scholarly nature". If anyone in US academia would see that phrase and understand your intended meaning for it instead, it would only be through some level of familiarity with British academia, because it is not a term that makes sense in US English. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:52, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you happen to have some references to demonstrate the prevalence of this setup? A search of academic staff on Google Books brings up a lot of American sources from various time periods that don't seem to clearly show this distinction. I then also searched for the combined phrase 'faculty and academic staff' and this led to a handful of university documents that clearly delinate these two categories, similar to what you described, yet there were also a lot of them that clearly indicated that academic staff is of a scholarly nature, but doesn't have the same rank as faculty. If e.g. the American categories were named "Foo faculty" or "Foo faculty and academic staff" while European categories were named "Academic staff of Foo", would this actually make the categorization of Europeans so hard to comprehend to American readers? That doesn't strike me as likely - surely most people would assume it's a general description and/or dependent on this non-American context? I mean, it's a question of how detailed do we really need to go - if the category name doesn't say "tenured professors", but just "faculty", that also doesn't properly convey nuance, either, but we don't expect anyone to mind. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 00:48, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The usual US phrasing is "faculty and staff". Google claims to have about 146,000,000 hits for that phrase. In case you are also somehow still doubtful that "academics" does not mean people in US English, other standard phrases to look for include "academics and sports" (700,000 hits) or "academics and student life" (144,000 hits).
    Why is it so difficult to believe that you are being parochial and that your preferred nomenclature will either be seen as parochial or misunderstood?
    Also, "tenured professors" is not the intended distinction here. The categories in question should include people hired both on permanent (tenured) and on renewable (non-tenured) contracts, both those with teaching-only positions and those with positions that entail a combination of teaching and research, regardless of whether they are called lecturers, readers, professors, assistant professors, associate professors, full professors, docenten, hoofdocenten, hoogleraren, etc etc). They should generally not include people hired with short fixed-term non-renewable positions (postdoctorates), even though their job titles may be similar. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:37, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I have no idea why you're bringing up "academics" again, and accusing me of being parochial simply from observing real-world ambiguity after verifying what you said? This is the second time I'm seeing this sort of an excessive response... but in this case, nobody is even proposing a rename of American-related categories, only European-related, because we've been over this already and American complaints have already effectively vetoed that. Maybe it was reasonable to assume that this is some sort of a slippery slope after Fayenatic's move, but it's clearly been stopped and we're back to discussing a compromise. Can we also get back to fully assuming good faith? :)
    The intended distinction that you describe, it seems very detailed, it strikes me as being beyond the level most readers would be interested in for categories, by default. I'm coming from a position of seeing the need to split "People of Foo University" into people educated there and people who actually worked there educating the former group, because that seems like a generally clear distinction, one that should be immediately obvious to most readers and one that can be thought of on a wider scale (so we have some level of consistency in the category tree). Within the latter category it's probably useful to think about ranks and length of service, but I would go there in subcategories, which don't have to be applicable on a wider scale.
    For example, universities in Croatia habitually hire to multi-year contracts in roles called 'assistant' and 'senior assistant' where they are very much part of the teaching process for half a decade at least, so if such a person moves from that position into something else, later becomes an assistant professor at a different university, etc, becomes generally notable and gets an article, it's fair to categorize them among the people who worked at both of those universities. For typical English readers, the level at which they worked is not likely to be a distinctive fact that needs to be immediately obvious from categorization. If it still is, at least the process of going up the chain of categories should at some point make it clear that they taught there, not just been educated there, and that's the scope of the category I'm assuming we're discussing now, because that seems to be the status quo of "People of Foo University" subcategorization.
    I looked up a statute of the nearest law school and it said (translated) "Teaching and scientific-professional work at the Faculty is carried out by teachers, scientists and associates elected to scientific-teaching, teaching, scientific and associate positions in accordance with the law". I wouldn't even try to replicate this multiple-layer scheme in Wikipedia categorization (just listing the permutations is a wall of text). Replicating their top-most phrasing into e.g. "Teaching and scientific-professional work staff at X" already seems like overkill, and it's an awkward translation, as the native phrase using two different conjunctions in a row is already a bit curious. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:43, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Note also that search results for "faculty and staff" are substantially different from those for "faculty and academic staff". The former brings up in the results a number of articles that say clearly that faculty basically means academic staff, while just staff is too generic because it includes everyone. Hence, I'm not sure why readers would be confused by the use of the term "academic staff". --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:04, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1. The construction is much better English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:55, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question for editors outside the US Would the phrase "faculty members" be useful or meaningful? I sometimes use that phrase in my job as a US academic administrator and scholar when referring to the people who are members of the professoriate at my institution and others. This sometimes avoid some ambiguities about the meaning of "faculty" that are less common in the US but still present.
If it's helpful for those outside the US, at many US institutions "academic" used as an adjective when referring to jobs often refers to people who work in specific units i.e., in "academic affairs" as opposed to "student affairs," auxiliary operations. But within those units that are classified as "academic affairs" there are many people who work in jobs that are common outside of academia e.g., human resources, information technology, physical plant maintenance. For a more concrete example, my current position is in a unit that reports to my university's provost so I work in academic affairs and many people would classify me as "academic staff" although I am not a faculty member.
My sense is that there may not be a good set of universally understood labels that work for all subjects and all readers. If that is the case, it seems best to use labels that are reasonable and then clearly explain the membership of the category to help readers and editors understand what we mean with the chosen label. If we can do that then "Academics of __" seems like a reasonable label for us to use. ElKevbo (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I came across https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/academic-staff which seems to be useful for an overview of formal English usage. It's apparent from there that US usage is distinct from the rest of the world, and there's examples there from Australia, India, UK, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Kenya, Ethiopia, Canada, South Africa, Malaysia, Ireland and elsewhere. Hopefully, this is also a relevant indication of common, vernacular usage. Let's assume that it is and think about the worst case - is the proportion of readers of these categories who are only familiar with the US usage and unfamiliar with non-US usage so large that it's a violation of WP:PLA? Would the average reader be shocked, surprised, or confused by what they read? If we're on the fence about what's "average reader" here, could explanatory notes in category content suffice to make this tolerable? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:32, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To me this comment appears to be a combination "lots of people don't follow the American practice of using faculty" (to which I agree) and "therefore it's ok that we use wording that is actively hostile to American readers" (to which I do not). I'm still not seeing any effort at MOS:COMMONALITY. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:59, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why would using "academic staff" be actively hostile to American readers? Unfamiliar, possibly confusing if they're part of American academia and used to its terminology, but actively hostile seems like a big stretch. Let's consider what might be common use cases:
a) a reader reads about a European professor, and notices "Academic staff of Lund University" - do they ignore what they read in the article content and assume the person was not a teacher there, which would be astonishing?
b) a reader arrives at Category:ETH Zurich and notices a link to "Academic staff of ETH Zurich" (next to the alumni category) - do they think that there is no category for what they know as 'faculty' and fail to click through, which would mean the category navigation was a failure?
Both of these seem like they're possible, but not very likely for the average reader. Even for readers aware of American academia terminology, it seems a bit odd to assume they can't infer any of this from context. --Joy (talk) 09:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1, because the subjects are academics so that should take primary prominence (i.e. it should come first), whereas the institution they work for is secondary. WaggersTALK 13:40, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer Academic personnel of... as it is the phrasing that seems to clash less with any other meaning, whatever the variety of English. Place Clichy (talk) 22:04, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer Academic staff of... but no objection to "personnel" or option 1 or option 2. When we investigated this some months ago, I checked in a couple of European languages and found that the American usage of "faculty" for personnel was alien to Europe. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prefer Academic staff of... (as a US person, where I've been credentialed as visiting academic staff at several universities in the past). Otherwise, Option 1 for preferential voting. No vote for Option 2.
    William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Currently there seems to be consensus for option 1, insofar that it is something of university, though not necessarily academics. There is consensus for either "Academics of" or "Academic staff of". The argument against academics is that it is ambiguous and UK-centric, meaning scholarly work in America. The argument against academic staff is that staff in America refers to non-professor staff, and therefore academic staff refers to staff working on the academic side of things.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Qwerfjkltalk 09:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment — not sure how relisting will enlighten anybody. With all due respect to Western US experiences, this is about Europe. In the Eastern US, I've never heard of "academic staff" as a reference to secretaries and janitors, whereas I've seen "personnel" used in that way. So there is unlikely to be confusion using "academic staff" in Europe, and "faculty and staff" in other locales. If a janitor is notable enough to warrant a wikipedia page, then there's enough wiggle room for inclusiveness under "staff". But there isn't any likelihood of a universal term per MOS:COMMONALITY.
    William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:22, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Further comment (voted above) Please close -- We frequently have ENGVAR situations. In UK, a professor (a term used more sparingly than in US) is one of the academic staff. A janitor (even a lab technician) might be "university staff", but not "academic staff". I would consider academic staff to include Vice-Chancellors, Deans, Readers, Lecturers, Research fellows, possibly post-doctoral research assistants. As I have said, the American use of "faculty" for staff is alien in each of the European languages that I checked. Whatever the practice may be in US, it should not dictate what the appropriate category name should be in European (and other non-American) countries. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2023 (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:American sportspeople of European 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: Delete all Timrollpickering (talk) 19:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose deleting Category:American sportspeople of European descent (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: WP:CSD#G4: re-creation of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 16#Category:American sportspeople of European descent. Because this is nearly 12 years old, Liz requested re-listing here.
  • Propose deleting Category:American sportspeople of Caucasus descent (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  • Propose deleting Category:American sportspeople of Eastern European descent (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
    • Propose deleting Category:American sportspeople of Caucasus descent (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  • Propose deleting Category:American sportspeople of Southern European descent (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT with unusual and irrelevant organization. Note that the only entry for Eastern European is the Caucasus subcategory. The other single entries are WP:CSD#G4 re-creations as above, currently re-nominated for deletion, at which point these should all become empty.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:46, 3 January 2023 (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:Sunni Muslim communities

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 Timrollpickering (talk) 19:10, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: upmerge, redundant category layer with only one subcategory. Most countries do not require a Sunni communities subcategory, in case Sunni are in the majority anyway. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:29, 3 January 2023 (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:Box-office bombs

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 Timrollpickering (talk) 19:11, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose deleting Category:Box-office bombs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: There are several problems with such a category:
  1. The term is highly subjective and we would end up with endless RFCs about whether this film or that film should be added to the category.
  2. Profit/loss analysis is not widely available for most films. We do have a list of big flops at List of biggest box-office bombs and I think a list is better for this sort of thing where sources can be provided.
  3. Unless it is something like Heaven's Gate, a film flopping is often not a defining trait, so many films that have technically flopped would fail WP:CATDEF. While Heaven's Gate would undoubtedly qualify for such a category, can the same be said about The Shawshank Redemption or Vertigo ?
These types of list have been routinely deleted in the past:
To my knowledge there has been no fundamental shift of opinion. For example, by the same reasoning, we don't have a "Blockbusters" catgeory for films like Star Wars and Titanic. Betty Logan (talk) 04:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:CSD#G4 as recreation of substantially similar content without new rationale for retaining said category. VegaDark (talk) 05:27, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:30, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, this typically requires a sortable table instead of a category. The table exists in List of biggest box-office bombs. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. OhNoitsJamie Talk 14:41, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as too subjective and open to original research, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:OR Mike Allen 17:48, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- Whatever this is about, I do not think that it is (as the name implies) about acts of terrorism where a bomb has been placed in a box office. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:28, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per sorry to say as much as I like or appreciate how the editors on Wikipedia who write about film enjoy movies, you are getting some things wrong. First, box office bombs is a term which has been around a long time, same thing with the awards for worst acting and films. You're not going to do away with the categories even if you pull it off on wikis. Second, it's helpful to have this category here although it only has four movies so far. Third, I find quite a few errors in film and tv articles on Wikipedia. The journalism is not up to standards. Much of that is due to the difficulty... You can only report reviews and premieres in so many ways. Also there are only a certain number of words that can describe things like film releases. Go on and try to improve. I and other editors will help, we're busy, but we can try.Highwatermark1 (talk) 12:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    None of that addresses concerns of the nom, and much of what you said is meaningless. –LaundryPizza03 (d) 12:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy delete per G4. –LaundryPizza03 (d) 12:40, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. LancedSoul (talk) 12:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • DeleteWP:G4 and WP:NOR.
    William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as way too subjective. --Mvqr (talk) 11:14, 10 January 2023 (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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