Category talk:Invasive species

message: Given that whether a species is invasive is country dependent - see  list of invasive species  - is a general category realistic? MikeHobday 11:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But what you are doing, at the moment, is effectively labelling all species that are sometimes invasive as universally invasive. This seems inaccurate. MikeHobday 13:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

text: With 200 entries, the category has clearly gone well beyond your laudable ambition, from the specific to something so general as to be inaccurate. I am therefore more inclined to suggest that the category is deleted. MikeHobday 18:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be a fairly extreme solution for a fairly small problem - the fact that there are 200 entries indicates that this is clearly a very significant category, and in need of reorganization (if anything) rather than deletion! True, this category is a sub-category of :Category:Introduced_species, and a few things here might be more appropriately categorized as introduced rather than invasive (given that the two are not strictly synonymous), but the fundamental problem is that the easiest type of reorganization into sub-sub-categories - by continent or even smaller geographic divisions - is going to result in massive overlap and redundancy of categories (species X is invasive in South America and Australia, species Y is invasive in South America, Australia, and Africa, etc.). It seems to me that the present categorical hierarchy is a compromise between having articles with too many categories (a cosmopolitan invasive might require a LOT of geography-dependent categories), and not having a useful index to all of the invasive species presently listed in WP. It is not a matter of whether a general category for this is "accurate" or "realistic" - WP is an encyclopedia, and "invasive species" are a topic suitable for encyclopedic treatment, and this category functions as an index to known invasive species, in a manner that does not require readers to constantly browse (or editors to edit) the LIST of invasive species. If you could suggest a way to maintain the indexing feature while deleting the category, then I might be persuaded, but otherwise I think the category is serving an important function and I would oppose any formal call for deletion. Dyanega 23:36, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree, this is an important subject already deserving (and receiving) encyclopedic and scholarly treatment.  Much of the significance of "invasive species" is not dependent on the particular region it is afflicting, but by common cultural and technological trends. Huangdi 23:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Should this category exist?

message: This category should probably be divided into :Category:Invasive plant species and :Category:Invasive animal species (and I suppose :Category:Invasive fungi species, if needed). Neutralitytalk 22:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: at some stage by someone... -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:11, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Division 

message: Today (December 8, 2020), an editor has created multiple new categories: :Category:Invasive_plants_by_country, :Category:Invasive_species_in_Ukraine, :Category:Invasive_plants_in_Ukraine, :Category:Invasive fish species in Ukraine, :Category:Invasive insect species in Ukraine, and perhaps others I have not yet seen. All of the tagged articles are single-species articles, which are explicitly prohibited by the guidelines. Someone with more time than I have might need to educate this editor before they proceed much farther, since these new categories are all headed for speedy deletion. Dyanega (talk) 17:40, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newly-created categories that violate the explicit stated guidelines