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February 22

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Category:Planned Parenthood

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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: keep and repopulate, if needed. There's clear support for keeping the category. There did not seem to be universal support for adding a US disambiguator, but at the very least a hatnote should say these are about the US organization. So I'll add one. The international category can be created if desired.--Mike Selinker (talk) 15:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Planned Parenthood (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. (did I say that out loud - I LOVE categories!!) It is not part of any existing scheme, it is a case of over-categorisation and the contents are better served by the article itself. A template may also be an idea of some merit. Note that I had cleaned out articles that were related to the international organisation of which Planned Parenthood was an affiliate. It was a case of putting the cart before the horse, or in this case, shoehorning international articles into a category related to the US only. Do I detect a little geo-centrism here?? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:55, 22 February 2012 (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:Buffy comic book covers

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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: Speedy rename C2C. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Propose renaming Category:Buffy comic book covers to Category:Covers from titles related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Nominator's rationale: Per all other such character-based comic book covers categories, such as Category:Covers from titles related to Batman.-- Mike Selinker (talk) 19:45, 22 February 2012 (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.

Obscure or ambiguous Old Fooians

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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 all. Editorial discernment should be used in choosing which should have redirects. - jc37 01:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Propose renaming:
Nominator's rationale: Rename to a descriptive format to clarify the category's purpose for Wikipedia's general readership, to whom the current category names will be at best bewildering, and in some cases misleading. A category should do what it says on the tin, and interpreting what it says on the tin should not require specialist knowledge or guesswork. What you see should be what you get.
Categories exist as a navigational device, and obscure, ambiguous, or misleading category names are an obstacle to navigation. The title of a category appears without explanation at the bottom of each of the biographical articles to which is attached and in its parent categories list of sub-categories, and there is no possibility in either case of piping a category name to clarify its purpose; the page title is what's displayed. The only conceivable purpose for naming a category in this way is to teach the reader new terminology, an approach which is specifically deprecated by WP:JARGON. The alumni of the school can of course call themselves whatever they like, and their terminology should be explained in the head article and in a hatnote on the category itself. Renaming the categories to improve navigability will therefore cause no loss of information to the reader.
These new names will eliminate ambiguity, adopt plain English, avoid obscure WP:JARGON and fit the convention of Category:People educated by school in England. This incorporates the general principle of WP:NCCAT that category names should normally correspond to the name of a Wikipedia article (in this case, the article on the school).
Problems with these categories:
  1. Some rely explicitly on a detailed knowledge of the school's history:
  2. Some use a term whose relationship with the school is clear once you know it, but obscure unless the reader already has specialist knowledge. In these cases, the demonyms may be similar to those allegedly used for the town where the school is located, but the use of demonyms for people-by-place is specifically deprecated in Categorization of people guideline. That issue was settled at CfD back in July 2006 and has been incorporated in the guideline since at least August 2006. Simply stripping the suffix "-ian" doesn't clarify the category's purpose in the case of:
  3. Some of the categories are ambiguous even for the reader who correctly guesses what the the "Foo" is in the "Old Fooian":
The "old fooians" format is used as inhouse jargon only by a small minority of schools in the UK. The nuances of it will be unfamiliar to the majority of UK citizens, whose schools did not use this format, and there is no reason to expect them to guess the meaning of these terms. Only 5.5% of Wikipedia's readership comes from the UK, and elsewhere the "old fooians" terminology is used only for a very small minority of schools (mostly those which were founded in the days of British Empire).
Similar renamings have been proposed several times before, and until mid-2011 such discussions mostly closed as "no consensus"; I have found no case where there was consensus to retain an unqualified "old Fooian" category. In mid-2011, since a new standardised format of "People educated at" has been adopted for all the non-"old Fooian" subcats of Category:People educated by school in the United Kingdom. That format has also been adopted at CfD for many "Old Fooian" categories which are obscure, ambiguous or misleading: see the list below, which is so long that I have collapsed it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename as per all the arguments given. Categories are supposed to be an index - currently the pages will not/do not make a workable index for the vast majority of people. It should not be necessary to click a category to find out to what it refers. The traditional name can be supplied in header text at the category top if desired, and will of course already be present in the relavent articles - so no hindrance to a search.Mddkpp (talk) 19:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename. No way to know without context that, say, Old Cholmeleians has anything to do with Highgate School.--Mike Selinker (talk) 21:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all per nom, who sets out a very thorough analysis of the problems. I think it's fair to say that there has been consensus that we should generally avoid these types of category names because they are ambiguous, unclear to those without pre-existing background knowledge, and essentially jargon-based, or at least centric to the culture in which the nicknames developed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all per nom. Perhaps the exhaustive analysis + table could now be linked rather than trotted out each time (as one foresees a multitiude of further cfds with only 'Old Etonians' still standing by about 2016); and it is getting difficult to scroll down the edit pane. Oculi (talk) 21:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry about the verbosity. These categories used to be v controversial, I was trying to cover all the points which left so many previous CfDs as a confused "no consensus". But we have now moved on from that gridlock, so if and when I nominate any more it will be terser. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all. I fully agree with the nominator's thorough explanations of why it's preferable to drop the Old Fooian format. Pichpich (talk) 23:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all per all the past CFDs and everything I've said in them. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename how the hell does Old Victorians get that? Does no one think of anything except their parochial school or something? Do elderly people in North London not exist? etc 70.24.251.71 (talk) 09:11, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment DO NOT create category redirects' for any of the more ambiguous ones, like North London, or Victorian, or Ignatian, or Petriburgian, or Grovian or Queenian, etc. I'd prefer it if no category redirects are created for any of these. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 09:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that caution should be taken in creating category redirects, and they should not be created for terms which have another primary meaning. Apart from list given by the IP above, I would add a bar on any that use a demonym, such as Leodensians. However, Old Mid-Whitgiftians and Old Cholmeleians are unambiguous, so I would support redirects for those obscure but unique terms. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all per precedent.--Lenticel (talk) 06:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. In principle, like several other editors who have taken part in many similar discussions in the past, I support the use of the "Old Fooian" format where it is actually used, and we do not have a general policy in favour of stamping it out. With regard to suggestions of ambiguity, huge numbers of Wikipedia pages have names which include ambiguous terms. Where there is a real problem, an answer is found: often the primary meaning has the simple term for a name, while other meanings get a longer name, including some qualifier. "Old Victorian" could, if necessary, become "Old Victorians (Jersey)". In the case of categories, it seems unlikely that people are confused by supposedly ambiguous terms. If there is the beginning of a problem, it can be dealt with by a summary at the head of the category. Moonraker (talk) 12:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Per WP:NDESC, an alternative to parenthetical disambiguation is to use a descriptive format, as is proposed here. This is routinely done for categories, because it creates a simple and predictable format of category names. Due of the risk of miscategorisation (which is hard to monitor), there is a growing convention with categories to disambiguate many terms which are treated as primary topics in article space. Anyway, in what way do you think that "Old Victorians (Jersey)" is clearer than "People educated at Victoria College, Jersey"? Your preferred "Old Victorians (Jersey)" reads to me as meaning people from the Victorian era, in Jersey. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename with redirects maintained for people who are looking for "Old Fooian". Someone unfamiliar with the term would not click on the "Old Fooian" category at the bottom of a person's entry whereas if they were interested to find out who else went to his school they might be tempted to click the "people educated at" category. People who are familiar with the "Old Fooian" term would not be confused when faced with a "people educated at" category. I think that the potential for confusion is pretty unidirectional. Disclosure; I'm an Old Fooian myself. Still think the categories should have more generic names. Let each one explain its history and commonly used nomenclature on a per case basis. Dino246 (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename ALL - either an all or none approach needs to be taken, so I expect to see Old Etonians being removed alongside all other Old fooians. DiverScout (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Unfortunately some editors seem to think that the issue here is the status of the school, but that is not the case.
    The actual purpose of categories is to facilitate navigation (see WP:CAT#Overview), so the question is what category name is most likely to help navigation. The convention with schools is to use plain English descriptive terms, but that may not be the best option in all cases. "Old Etonians" is an interesting outlier case, with 4290 Google News hits, whereas the years for other prominent schools are much more rarely used (e.g. 97 Gnews hit for "Old Carthusian", and Charterhouse is a highly-regarded public school). Previous attempts to these categories rename en masse became very heated as some editors claims that some schools terminology were particularly well known, and the large group nom did not lend itself to examining those claims. Discussions of smaller groups of allow us to examine each case individually. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all these. After so many similar categories have been renamed, it is surprising that some of the remaining ones, such as these, are really obscure. We should now aim for consistency as the principle of renaming them is now clear. --Bduke (Discussion) 15:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support rename of all such anachronistic listings. We need to use language that is clear and easy to understand. It is clear and obvious when you see a category named "People educated at Cardiff High School", but if you see a category named "Old Sheep Shaggers" you would have to click the category and look at the description to be able to understand what on earth it was talking about. --Bob Re-born (talk) 16:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all The proposed format is accurate, WP:JARGON-free, non-confusing or -confusable, not ambigiuous in the least, and maintains a consistent category tree. - The Bushranger One ping only 18:31, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename 2/Neutral on 9: Old North Londoners and Old Victorians could be confused for non-alumni articles. No opinion on rest. RevelationDirect (talk) 05:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all these: All on this list seem to fit in with the arguments for renaming, although the case is overstated with the sentence "The "old fooians" format is used as inhouse jargon only by a small minority of schools in the UK". I think that it is quite a large minority of schools in the UK which use this format as inhouse jargon, but some statistics would be useful to confirm whether this is correct. Furthermore, whether the minority is large or small is not relevant, because the rest of the analysis is applicable. On renaming the categories, the step "their terminology should be explained in the head article and in a hatnote on the category itself" needs to be dealt with so that the information about the relevant "old fooians" format is readily available to the reader. Coyets (talk) 09:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all in the current format these categories linguistically fail to do what they set out to do. Zangar (talk) 11:25, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notification spam. Moonraker (talk · contribs) has sent a notice about this and another discussion to 45 editors who took part in a wider discussion in February 2011 about all 387 categories for former pupils of schools in the United Kingdom. The messages sent appear to be neutral, as does the audience selection, but the sheer number of recipients appears to amount to excessive cross-posting. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:43, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure how relevant that comment is. Moonraker notified people regardless of their opinion - and my was the polar opposite. If that is notification spamming then I heartily welcome it because it has given much greater visibility and resulted in a more thorough discussion. Thanks Moonraker, I appreciate and applaud your actions. --Bob Re-born (talk) 19:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm also not too sure about the significance of the spamming. However, it is considered good practice to note at XfD of the fact that notices have been sent out, in the interests of transparency, so I posted the note. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename BHG has demonstrated the two main points 1- only a small percentage of users will recognize these category names 2- we have a precedent to not use denonyms for cities of a few million people, there is not reason to use them for much smaller locations. Beyond this, she persuasively points out we are supposed to link category name and article name. This makes it easy to determine if there is an article, easy to know what the category would be named, and easy to rename the category when the institution changes name or the article name is changed. The former is not as uncommon as some may thing and the later becomes crucial in disambiguation. The fact that several of these categories could easily be applied to multiple category names indicates that there is no consistent reason for these schools to be so designated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename all for clarity for those that didn't go to that school. --Kbdank71 22:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose — there is no specific guidance on this under the WP:COP "By association" section, it is just a WP:POV of the proposer deciding what should be renamed from their point of view of what is "obscure". In addition, there are other standard ways to deal with disambiguation on Wikipedia. WP:MOS says "avoid unnecessarily complex wording", so why make the name more complex by lengthening them unnecessary in this way when there is already an existing term? Where do you draw the line in a way that is not arbitrary depending on your perception? In any case, the general issue of "Old ..." has been discussed a number of times before with no consensus reached. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 13:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Where there is no specific guidance, issues are decided by consensus, which is what we are trying to form in this discussion.
    It is quite untrue to say that no consensus has been reached at previous discussions on these topics. That was the case until about a year ago, but since then dozens of such categories have been renamed (since you obviously read the nomination before commenting, you will know that there is a list of them above, at the end of the nomination). Also, there is no case in that I am aware of where a CFD reached a consensus in favour of keeping any Old Fooian category. We had a long period no consensus, but now lots of case of consensus to change.
    As to how disambiguation should be done, one approach is to add a disambiguator, but another is to use a descriptive format (see WP:NDESC). The descriptive format is widely used for categories (see e.g. Category:People from London, rather than Category:Londoners, and there is already a standard descriptive format used by other UK schools. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:41, 28 February 2012 (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:Skins cast

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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) 15:31, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Skins cast (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Per WP:OC#PERF/performers by performance.  Mbinebri  talk ← 15:43, 22 February 2012 (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:Norwegian State Railways

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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: No rename. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Propose renaming Category:Norwegian State Railways to Category:to be determined by consensus
Nominator's rationale: Suggesting Category:Norwegian State Railways (1996-). The relavent articles are Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996) and Norwegian State Railways, also the other relavent category is Category:Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996). To summarise - a state owned company was split in 1996 into several new companies, including a new company Norges Statsbaner AS with reduced scope but unfortunately the same name (excluding company type I think).
I note that the main page is not named Norwegian State Railways (1996-) - I am not proposing this though it may be an option - the issue here is that having the category Category:Norwegian State Railways only for post 1996 is confusing.
I would also suggest considering a parent category to contain both historical entities.
Currently as far as I can tell "Category:Norwegian State Railways" only contains topics applicable post 1996.
If an alternative namimg scheme can be found that readily distinuguishes the pre and post 1996 organisations that would be a good solution.Mddkpp (talk) 12:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note - It may be that some reorganisation of the categories would also work - maybe two (actually more than 2) dated sub-cats as children of an undated generic "Norwegian State Railways".Mddkpp (talk) 13:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note2 - also affects subcats - eg see the categorisation of NSB El 13 by locomotive is in Category:Norwegian State Railways locomotives , and Category:Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996) locomotives - the 2nd is not a subcat of the 1st.. -at minimum needs tweaking as per Principle of least astonishment. Thanks.Mddkpp (talk) 13:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
minor Note3 - there was a recent speedy renaming eg diff - though this doesn't appear to affect the current issue as is an english/norwegian naming convention issue.Currently we are using enlgish equivalents of the Norwegian name - using the original names doesn't solve the problem anyway.. Mddkpp (talk) 13:09, 22 February 2012 (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:Vegetarian and vegan media

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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 to . Timrollpickering (talk) 21:44, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Propose renaming Category:Vegetarian and vegan media to Category:Vegetarian media
Nominator's rationale: Redundant--veganism is a type of vegetarianism. Alternately, Rename to Category:Media about vegetarianism as the media themselves are not herbivorous. —Justin (koavf)TCM08:57, 22 February 2012 (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:Our Gang Hal Roach short films and Category:Our Gang MGM short films

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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: Upmerge to Category:Our Gang films and either Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short films or Category:Hal Roach Studios short films. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Our Gang Hal Roach short films (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Our Gang MGM short films (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: These are categories for Our Gang comedies separated by production company. I see no need for this division and am inclined to have them deleted, but if having seperate categories is justified, they at least need to be renamed to Category:Our Gang short films produced by Hal Roach Studios and Category:Our Gang short films produced by MGM (or something similar) for clarity, so that the public at large will understand what they mean. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 07:11, 22 February 2012 (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:DannyWilde accounts

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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) 12:10, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:DannyWilde accounts (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: This is a category for the self-declared alternative accounts of DannyWilde (talk · contribs · block log), a user who was indef-blocked over six years ago. A January 2011 discussion produced a consensus that alternative Wikipedia accounts should not be categorized by user. All of the accounts appear in Category:Alternative Wikipedia accounts so there is no need to upmerge. -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:32, 22 February 2012 (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:Nicaragua Seleccion Nacional Leyendas del Diriangen

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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: Speedy rename C2D to Category:Diriangén FC. The Bushranger One ping only 02:17, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Nicaragua Seleccion Nacional Leyendas del Diriangen (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. I don't see a point in this non-English category. It also has only one category member, a football club. ~FeedintmParley 00:10, 22 February 2012 (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.