Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/User/Archive 5

message: If the proliferation of dubious user categories is such a concern, then we should reverse the rule and require approval for the creation of such categories. Set up a "proposed user categories" page and require would-be category creators to demonstrate the utility of the category to the project. And make unapproved categories speediable. Grandfather in categories created before implementation of the approval requirement, so they must still be deleted by consensus. Thoughts? bd2412 T 02:14, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: see Wikipedia talk:User categories for discussion#A radical proposal (below), which is essentially the same thing you have proposed. It didn't garner sufficient support when I suggested it, and it's likely that it still lacks the requisite support, although I think it's a great idea. Horologium t-c 02:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

text: hear hear! --Paularblaster 02:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: As Chlämens pointed out above, a change request should be filed to straighten this out. A simple first step could change the Albanian language ISO 3 codes, to ones beginning with "sq", the ISO 639 alpha-2 code for Shqip. This would free not only "als", but also "aln", leaving some space for future Alemannic codes.
code	now               	better
alb 	Albanian ISO 639-2	Albanian
aln 	Gheg              	Low Alemannic German (Niederalemannische Sprache)
als 	Tosk              	Alemannic German (Alemannische Sprache) or Alsatian
sqg 	-                 	Gheg
sqi 	Shqip Albanian    	Shqip Albanian
sqr 	-                 	Soqotri
sqt 	Soqotri           	Tosk
Does this make any sense? -- Matthead discuß!     O       05:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, KISS, "sqr" was nearby and free, so I did not look any further, its as good or bad as "sqt" for Soqotri. Don't want to cause more commotion than necessary. Is there any system behind the allocation of codes, other than "random & arbitrarily"?-- Matthead discuß!     O       06:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

text: I've noticed that they consider themselves infallible. No wonder, considering the Christian background of SIL/Ethnologue. It's appalling that ISO relies on them. -- Matthead discuß!     O       00:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Standards, include ISO ones, value stability very highly. Once they declared als to be a dialect of Albanian, changing it would have caused a huge amount of complaint from organizations depending on the stability of the standard. Wikimedia should never have used als to mean Alemannic, since that was inconsistent with the standard; als was a reserved code, not a private use one. This is not SIL's fault.--Prosfilaes 01:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Filing a change request with Ethnologue/ISO

message: :This issue was initially raised by User:Equazcion on the main page. Since it is an issue regarding the process of category discussions, I think it ought to be continued here and not on the main page. For context, please see Wikipedia:User categories for discussion#section break.
The argument of precedent is not something unique to UCFD that "survives" due to inattention. It is a principle that is solidly-established at WP:CFD and just carries over here as well. What exactly is the perceived problem with deletion on the basis of "precedent"? It basically means deletion on the basis of arguments made in a prior discussion; if an editor feel that the arguments are/were inadequate or do not apply to a particular situation, s/he is of course free to mention that fact. – Black Falcon (Talk) 00:13, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Precedent 

message: Noting discussion at WT:CFD#Wikipedians by contact information and related deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion review#:Category:Wikipedians by contact information. These are for user categories by external contact methods, mainly IM services. -- Ned Scott 20:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedians by contact information 

message: Does the subdivision of :Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: United Kingdom by constituent country aid navigation. If upmerged, the main "United Kingdom" category would contain 49 subcats, so it's not clear that subcategorisation is needed at this point. I'm initiating a discussion here rather a nomination on the WP:UCFD page as I don't feel strongly either way. – Black Falcon (Talk) 21:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at the child cats, :Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: England has 24 subcats,  :Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Scotland has six, and :Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Wales has four. (Refreshingly, none of them has users who have stubbornly included themselves inappropriately into organizational cats.) There doesn't appear to be a category for Northern Ireland, which would include two universities. 13 of the fifteen universities that are categorized in :Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: United Kingdom could be categorized in the England subcat (the remaining two are the Northern Ireland ones mentioned earlier). I think that we should either create a Northern Ireland cat, move the two relevant universities into it and move all 13 of the others into England (making the parent cat a organizational-only cat), or upmerge the constituent country cats into the parent. I don't really have a preference one way or the other on that, but let's be consistent. Horologium (talk) 23:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's essentially why I asked. I've been going through the Wikipedians by alma mater category tree, and I wanted to know whether I should start a nomination to request upmerging or simply follow the existing subcategorisation scheme. If you have no preference, and if no one else expresses a preference within a day or two, I'll just go ahead and follow the existing scheme (including creating a category for Northern Ireland); a nomination for upmerging - should anyone care to write it - could always be done later on. – Black Falcon (Talk) 23:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: . I think that it will be easier to evaluate the need for subcategorisation once the current series of nominations (made through Dec. 7) are closed and a more accurate figure of the actual number of category members emerges. – Black Falcon (Talk) 21:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: United Kingdom 

message: This seems like a very busy page - I'm wondering why the nominations aren't on subpages like AFDs and MFDs? Thanks. Redrocketboy 17:04, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A system of daily logs, like at WP:CFD, rather than individual discussion pages would be more suited to this page because most nominations receive an average of 2 comments. So why aren't daily logs used? I think one reason is that there's never really been a pressing need to use subpages, since this page is generally less than 100-150 KB in size. Another reason is that the rate of nominations is highly variable. Sometimes days pass without a single nomination. Other times, there are no more than 1 or 2 nominations per day for a period of several days. Other times, such as now, dozens of nominations are made in a short time span. Unlike at CFD, which gets a fairly regular stream of nominations from multiple users, nominations here tend to happen in spurts. – Black Falcon (Talk) 17:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the answer Black Falcon - have a nice day! Redrocketboy 18:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem. :) Cheers, Black Falcon (Talk) 18:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On the other hand, subpages would prevent links to discussion to don't "expire" when the discussion is archived, which can be helpful. I would support month-based subpages. Snowolf How can I help? 02:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just link to the archive, even if a discussion hasn't been archived yet, since the most recent archive page always has a "if it's not here, check the main page" notice. Month-based subpages would make sense as they could also automatically serve as archives, but I'm concerned about length (the size of the monthly archives ranges from 250 to 700 KB). – Black Falcon (Talk) 02:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subpages 

message: As per his comments here, User:Bedford has declared "No one who votes to delete this will ever get my cooperation for anything".  He then proceeded to !vote keep on just about every category I nominated, as well as several of Black Falcon's, with weak to no rationale.  While there is no way of knowing for sure if this is just for "retaliation", I think the edit above shows enough reason to discount every one of his !votes on all categories other than the Mayflower one. VegaDark (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only way to fix this is if more admins take interest in the process. You seem to have motivation to increase the number to 4-6. –Pomte 22:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It may be more productive for me to try to recruit others than to commit to it myself... as someone pointed out, I have 16 flags ... I could do a few to see how it went maybe. ++Lar: t/c 22:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Noting that to my knowledge there are roughly 5 resular closers on WP:CFD, as well, 2-3 of which also close WP:UCFD... - jc37 02:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I closed one to try my hand, and when I went to close the others today, a bit more controversial, they all had been closed by one of the regulars. (that regular in fact double closed mine without checking to see that I had closed it already ) Not very inclusionary. I'm more concerned than ever by insularity. See also this argument. When I questioned AM about his closes of the others, User_talk:After_Midnight#Wikipedia:User_categories_for_discussion.23Wikimedia_and_advertising pointing out that I think he called them wrong, he didn't really address my points, he instead just reiterated that he was right. Not a good approach. ++Lar: t/c 13:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you could assume good faith that I had an issue refreshing my cache rather than implying something else untoward. As for your dissatisfaction with my responses, you asked for me to elaborate and I did so.  That you still don't find my answers to be satisfactory does not mean that I did not try to answer them in good faith.  I'm not finding your combative style to be a good approach towards me.  Your repeated pattern seems very passive aggressive to my perspective.  If you want to go to DRV, that is fine, I've been there before and I'm sure that I will be there again.  One thing that I have found is that you can't make everyone happy all the time and that the unhappy people often take things there, hell, I've even taken myself there once.  It seems however that I will never make you happy.  I find it interesting that based on the arguments that you are making about the 2 debates that you seem destined to DRV, you are saying nothing about the one which I closed in your favor, despite the fact that I used the same principles to close all three.  If you take 2 to DRV, why not take all 3 and see how things turn out? --After Midnight 0001 03:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think taking them all to DRV is a good approach, and I will, later today. Clearly trying to talk to you informally isn't quite working out the way I had hoped. It seems we both are making some bad assumptions about the other person, or at least it appears that way. ++Lar: t/c 14:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: User:Bedford possible disruption

message: 32 of the 70 subcategories of :Category:Wikipedians interested in a region simultaneously became empty a few days ago, all appearing on special:Unusedcategories.  I've been hesitant to delete them because I'm thinking this is more likely due to vandalism than from legitimate edits.  Anyone know what userboxes/templates were associated with these categories to check? VegaDark (talk) 20:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Judging by the history of a few of them, it appears that Ebyabe created them because they showed up in Special:Wantedcategories. This, in turn, might have been a result of them being on User:Pomte/List of populated user categories. I see no harm in deleting them. However, Pomte might have some additional insight… Ben Hocking (talk|contribs) 20:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure whether Special:Wantedcategories shows only categories that are unpopulated, not unlinked, but considering it says "members" in brackets I'd figure yes. The proportion of red links on my user subpage is an indication of UCFD's progress over the last half year. –Pomte 21:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

text: These were created back in July, however, and I watch special:unusedcategories all the time.  These categories have never been in there, meaning someone was in those 32 categories since July, and only recently were they removed. VegaDark (talk) 20:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Yup. The userbox simply expresses the fact that a user has visited a particular country; I felt that using this to populate categories for interest in a country was miscategorisation (see diff). I didn't know the change would have emptied over 30 categories, else I would have left a note here. – Black Falcon (Talk) 19:19, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I recall thinking about this issue before, but can't find any discussion of it. It's a valid decision anyway, and I agree with it. As the particular categories have been empty for 4 days, they can be speedily deleted unless there are objections. –Pomte 19:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I speedied them all yesterday :). VegaDark (talk) 22:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Subcategories of Category:Wikipedians interested in a region

message: # Special:Categories, a dynamic list that can show up to 5000 categories per page (we have only around 3700 user categories).
# User:Pomte/List of populated user categories, taken from the above. See also related changes.
# Special:Unusedcategories, for potentially new categories.
# Special:Uncategorizedcategories, for potentially new categories.
# Special:Prefixindex, similar to 1, but lists only existent categories.
# Special:CategoryTree, a dynamic tree that loads on click of all subcategories of :Category:Wikipedians.
# m:Extension:CategoryTree, same as above that you can put anywhere. Example:
Wikipedians
–Pomte 18:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ways to navigate user categories 

message: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 December 19#Category:Jesuit alumni - Should it be moved here this late in the game? –Pomte 03:01, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that you have just suggested a different rename and one that would have been proposed here earlier, plus the fact that it covers sub-cats suggests to me that it should be moved and left open longer. --Bduke (talk) 04:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  User category discussion at CFD