Let s see just as a preliminary matter the following is how I read the bottom line votes of each user Mayumashu nominator upmerge all Postdlf upmerge all except Category Sportspeople in Columbus Ohio Alansohn keep all Mike Selinker upmerge all Closeapple keep all Vegaswikian upmerge all In summary and as merely an indication of vote count the results as I interpreted them were Upmerge Category Sportspeople in Columbus Ohio YES 3 3 NO Upmerge the rest YES 4 2 NO The reason I read Mike Selinker s vote as upmerge all was for the following reasons His bolded vote said Delete upmerge and He said I think categorizing the individuals by city is too specific which I understood as applying to all the categories under discussion because all of them categorize individual sportspeople by city Maybe Mike Selinker could be consulted to see if I misinterpreted his comment it is of course possible that I did though on a second look I still don t think I did Leaving aside Category Sportspeople in Columbus Ohio the following arguments are ones that I gleaned from the commenters From the upmerge side Not part of a larger categorization scheme Mayumashu Vegaswikian Categorizing sportspeople by city is too specific Mike Selinker Vegaswikian Overcategorization issues categorizing people in this manner will lead to articles being in categories that are not defining for them Vegaswikian From the keep side Categories are well organized and well populated Alansohn Closeapple A high proportion of articles in one of the parent categories are sportspeople Closeapple A wider scheme would be sustainable Closeapple My assessment of the arguments From the upmerge side 1 is true and is relevant though not determinative and should not to be given any great amount of weight 2 is relevant but essentially a judgment call however it is one that was not really challenged by anyone else 3 is significant and gets to the heart of the problem and ultimately was the most convincing argument for me From the keep side 1 is true and relevant though not determinative and should not be given any great amount of weight since many well organized and well populated categories are deleted 2 was true for one of the categories but was not true for the others and would not necessarily be true for similar categories for other cities as Vegaswikian pointed out 3 is relevant but essentially a predictive judgment call and is not a particularly weighty argument My conclusions It wasn t a great discussion and much of it focused on Category Sportspeople in Columbus Ohio which I haven t discussed above and for which I saw no consensus For the rest on balance the upmerge side had the stronger arguments by far Neither 2 and 3 either of which could theoretically justify the deletion of the category on policy and guideline grounds were not challenged The keep side pointed out some virtues of the categories but nothing that was particularly convincing or based on a policy or guideline The strength of the arguments combined with the 4 2 vote count in favour of upmerging led me to make the decision I did