Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/User/Archive 3

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New string of nominations by User:Patricknoddy

From what I can tell almost every single category nominated by Patricknoddy today was created by himself from a redlinked category he found that was populated. Someone needs to explain to him that this is not what should be done, and also speedy close all the nominations of categories he created due to original author request. I'll be busy for a while but I will help when I am done. VegaDark 20:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I left a note on his talk page. Haven't looked at the creations. Xiner (talk, email) 20:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

What? This is acceptable here! Those categories aren't needed at all. Plus, VegaDark created many categories via redlink. And all she did was paste {{cfd(or m or something else)-user}}. Therefore I protest this! - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 11:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Use {{Db-author}} to speedy delete the categories. They don't need to be discussed here at all. If you created them just to nominate for deletion, please don't do that. –Pomte 12:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point, or earn a Barnstar, as the case may be - that could be borderline on a block.--WaltCip 12:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

In response to PatrickNoddy: 1) I am a he, not a she, and 2) I have never created a category from a redlink as to nominate it as UCFD, I have only nominated categories that have already been created by someone else. VegaDark 20:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, VegaDark, just 'fess up. Seriously, though, Patrick, this is looking like a WP:POINT thing. Please be careful or you may be blocked next time. Xiner (talk) - —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiner (talk • contribs)

This is not a WP:POINT thing! Grr. You are so uncivilized. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 13:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, all categories already exist when there are pages in them. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 11:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

No. Though that's a common misunderstanding. A category may be a grouping of members, but the category page is a page. What they are talking about is that you created the category pages. Users may be able to place themselves in a category for which the category page does not exist, and thus be in a redlinked category (due to technical reasons), but by doing so, that doesn't create the category. I hope this helps clarify : ) - jc37 12:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Just because I created the page doesn't mean I created that certain category. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 13:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Right. The complaints above are that you created the pages. The general request is: "please don't". - jc37 01:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Just because I created the page doesn't mean anything to this issue. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 15:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Patricknoddy acted properly.

The UCFD process is needed to justify depopulating a user category (except for categories solely populated by a userbox, a process is necessary to justify editing other users' user pages), so these categories should have been nominated. A nomination _requires_ adding a template. This was absolutely the right course of action and I don't see what else you think he should have done. --Random832 15:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

For example, instead of creating Category:Wikipedians in USA, Patrick should've simply modified the relevant pages to Category:American Wikipedians. Xiner (talk) 15:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Random832 someone here understands. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 15:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be needed to justify depopulating a redlinked category. I say just remove redlinked categories from all user pages and templates. If a UCFD were necessary in each case, that would require many, many more times the number of categories that he already created and nominated. It also sounds like a huge loophole that could be taken advantage of: If someone wanted to, they could add themselves to hundreds of redlinked categories and we would need to create each and then go through a 7 day UCFD for every one if what you say is true, which would develop a huge backlog and a lot of unnecessary work. VegaDark 00:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I think either solution would be okay, and that the effective accusations of bad faith toward Patricknoddy are, well, a bit much. (Be careful with the term "disrupt", as it has a meaning well defined at WP:DE and WP:POINT as being bad-faith action). From my point of view, Patricknoddy appears to have been following procedure and being cautious, instead of being bold to go modify other people's pages. I don't think he should be castigated or threatened with blocks for attempting to do the right thing. I believe that a lot of other people would have done what he did, because of the "sacrosanctity" that many people feel about their user pages. I'm not sure I'd want someone modifying mine either w/o the modification being backed up with a consensus record at XfD. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Trivial renaming

Would this process be faster/preferred for trivial renaming such as alma mater: Edit the userbox to use the correctly named category, create it, and then WP:CSD#C1 the old empty cat after 4 days. –Pomte 17:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that what you're suggesting is in the blurred area between Speedy and being bold, since it merely involves editing a template. If, by editing the template, the category no longer has members, then I presume an admin could delete it at any time due to C1 - empty. (I've been doing this myself, though mostly as a result of WP:UCFD discussions.) The thing is, an edit to a template can be reverted, so the guidelines at WP:BOLD would seem to apply. - jc37 01:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically, empty categories are supposed to stay empty for 4 days before being speedied. But I don't see a problem with doing that for uncontroversial renames in the interest of improving the encyclopedia, per WP:IAR. VegaDark 04:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Keeping up

I've realized we've had some deletions, but they never took place. We need a bot or something like that to keep up with the deletions, mergers, etc. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 12:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

We do have bots (WP:CFD/W, but they are imperfect, especially when templates such as userboxes are involved. Sometimes it's just easier to do it by hand. Xiner (talk, a promise) 15:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The bots don't do their work at all, or so I don't believe. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)}^|^HISTORY 13:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Please remember that we're all volunteers here, so things may not happen as quickly as you may like : ) - jc37 04:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Userbox transclusions

I've gone through quite a few userboxes adjusting categories to match current consensus (most recently, the native language programming language cats). I've found that if the userbox has a double redirect (as due to userfication, for example), the cats take a LONG time to depopulate, even though the userpages show the new, updated category. Obviously we should avoid deleting a category before depopulating it, however, I've found that if I go through every remaining member of the category, and find that each's category has changed, but this just hasn't been reflected (yet) in the category listing, then it's safe to delete, with the presumption that the servers will eventually catch up, and depopulate the category. Just thought I would mention this for anyone else who may have had similar issues.

PS: A way to "speed up" the process would be to actually "dummy edit" each usepage, since that will update the category, but I don't think that that is a good idea due to (among other things) the large number of userpages involved.

Hope this helps : ) - jc37 01:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

MESSY!!!

The page is way too messy. Every day, the page gets a "Speedy Deletion" notice. Whoever has contributed a lot to it, I don't think you want to see it go. I reccomend that everyone who contributed to the page, and doesn't want to see their work go down the drain, help fix it. Thanks, Meldshal42 17:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Uh, I think you posted on the wrong page. VegaDark 04:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by WikiProject

Currently, Category:Wikipedians by WikiProject has 2 official naming conventions for subcategories for some reason, instead of just one. It uses both "WikiProject x members" and "WikiProject x participants". Does anyone else support deciding on one, and renaming the rest? Personally I prefer participants. There are also several subcategories I noticed that don't match either of these conventions, and should be renamed to whatever we decide on. We could also decide on a completely new naming convention such as "Wikipedians in WikiProject x" but that would mean even more work. VegaDark 04:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a recollection that this was discussed before with no consensus. Whatever is decided, we should note that the general Project member template - Template:Participant puts people in the participant category. One result is that for some Projects, both categories exist. For the Chemistry Project most are in "WikiProject Chemistry members" but a few because of that template are in "WikiProject Chemistry participants". --Bduke 07:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I like 'participants' because it implies obligatory contribution unlike 'member'. There should be no distinction between the two, so I agree on merging. –Pomte 09:26, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with this. We've had several "discussions" about this. The most notable thing to me was that there were more comments about how they were afraid that "participants vs members" advocates would come out of the woodwork than ones who actually did : ) - Oh, and I prefer "participants" as well. - jc37 17:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I prefer 'members' because it implies a sense of belonging, not just some casual contributor. In any case, I think this falls under the "Ain't broke" guideline. --NThurston 20:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Since there's now an opposing preference, there's no point trying to settle on one term over the other. It's trivial and different projects may decide on different category names. However, it is broke for the projects that have both, such as Chemistry and Category:WikiProject Tennessee members/Category:WikiProject Tennessee participants. Someone please notify these Porjects, and leave it to them to decide which one to stick with. –Pomte 20:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Good compromise - either/or, but not both. --NThurston 21:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Tennessee and Chemistry have been notified. Group nom for remaining anomalies has been posted. --NThurston 21:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing at all "official" about those naming conventions. Please do not lend undue weight to the preferences expressed by "janitorial" Wikiprojects. The above discussion strikes me as categorization policing and consistency insistence for its own sake. I think we all have better things to do. If Wikiproject X wants to call is members "participants" and WikiProject Y wants to call its participants "members", that really is not only no one else's business really, it is of no consensquence whatsoever. The choice has always been up to the projects, and this arguably is not the venue at all for a putsch to override this tradition of laissez faire permissiveness; some projects wants to stress membership in a cadre, others want to stress participation in actually solving problem, and that's just fine. We are here to write an encyclopedia, not go around enforcing "rules" just for the hell of it, especially when they are not in fact rules at all. Also, please stop trying to rename project member/participant categories in the form "Members of [project]" and "Participants in [project]"; these were named this way for good (disambiguating) reasons. CSD has a long history of permissiveness in this area when it is warranted (cf. Category:American players of Canadian football, Category:Australian players of English billiards, etc.; these "violate" the "standard" that would call for nonsensical names like Category:American Canadian football players, Category:Australian English billiards players, and they do so for a reason (parseability and disambiguation). I.e., let's quit being nitpicky about pointless things and go do something useful. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is use of Template:Participant. This userbox puts the user in the "participants" category. In the case of chemistry, I think the Project decided on "members" and only a few people who have used this template are in the "participants" category. I suggest that this template be edited so it does not put the user in any category. I also suggest that the Chemistry Project have a userbox that puts the user in the member category. --Bduke 02:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Note also: Template:Members and Template:Participants. - jc37 12:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Update - Tennessee has chosen "participant" and is done. It looks like Chemistry is very close to a definitive decision on "member." Good evidence that the projects themselves can take care of this. --NThurston 13:43, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As my grandfather used to say: "Yeah-huh" (which apparently meant "right!") — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The original discussion was at Wikipedia:User_categories_for_discussion/Archive/November_2006#WP members and Wikipedia:User_categories_for_discussion/Archive/November_2006#Participants in WPs. There we went for the hippocratic approach, which was that "(x)s in WikiProject (y)" would be named to "WikiProject (y) (x)s". But we wouldn't switch members to participants, or vice versa. I'm fine with bringing it up again, though I'm quite confident that the "WikiProject (y) (x)s" formula will survive regardless.--Mike Selinker 04:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration argument

A reason for deletion that comes up is that the given user category doesn't facilitate collaboration. Personally I think few if any of the user categories we have encourage collaboration at all. Is there any evidence whatsoever that users actually browse these categories for the off-chance that the people in it want to collaborate on some articles? If so, encourage them to join or start an associated WikiProject. They can still find the others by checking whatlinkshere on the userbox. But the primary use that comes to mind is social networking, i.e. finding other users with the same interests. WP:UC is inactive, and I don't know whether there was any original encyclopedic reason to start the old lists. –Pomte 13:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:UC isn't {{Inactive}}, just not active enough. I'm not sure I want to opine on its merits otherwise, really. What concerns me here and now is that WP:NOT is very much active, yet an enormous amount of this stuff is MySpace-y fanwanking, clearly in violation of WP:NOT, yet !voters here keep urging "Keep" on the basis of utterly bogus "naming conventions" (i.e., random hatnotes that this editor or that affixed to an itself-questionable parentcat some while back, and no one thought to question it until now; they're not "conventions", they're a mistakes). To the extent that several thousand usercats are salvageable at all, they must be changed to "Wikipedians who are interested in X" categories, to give at least some fantastical possibility that they'll actually be used for collaboration instead of band T-shirt style cultural-product advertising, and equally importantly so that we can move away from the neverending, and ever-growing, like/hate/support/oppose/fans of/who think X sucks/use/don't use/etc./barf nonsense cycle. This is seriously getting out of hand. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The attitude here is that convention should be argued against in a group nom, not a specific renaming discussion for one particular subcat. If you want to get technical, they should be renamed Category:Wikipedians interested in collaborating on articles about or related to X. Merely being interested in X does not imply any sort of activity on articles related to X; you could be an idle fan from afar. However, it is a step in the right direction to avoid exclusion: For things like sports teams, both fans and rivals belong in Category:Wikipedians interested in X, but the rivals wouldn't attach themselves to Category:Wikipedian X fans even if they edit the article. –Pomte 14:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

A) No particular disagreement on the "meat" of that from me, other than I don't think that a logorrhoeac Cat. name like your example is actually necessary to get the point across. B) However, I suppose I must then simply object to "the attitude here", which does not seem to me to comport with that of the rest of WP. It doesn't generally matter where a "sanity check" comes from; the fact that one is made and others "start ta go 'hmmm...'" (which is clearly the case here) is generally enough, and we just work together to make the solution happen. Insisting on process (and in this case pseudo-process on several levels I've already addressed on the non-talk page) for its own sake, strikes me as counter-productive (and if you've been following the WP:ATT debate at all, you'll recognize me for a mega-stickler for process...when it actually matters). C) All that said, if the only possible way for me to help steer this truck where it needs to be headed is to spend days and days doing group-noms, then maybe I will, but don't expect it to happen any time soon. Cleaning up userspace and userpace categories is pretty low on the priority stack compared to article work, to me. I just can't do it right now. I know that at least two other people here seem to understand what I'm getting at, and are UCfD "regulars", so please just take the reins and make it so. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 16:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Before we get started on those group discussions, the first of which should be Category:Wikipedians by website, the main question I wanted to get at was how these categories help Wikipedia at all. Autograph books in user subpages are getting kept at MfD (mainly) due to a quote by Jimbo Wales: "You keep asking how [signature books] help build an encyclopedia. But you also link to Wikipedia:Esperanza. I think that is your answer, no? Anything that builds a spirit of friendliness and co-operation and helps people get to know each other as human beings seems to me a good thing. Unlike divisive userboxes, the autograph books seem to just be about saying hello and being friendly." I think people would support user categories for the same reason. Do you think it applies here? –Pomte 02:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the simplest answer is that direct collaboration is not the only reason to keep a user cat. And I think that's what User:Jimbo Wales is getting at above, that such things can help in the process of building the encyclopedia, without needing to be a 1:1 ratio of user cat to article. Exopedianism and Metapedianism are of course welcome, but they are not the only perspectives on building the encyclopedia : ) - jc37 14:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I certainly have bashed down the collaboration-is-our-god argument more times than I can count. I believe basic user data is fine, as are statements of cultural likes (but not dislikes), as are claims of conditions or beliefs. I don't like joke categories, and I don't like divisive categories. But as long as categories are consistently named and useful in linking people up, I'm okay with them.--Mike Selinker 04:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

In my view, the "user categories facilitate collaboration" argument is fallacious. WikiProjects facilitate collaboration. The WikiProject system is very well-developed and fine-grained, and each of hundreds of projects is geared specifically towards improving articles.

Just consider the words "project" and "category". One is about the articles you're working on or would like to work on; the other is about identifying yourself according to a group you feel you belong to. One is about doing; the other is about being. If you want to collaborate on articles, you can join a project, and jump right in. If you want to make claims about what you are, you may do so on your user page, without putting yourself into a category to make it easy to find others who share your ideology, or who also like ice cream(?!).

Despite the surprised-looking punctuation, I see a lot less harm in these categories that apparently "do not facilitate collaboration" than in the political, religious and ideological ones that supposedly do. User categories aren't for helping write articles, therefore they're just for fun, and there's no reason to tell people they can't have a category about how much they love their pet gerbil. That's an arbitrary exercise of power over activities that aren't even connected to the encyclopedia; I see no reason for it.

Categories that identify users according to ideology however, have a history of being abused to "round up posses" and muscle deletion arguments in a desired direction by numbers. I'm not aware that they have any history of being used for developing articles. I think it's time to revisit the whole question of user categories. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would support deleting all user categories to get rid of any problems. –Pomte 23:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Closure dispute

Resolved

– Topic mooted by new proposal below this topic.

WP:UCFD#W b W renaming was closed as consensus to rename on all but a few items. However, well-reasoned objections were supplied against several other of the renames, and largely unaddressed, so there was no consensus on those items (and in another case, no objections were raised against one of the items flagged as "no consensus" (WikiProject Current Local City Time members), meanwhile both in the debate and here on the talk page several parties (SMcCandlish i.e. me, NThurston with caveat, Bduke with note about duplicate categories sometimes arising, Pomte who labelled the matter "trivial", while even the closer Jc37 noted that the issue has been contentious) agreed in one way or another that there isn't any paricular reason to interfere with reasonable choices by WikiProjects about how they want to name their user categories, and no objections were raised against this view. I thus have to dispute the closure results' validity. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this assessment that there was no consensus to rename the categories other than those listed in the Mis-named section. –Pomte 03:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd be interested in how you came to that conclusion.

The changes that went through were very nearly speediable:

Participants in X -> X participants
Members of X -> X members
Wikipedians who are members of X -> X members
WikiProject WikiProject X -> WikiProject X (error in using a template)
Members -> members (caps)
member -> members (plural)

Now I presume that your concerns are about the first three due to order of wording?

I suppose I could make this simple and count "votes", I see two opposed (you two) and five in support. I could get more technical and suggest that SMcCandlish's initial concerns were that the WikiPRojects retain the right to determine whether to use members or participants (which was retained in the closure). For the later question of clarity for cue sports, NThurston gave weak support, but only in limited usage, preferring convention, but that still was opposed by the other four commenter's concerns for a single convention.

I removed the three that did not include members or participants in the name at all, since that was seemingly divisive in the discussion, and had the added benefit of removing the editor's assistance cat, which was also a concern.

I hope this clears things up for you. - jc37 05:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. A logical rationale was given for why "Participants in X" and "Members of X" are sometimes desirable, in a few rare cases (just as similar exceptions are made from time to time at CfD and SfD), and no convincing argument was made against this point (simply reasserting that it's not the convention is not an argument, it's simply a circular observation that fails to address the problem that the avoided argument raised about the convention, or rather its over-enforcement, in the first place). The discussion simply was not over.

Please also note that one of the most obvious and noncontroversial renames would have been to Category:WikiProject Current Local City Time members, yet this one was specifically not done. The conglomerated result didn't reflect consensus on either side in some cases. And, no, you can't count votes. This isn't a vote. It's a discussion, which is why I pointed you to the related discussion on this talk page as well. Also, you are mistaken about what my initial concern was. Please re-read. The intial concern was that a few categories (see my Leave alone first comment) were named in members/participants-first order for a reason and that demanding lockstep naming uniformity would result in problems; even CFD isn't that conformity-insistant.

I get the feeling that you did not actually read the debate at all, but simply skimmed it, since all of this was covered in quite a bit of detail, but you seem to be aware of that, including guiding examples, that do have clear consensus, from outside of UC space, logical explanation of the rationale, rebuttal of skeptical replies (rebuttals which still stand unchallenged), etc., etc. And, trying to simultaneously discount NThurston's opinion as wishywashy and make mine look extreme is a straw man; I too urged for very limited usage of the members/participants-first counter-convention, and except in odd cases I do of course vastly prefer the more conventional members/participants-last order. Also, it was not just about the cue sports example, but all of the members/participants first examples. They were clearly all named that way for the same reason (though some of them could probably be renamed without a particularly ambiguous or hard-to-parse result; they all need to be looked at separately). Finally, four !voters who do not address the rational objections raised by two others does not make a consensus, it makes a "no consensus", by definition. PS: No quibble with leaving out the divisive ones you mentioned last, nor of course with the typo fixes and such. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the main issue of your concern of the closure is that you are dismissing certain opinions and perspectives that I didn't in the closure. I realise that you don't like rationales based on current convention, but it's a valid perspective. And categorisation by convention is a standard throughout both WP:UCFD and WP:CFD. See also WP:OCAT for convention applying to how to not categorise pages.

I won't quiblle about what your "initial concern" was, either. I was talking about what appeared in the discussion to be your first comments in response to others' opinions. (Noting that there were many.)

Besides Category:Wikipedians in the Editor Assistance Project (of which there was distinct opposition), I excluded the other two categories simply because the associated WikiProjects had not decided on whether they should be members or participants, and since it wasn't already in the name of the cat, I followed consensus of the discussion that they should not be renamed arbitrarily... I might note that you were/are a leading proponent of this, based on your comments both there and on this talk page. (And you accuse me of straw man arguments... I have some interesting links at the top of my talk page, feel free to check them out : )

In any case, I think I'll refer you to the first paragraph above, since I really think that's your main objection. I.e. you don't like the current "conventions". That's a perfectly valid opinion. Develop a consensus to change the convention at WP:UCFD through a group nomination, and you may find more support for that idea than you realise. But trying to usurp individual nominations in that way is starting to appear disruptive to make a point...

Hopefully this further clarifies. Though, of course, I enjoy a good, positive discussion, so if you have further thoughts or concerns, please feel free : ) - jc37 09:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think much of this is moot, given the subtopic below. But to clarify again, I've never said I disagree with the extant convention (though I like the new one suggested below), and in fact just now in the last round of this stuff reaffirmed that I support it, when it is not treated as utterly inviolable; I disagree with applying any convention as if it were a law, with results that do more harm that bending the convention does, and secondarily disagree with closing as having "consensus" debates where the rationales on one side consist of "but, it's the convention!", while those on the other, which remained unaddressed, give logical reasons for bending the convention to accept needed exceptions. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: I'm not trying to impute any bad motives; I just think this was closed too soon, and without a deep enough look at what arguments, rationales, reasons had been presented and addressed. Many of the comments were reflexive "rename per convention or per nom" me-too comments without elaboration, and without addressing anything other than the intial nomination, yet seem to have been given at least equal weight (i.e. treated as votes) as the far more substantive responses to the UCfD in question, which was a complex one on several levels. I'd rather simply re-open the original until a clearer consensus is reached than file a new counter-rename, or go complaining to where ever it is one DRV-style complains (I've never bothered before with *CfD disagreement, so I don't even know where that is!) I think discussion is generally more productive than going on the offence. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:DRV, if you wish. - jc37 09:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Nah, I think it's a moot point, and I don't like complaining in places like DRV (which is what I meant above; self-corrected my "RRV" typo); I wasn't actually certain that rename issues would be dealt with there. Just talking it over is usually a lot better. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Reframing the debate

I think the first question at the root of the matter really is "Can there ever, for any reason be an exception to the members/participants-last convention?". The second of course is "If so, under what conditions?" Clearly, my answer to the first question is "yes", and this view is supported in general pretty much WP-wide in other venues of a similar nature (most relatedly CfD, SfD and RM). Even MoS, which is anal as hell, especially at MOSNUM, recognizes the value of flexibility in such conventions, because understandability is more important than 100% conformity. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Can't we just change the naming convention for all wikiproject categories to be Category:Wikipedians in WikiProject x? That would seem to solve both your issue of name ambiguity and our need for a uniform naming convention. Personally I think that there should not be any divergence from whatever our accepted naming conventions are, even on the small off-chance it could reduce some ambiguity in the name. The naming convention we accept should specifically identify possible name ambiguity situations and be selected as to avoid them (as I believe the above does), we shouldn't make naming convention exceptions if the current naming convention is broken, we should go to the root of the problem and fix the convention so we no longer have the need to create exceptions. VegaDark 09:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I fully support that rename. Also, I think that this "members/participants" discussion is slowly becoming moot, considering the current ongoing ReOrg of the WikiProject system, and the recent tendency to AfD "organisations" which have "members". - jc37 10:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, works for me, too! I've been thinking on it since VegaDark posted this, and can't come up with a result that would be ambiguous or confusing. So, what are the next steps for getting this idea more broadly accepted? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

A group nomination would seem to be the best way to go. However, I think I would like to see the WikiProject Restructure to stabilise first. (It may make a difference in the name of quite a few of the Projects.) - jc37 11:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you link to any related discussions? I'd like to follow it. Also, if/when this is done, we should check to make sure the WikiProject actually exists (actually we could start this now). I was looking through the list and there are some really wierd things on there that is hard for me to imagine being a WikiProject, and I'd suspect that at least some listed don't actually exist and someone just made the category. We may also not want to make categories for inactive WikiProjects. VegaDark 20:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested links:

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council

Wikipedia:WikiProject reform

- jc37 08:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm mildly ok with "Wikipedians in WikiProject X" - I don't know what "in" means any more than I can distinguish between members and participants. As for the previous decision, the only legitimate issue is perhaps Cue Sports. I felt that there may have been a good reason to leave it as is. --NThurston 20:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What about "Wikipedians participating in X" (where "X" is "WikiProject Y" or something else; there are a few things that are projectish but which don't begin with "WikiProject")? PS: Re: Cue sports, I'd just as soon work toward the new convention than fight for that exception to the old one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That still has the same problems of participants in/members of and is probably too long to be much good. At present, the category is "by WikiProject." There are better cats for the "ish" things (like Editor Assistance), such as Category:Wikipedians by Wikipedian organization (a parent of WbW). --NThurston 20:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Another option would be Category:Wikipedians who contribute to WikiProject x. It's more clear and avoids the members/participants debate, and avoids ambiguity. VegaDark 00:06, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Perfect, actually. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Blatant lie. A lot of WikiProjects are inactive and it is misleading to label the users in it as contributing to them. It'd take too much effort to make sure every user actually does what the category name claims. –Pomte 00:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the same could be said of "participants/members"? Besides that, There's always: WikiProject X contributors, which just sounds like we've added third option, rather than resolve the issue : ) - jc37 00:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. It's no more a blatant lie than "participants" (to participate, one has to contribute, at least to discussion; otherwise you are doing nothing but reading), and "members" simply makes no sense since WP is not composed of a bunch of individual membership organizations (see Esperanza MfD!) There's enough of a "truth" debate going on over at WT:ATT; let's not let it infect other areas. >;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yet another option would be to fall back on our old standby, "interested in". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

"Participants" is weaker in that if all someone does is sign their name in the WikiProject page and transclude the userbox in their userpage, that's the minimal amount of participation required. "Contributor" implies something more. "Member" implies nothing, which is why I don't prefer it either. "Interested in" cracks me up as being way too generic. Take this with a grain of salt. –Pomte 00:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It sounds to me like you don't like any of the conventions, either current or proposed. Perhaps you could propose your own, or identify which you consider to be the "least bad"? VegaDark 01:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Salt taken, but I perceive them rather differently. What you've said about "participants" strikes me as descriptive of "members", while "participants" to me is synonymous with "contributors" (as defined by the latter not the former), for the reason already given (must contribute to "participate" at all). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

If we're going to making a change, the only one I find reasonable so far is Category:Wikipedians in WikiProject x. Sometimes the simple solution is the best. --NThurston 13:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I like this name but it ruins the convention for the other categories: WikiProject X articles -> Articles in WikiProject X doesn't make any more sense. Look at Category:WikiProject The Beatles for an example. I know convention isn't a rule to abide by, but it raises a potential debate about the naming for those other categories as well. Has the WikiProject Council/Reform been notified about this issue? I think they can judge this with a wider perspective. –Pomte 02:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly bad about having Category:WikiProject The Beatles articles, etc., and Category:Wikipedians in WikiProject The Beatles; the former is first and foremost a WikiProject working directory, of no interest to any other part of WP and thus not affected by any naming convention other than that for such directories as presumably established by the Council, while the latter is first and foremost a Wikipedians sorting category, and secondarily a WikiProject category (and not a working one - the project already has a list of it members/participants either on its front page or on a members/participants subpage, and probably a much more complete one, since many users eschew userboxes). As for whether the Council's been notified about this: They have not, unless I missed it. I'm off to dinner now, so I'll leave it to others to do said notifying. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with "Wikipedians in WikiProject (X)" but I'm also fine with doing nothing. The use of both members and participants doesn't outrage me, as they follow the same naming scheme.--Mike Selinker 17:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
- I wouldn't particularly mind if we continued to use those either, if we didn't have the need for "exceptions" due to the current naming conventions allowing for unclear interpretations of what they are actually intended for. I think that changing the naming convention is worth it in order to get rid of the need for such exceptions. VegaDark 04:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions (categories)

Perhaps the way to go about this is simply to develop a naming convention (and by corrollary, an inclusion convention) for user categories.

I'm going to spend some time going through every user category (ugh @ me for volunteering), and take some notes along the way. There are subcats of subcats of subcats.

Comments are welcome : ) - jc37 09:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Before you do the tedious job of clicking through categories, why not get a bot to dump them all into an easy-to-read indented-by-hierarchy list somewhere? –Pomte 14:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If you know of such a bot, I'm all ears : ) - jc37 17:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Check this out if you don't know about it. –Pomte 14:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Parent categories

One thing that I would like discussed in the meantime is the creation of a template for "parent categories" which should not have Wikipedian userpages as members, but are only organisational catgegories, designed to hold only sub-categories (and possibly historical lists). It should not be garish, or huge, but should be clearly evident by the casual reader.

Once we decide on that, then we'll decide which categories should have it.

And after that, in one action, we'll depopulate those categories. (In one action, so that we don't rack up a zillion page changes to user pages, so to, hopefully, minimise confusion, and possible disruption.) - jc37 09:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

For the template, I've made a draft at User:Pomte/Template:ucfdepop, copying the look of {{Category redirect}}. –Pomte 14:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice work on the template. It should probably be comparable to {{catdiffuse}}. - jc37 19:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I edited the text to make it a bit more generic for usage, and moved it to template space - Template:Parent category. - jc37 00:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I just found {{Metacategory}}. Merge? –Pomte 00:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

At first, I was thinking yes, but there's a possibility that there is a subtle of semantic difference in usage that we're unaware of. But if not, then yes, some sort of merger could be appropriate, unless we want to less generalise the parent category notice back into being user category-only. - jc37 01:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere doesn't suggest any difference. –Pomte 02:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Are they widely called "super-categories"? What about ditching the a.k.a's and just describe the function like {{Metacategory}}? –Pomte 00:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

They're called all three terms on WP:CFD. The least useful descriptive name is probably meta-category. They've also been called "overcats" as well. But parent cat and super cat seem to be the most common usage. (I didn't call the template supercat simply because it doesn't need a cape : ) - jc37 01:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Rename to Template:Parent category for brevity, and it does more than notify: it tracks! If you agree, I'll redirect {{Metacategory}} to this new name and post a notice at WT:CAT. –Pomte 02:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Done, and done (as I note that you spotted the change before I could post here, and followed through on the above : ) - jc37 11:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

In Category:Parent categories, do we really want every single parent category inside it? Alternatively, it can be subcategorized by type to distinguish between article categories and user categories. For bot and maintenance purposes though, one single huge category should work. –Pomte 00:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought about that, and had removed the cat entirely, but then I remembered this page and thought that it might be useful. We could split the category by namespace, I suppose (since there are Wikipedia:space cats as well). But just keeping in mind that the main (if possibly only) reason for the category's existance is for maintenance, typically bot maintenance. - jc37 01:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Userbox links in category introductions

Another thing is that I think we're going to have to require is that there must be a link in a category introduction to every userbox which transcludes the category. This is rather necessary especially in light of the large amount of userboxes being subst: and/or userfied due to recent "migration" actions. It's making it more and more difficult to find populating templates, and such. - jc37 09:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The userbox linking is going to be hard to enforce. From now on at UCFDiscussions once I find the userbox, I'll link and transclude it in the category. –Pomte 14:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Note that if you transclude a userbox to a category, it typically adds the category to itself : ) - jc37 19:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we can risk having the category include itself, and if not, ~~use <includeonly>~~. I've made a template at User:Pomte/Template:usercat that does this in one line. –Pomte 00:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I hate it when a category is a subcategory of itself (usually due to the userbox being on the page), and would support removing any such occurances. VegaDark 01:18, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A way to uncategorize any non-user pages that transclude the userbox is {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|User|[[Category:Wikipedians ...]]}} –Pomte 02:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

We went through this process at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Education/United_States. We now have a "nocat" switch which allows each userbox to be displayed without cat'ing the page. It is incorporated into {{educat}} so that none of the userboxes create parent-child problems in the categories. It also allows the userbox to be displayed on sandbox and other pages without cat'ing them. --NThurston 13:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Speedy actions

Is there an admin that could look at my speedy noms and either close or re-list as non-speedy? --NThurston 17:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Well considering I asked above that we wait a bit before nominating more of the W b W cats, I probably shouldn't be the one to do so : ) - jc37 17:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. However, after these are considered, that's pretty much all there is. There are a few others that I have requested that the project itself consider. --NThurston 17:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and closed several of them. - jc37 18:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

April 4-20 discussion on user wiki categories: upper vs lowercase

Minor point: VegaDark pointed out twice that Wikitext is uppercase and Jc37 seems to agree. However, in the wikitext article 'W' is only capitalized when it is the first word in a sentence. See also the primary source Help:Wikitext examples. Wikitext is not a specific language but a class of them, so I guess that strips it of its proper noun status. –Pomte 03:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree. I think "Wikitext" would be a bit pretentious, like "E-mail". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

In the first line of the page, it says "For Wikitext formatting in relation to...", but other than that, I see that it is used in lowercase except at the start of a sentence. However, is there a consensus that we shouldn't capitalize the word after "User" in babel categories? It seems more like a title than using it in a sentence, in which case capitalization may be acceptable. Either way, there are several naming conventions used at Category:Wikipedians by programming language which all need to be changed to a uniform system, this is just one of many. (Some are capital, some are lower case, some are abbreviated, some are spelled out, some are duplicates, one is not even babelized). VegaDark 06:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The closure was based on VD noticing the caps, as he explained above. Babel-named categories seem to fluctuate between whether the first word after "User" is capitalised. All other categories should follow normal capitalisation. For me, the question is whether there are references external to Wikipedia using the word "wikitext" and whether it's considered a proper noun which should be capitalised, or simply a proper noun that's fallen into common usage. (For example see List of generic and genericized trademarks.) - jc37 06:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The external sites are undecided.

The abbreviated programming language categories follow the lowercase convention at Category:Wikipedians by language. Some may find it awkward seeing ActionScript in lowercase, or as the short lowercase acronym "as". But I'm guessing there is (unspoken) consensus at Wikipedia:Babel since the lowercase language abbreviations have been prominent for so long. Incidentally we renamed tex to TeX a while ago. –Pomte 08:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the links, it seems to be a question of CamelCase (See:Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia). WikiText vs wikitext. In looking over the Linux document, the author seems to prefer WikiText. Most of the other links are CamelCased wikis. Though one uses WikiText as part of their programming code. However, in all the Wikimedia help files, it's Wikitext or wikitext (which could be a result of someone fixing CamelCase links at some point and not due to an actual preference). I think the broader, more-inclusive term would probably be WikiText, since not all wikis use the mediawiki version. - jc37 19:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Fascist Wikipedians

It seems that this category has reared its head again. This time resulting in an arbcom case. Please see User talk:JzG#Fascist Wikipedians for more information. - jc37 09:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm personally glad to see it go, although I do consider it to be a double standard to allow the other political categories to remain. VegaDark 02:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Subjective "concern"

The "like" vs "interested in" debate.

I was reading through Wikipedia:Userboxes#Designing a userbox, which seems to apply to this discussion, especially Content, and category inclusion.

While I think "interested in" or even some other phrase may replace the verbs: favors, likes, loves, prefers, and fascinated by; I think the replacement is subjective, and could possibly be argued that the distinction is merely WP:ILIKEIT or more appropriately WP:IDONTLIKEIT.

That said, I think I'm shifting to semi-neutral on this aspect of the debate.

However, the other verbs, such as: listens, watches, plays, etc are more specific, and "useful" distinctions. And I still strongly oppose changing all subcats of Category:Wikipedians to "interested in".

As stated above on this page, and elsewhere, User categories do not have to be directly collaborative in order to be useful for collaboration.

I welcome other's thoughts on this. - jc37 08:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

From my perspective, this is not an "I don't like it" issue at all, but a WP:NPOV one (yes, NPOV is intended principally for articles, but as a principle it remains important more broadly). I don't particularly have any issue "Wikipedians who play trombones", because it isn't ever likely to inspire someone to create a "Wikipedians who don't play trombones and think they suck" counter-category. "Wikipedians who love Britney Spears" is fairly likely to lead to a reflexive anti-cat. The secondary concern is that while a cat. doesn't have to be directly collaborative to be useful, it's way more useful if it is directly collaborative, and I feel that "interested in" is more likely to to foster actual article collaboration that simple declarations of fandom. I'm not in very many "interested in" categories, because I know that people may seek out my input/participation for something as a result; I choose them carefully. If I were a 16-year-old fanboy again I might well be in 250 "like"/"love" categories just to proclaim what I "dig". That's a major part of the issue to me. While Jimbo is right, and WP isn't going to just fall apart all of a sudden because editors dither around in such self-categorization pursuits, I see zero evidence that POV User categories do anything productive for the project. That's my take on it in a nutshell (albeit a big brazil nut shell). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Your concern would be already covered by the suggestion to avoid creating "not" based categories. When faced with a positive and a negative category on the same subject, one of the two should typically be deleted, and of the two, typically the negative should be deleted. - jc37 10:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

That partially addresses one of my concerns (partially because the fact that we'll delete not-cats doesn't keep them from being created and wasting all of our time.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The same could be said about just about anything on Wikipedia. Do we stop doing something positive simply because someone else may, or even is likely to do something not-so-positive? Of course not. - jc37 18:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

For Wikipedians interested in BS, there are Wikipedians disinterested in BS and flabbergasted that there is yet another category devoted to her. I highly doubt that either name fosters collaboration better than the other. Everything in mainspace should be generic/impersonal, but user stuff can take a more personal attitude, which seems to be a fundamental motivation behind users slapping userboxes on themselves in the first place. Personally I think the entire idea of user categories is a waste of time, and they all reduce to POV however you reword them, but I'm not drafting a proposal to delete them all. (Should I?) –Pomte 19:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This brings me back to changing the naming convention to Category:Wikipedians interested in collaborating on x-related topics. I don't see it as an ILIKEIT argument one way or the other, the only thing I look at is how likely the name of the category will facilitate collaboration, and "interested" always wins out over "likes" for me in that regard (although still can be improved, as I mentioned first). If wanting the categories to have more collaborative names is an ILIKEIT argument, then I guess I am guilty as charged. And now I know this is where Pomte will ask- "But do you have any evidence that one name is more collaborative than the other?" and my answer is no, I only have my judgement to go by, which tells me it is (mostly for the reasons SMcCandlish mentions, some fanboy is more likely to join a "wikipedians who like x tv show" category just to proclaim what they "dig" than a "wikipedians interested in x tv show" category. VegaDark 20:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Category inclusion syntax

After having had to correct quite a few userpages due to others' unintentional code breaking, and seeing so many userboxes (including subst ones) with incorrectly coded category inclusion, I've added some syntax information at Wikipedia:Userboxes#Syntax for including categories.

I think that Wikipedia:Userboxes#Designing a userbox and it's subsections (of which the above link is one) should be required reading for anyone working on userboxes with category inclusion. Hoping this helps. - jc37 08:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

...interested in...

Per the recent discussions, I've updated Wikipedia:Userboxes to reflect what did at least have consensus. Essentially preference verbs, such as "like, love, enjoy" should be changed to a more specific verb, or at least, "interested in". - jc37 23:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Instruments categories

Wikipedia:Instruments - The categories were named after the userboxes. I've adjusted the main templates' coding changing the naming convention from:

User <instrument abbreviation>-#

to:

Wikipedian <instrument+ist>-#

per several UCFD discussions.

Which leaves us with more than several redlinks. If anyone knows a bot owner who might like to help with this, drop me a note here or on my talk page. - jc37 14:59, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

It's only Wikipedia:Instruments that needs to be updated, right? I've edited the template to default to linking "Category:Wikipedian X players" and the other suffixes can be set manually. –Pomte 20:56, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

~~Userboxes like {{User mvx-2}} need to be fixed. –Pomte 21:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)~~

I'm pretty sure what is going on now. See the subcats of Category:Wikipedian saxophonists for an example of the switch-over. Delete all the user sax-#, right? The users still in those will have to be switched over, and that can be done with a bot or AWB. I think the actual category renaming will require a little more than bot work considering some templates/cats I've seen are coded improperly, and the ists parameter has to be figured out by a human. –Pomte 23:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind starting hunting the templates down, I just want to do it with little pause between it and the bot depopulation, in order to reduce confusion as much as possible. And all the "new" categories need to have Category:Wikipedians by musical instrument added (which will likely create the cat page). - jc37 07:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've created all the red Cat:Wikipedian ist-# categories I could find, so now they coexist with Cat:User code-#, which can be depopulated all at once. Also rewrote Wikipedia:Instruments/Adding to prevent new additions from messing it up. I don't like how user pages are in both Cat:Wikipedian ist and Cat:Wikipedian ist-#, but I can't think of a better solution. –Pomte 08:23, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by number of edits

Aren't Category:Wikipedians by number of edits and all subcategories speedy deletable per this CFD? It has been almost a year, however, and consensus can change. Would UCFD'ing this be be better? VegaDark (talk) 04:12, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Renominating seems like a better idea. In this August 06 CfD, the category got renamed without scrutiny. Category:Wikipedian edit archive appears useful in grouping those historic lists, unless you'd prefer a template for navigation between them. –Pomte 03:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)