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November 9

Category:University towns

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: procedural close, please re-nominate with sub-categories. – Fayenatic London 13:25, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:University towns (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: I'm not sure if this can be fixed with renaming, or if deletion is necessary. If we are to keep this category and its subcategories, it needs to be better defined. From what I can tell, it is nothing more than a category "cities and towns (of any size) that have at least one college or university". We have many global cities like London or Boston which, like virtually all such first-rank cities, have many universities. They are often figuratively called "college towns" but that's like figuratively calling Seattle a company town because it's dominated by Boeing. Or Amazon? Or was. Major cities have a tendency to be many things. They're major cities, after all. College towns, or company towns, railroad towns, military towns,or mining towns, are anything but that. They owe their existence to a single industry. New York City is a college town, and so is Paris, but that's a redundant way of saying it's a world capital. In order to meet defining characteristic criteria, we need to limit this to well sourced cases where the university is the town's defining characteristic. Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:04, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, It appears that the nominator's criticisms relate to misapplication of the category rather than to its intrinsic value to the project. If there are towns for which being a university town is a defining characteristic, then the policy cited is an argument for the category, not against it. --Dystopos (talk) 22:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, this is only defining in exceptional cases like Oxford and Cambridge. But procedural oppose, the subcategories should be co-nominated, it does not make sense to only nominate the top level category. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural oppose, as Marcocapelle is correct that discussion needs to include all of the subcategories and not just the top-level parent. That said, nominator's reasoning is otherwise correct — this is being used entirely too often to contain places that merely have universities (e.g. Category:University towns in Germany is including Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart, and Category:University towns in the United Kingdom is including London), but the actual definition of a "university town" is a town whose entire existence is so wholly dependent on the university that if the university closed the place would become a ghost town because there would be no economy left to retain anyone anymore. While this is a legitimately WP:DEFINING characteristic of a few places, nearly all of which are in the United States, this category tree is far too frequently misused for something other than its valid purpose — but the term is so heavily misused in the wild that any attempt to simply purge the categories would be undone by people readding Berlin and London and New York City again in the future, making the categories unmaintainable. So I definitely support deletion in principle, so long as the subcategories get properly bundled. Bearcat (talk) 18:40, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- This definition "a town whose entire existence is so wholly dependent on the university" is kind of extreme. The one we have at college town is "dominated by its university population". This is consistent with sources, "the cultures it creates exert a dominant influence" on the city or town. In theory, this could be a defining characteristic, and could apply to a reasonably-sized population of towns (or neighborhoods), but I have questioned whether in practice that's possible, and so maybe it's better not to have any such category.
  Procedurally, if it appears there is consensus for deletion, renaming, or some process for applying a consistent definition, then we can do it over with whatever procedure applies. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Let's hope that an administrator closes this discussion quickly so that you can do a full nomination instead. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:29, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The tagging so far seems a bit arbitrary. New Haven (Yale, Albertus Magnus, Southern CT State) and Storrs, Connecticut (University of Connecticut main campus) were both rightfully tagged. But what of Bridgeport (University of Bridgeport, Housatonic, St. Vincent's) and Fairfield, Connecticut (Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University) be tagged? Those towns are less "run" by their universities than the first two. Ditto Hamden, Connecticut, (Quinnipiac, Paier). So my question is... where's the cut-off... how was the decision made as to which towns/cities to include? How about Stamford, Connecticut? It's also not on the list but does have the largest secondary campus for UConn. Likewise, New Britain, Connecticut is the home of Central Connecticut State, and was tagged as a "college town" but there's a lot more to that town than just that one school. Markvs88 (talk) 22:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. My first reaction was to keep this category, but studying it in more depth makes it clear that the term is ill-defined. The definition of a "university town" as a town whose entire existence is so wholly dependent on the university that if the university closed the place would become a ghost town would cover very view towns. I know the UK and Australia better than the US and it not clear that that definition would include Oxford or Cambridge or Durham in UK. It might just include Armidale in Australia, but no others. So delete this category and all its sub-categories. --Bduke (talk) 00:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Either delete or heavily prune -- Most of these places do not fulfil the definition of College town, a place where the university of college is dominant. This does not apply to Oxford where a motor factory (formerly Morris) is also a large employer. It may once have applied to Cambridge, but that is now dominated by IT. I think this is much more an American phenomenon than a British one. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:36, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In Britain Keele might even be a "university village". Even there I doubt it would be a "ghost village" without the university. Thincat (talk) 17:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment it is probably defining if used properly - but, it may be impossible to define objectively. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:59, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural oppose No point deleting the parent category. That just leaves all the article categorised in categories which are not linked to each other. Feel free to renominate with all the subcats listed and tagged. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:58, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - it's WP:OR as to which city or town this may be defining. And can someone with an editing tool, tag and add the subcats to this nom, please. - jc37 23:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There are also several subcats of Category:Cities by type, like Category:Port cities and towns, which probably should go, if this does. - jc37 23:15, 18 November 2018 (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:Wikipedia disambiguation pages with links monthly contests from November 2018

The result of the discussion was: Speedy delete. G6: the miscategorization that caused the bot to create it has been fixed. Or call it a G7 if you'd rather. Anomie ⚔ 15:42, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:Wikipedia disambiguation pages with links monthly contests from November 2018 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: Not a monthly clean-up category and never has been. It could have been created accidentally by the bot. Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:51, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomie: this was created by AnomieBOT, and is the only disambiguation contest category of this type. Do you know anything about it? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:11, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412 (talk · contribs) configured Category:Wikipedia disambiguation pages with links monthly contests as a sub-category of Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. This instructs the bot to create monthly sub-categories. If that's not wanted, then Category:Wikipedia disambiguation pages with links monthly contests needs a different parent category -- John of Reading (talk) 17:53, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What John of Reading said is correct. Anomie ⚔ 19:01, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@John of Reading: I don't think BD2412 should have configured that. I don't see any consensus for that to happen and I don't even understand the point of that category. We don't need a maintenance category for that purpose. Pkbwcgs (talk) 19:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Category:EngvarO

The result of the discussion was: redirect (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 12:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:EngvarO (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: This category will never be used because Template:EngvarO redirects to Template:Use British English Oxford spelling. It may be useful to redirect this category to Category:Use British English Oxford spelling. Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Category:EngvarC

The result of the discussion was: redirect (non-admin closure). Marcocapelle (talk) 12:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:EngvarC (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: Never been used because Template:EngvarC redirects to Template:Use Canadian English so I guarantee that this category will never ever be used. It may also be useful to redirect this to Category:Use Canadian English. Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Sabrina Carpenter

The result of the discussion was: Delete. Timrollpickering 12:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:Sabrina Carpenter (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: Not enough entries, fails WP:OCEPON. --wooden superman 12:13, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Agree with nom even with addition of a discography page. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 01:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Twenty articles under the category, with a twenty-first coming. --Jax 0677 (talk) 14:02, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

18 of those articles are already in more appropriate subcategories, which is the recommendation per WP:OCEPON and the two are interlinked. The discography page can be placed in both and a WikiBook is not an article. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 02:53, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom, the albums and songs categories already link to each other and to the main article. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:40, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Albums by LGBT artists

The result of the discussion was: Delete. Timrollpickering 12:44, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting Category:Albums by LGBT artists (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: Trivial intersection. We don't have Category:Songs by LGBT artists or Category:Albums by Muslim artists. Extra scrutiny is applied to identity-based categories and this doesn't pass. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:27, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The reason I created this is that individual albums keep getting added to the parent category Category:LGBT-related music, which therefore needs this for cleanliness purposes. If individual albums are a legitimate part of that tree, which they are, then there has to be a subcategory to keep them in instead of having the parent category continually cluttered up, in a way that's not useful or productive or helpful to the reader, with content that isn't allowed to have a more specific subcategory created for it — "trivial" or not, if this gets deleted literally all that will happen is that Category:LGBT-related music will get excessively recluttered with albums to the point of needing this (or something else with a different name but a virtually identical purpose) to be recreated again. I'm not opposed to renaming it if somebody can figure out an alternative name that satisfies Koavf's concerns while still enabling albums to get sifted out of the overly general parent category, but the parent category needs a way to not have to directly contain every individual album by an LGBT artist. Bearcat (talk) 07:04, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Bearcat: We've already been thru this four years ago. What changed? Why is it a problem to have album articles or categories in the category? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've already explained why: excessive clutter, because the parent category collects literally hundreds of "artist albums" subcategories for LGBT artists, and literally hundreds of individual albums by LGBT artists who don't have their own dedicated subcategories yet. We have not "been through this" before, as the only person in that discussion who said anything whatsoever about the "parent category collects individual albums" issue explicitly supported the creation of an alternate category and was only opposed to the specific "LGBT-related" wording — nobody in that discussion ever proffered, or even tried to, any reason why the parent category cluttering up with individual albums was somehow not a problem that needed to be addressed at all. So that's what's "changed": this was an attempt to come up with an alternative that avoided the problem with the other category while still resolving the fundamental problem of the parent category collecting hundreds of individual albums.
    You're free to disagree on what should be the solution to the problem — but I will brook no disagreement on the point that the parent category getting cluttered up with individual albums is a problem in the first place. It is a problem, and the only acceptable debate about it is what is or isn't the best way to solve the problem. Bearcat (talk) 05:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There may not be Category:Songs by LGBT artists but there is Category:LGBT-related songs, so why not rename to Category:LGBT-related albums? But don't make it artist specific since not every album by an LGBT artist has LGBT-related themes.Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 16:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that Category:LGBT-related albums was deleted at CfD in 2014. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 17:07, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Changing my !vote to delete. The arguments here have convinced me that this is not a defining category for such albums and that it's the parent category that needs its scope refined and more clearly defined to prevent "clutter". Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 02:58, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Probably the problem of the pollution of the parent category Category:LGBT-related music is related to the unclear scope of it. That category (and many other LGBT-related categories) can better be renamed to LGBT-themed instead of LGBT-related. Until that happens, it is not very helpful to delete the now nominated category right away. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:49, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. I agree with Marcappele that the underlying problem is the "related" in the parent category's name. DexDor^(talk) 16:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete whether an album of Beethoven's music recorded by a LGBTQ person is sufficiently different than the same music recorded by a straight person, on account of the performer's sexual orientation or identity has not been proven, and likely can never be. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. An album is rarely the product of a single person, so a relation between the album itself and the sexual orientation of one or more of its performers is a bit far-fetched. While the fact that an artist is LG+ can clearly be defining according to WP:OCEGRS, I fail to see how Albums by LGBT artists can be defining. What if only the producer is? What if it is the graphic artist of the album cover? Place Clichy (talk) 17:50, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And what, exactly, do you propose be done about the absolutely critical and non-negotiable need to clean up the excessive cluttering of the parent category with individual albums? Bearcat (talk) 06:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming the parent category is the most obvious solution, see earlier comment. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't eliminate album clutter. Bearcat (talk) 16:00, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sure it does because now the focus will be clearer. You'll be eliminating albums that are simply by LGBT artists and only including albums that have an LGBT theme. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 16:08, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, a separate subcategory to get all albums out of the parent category would still be necessary no matter how the category is or isn't renamed. Secondly, all an album would have to do to be "LGBT-themed" enough to warrant inclusion in an "LGBT-themed" category is include one song with an LGBT theme — requiring anything more than that would be an arbitrary threshold cutoff, which categories aren't allowed to have. So it wouldn't disappear nearly as many albums from the clutter pile as you seem to think it would. Bearcat (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a questionable criterion indeed. It would make more sense to require that an album (as a whole) is described as LGBT-themed in reliable sources. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:02, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I get the question, but if "eliminating clutter" with fancy diffusing criteria such as sex orientation is an "absolutely critical and non-negotiable need" here, I suggest diffusing by left/right-handedness or hair colour. Place Clichy (talk) 18:40, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The clutter problem is cropping up in Category:LGBT-related music itself. So those aren't relevant or useful comparisons to the matter at hand — sexual orientation is the base concept that needs to have secondary diffusion criteria applied to it, not the "fancy" diffusion criterion being applied to some other base concept. This is a matter of whether a music category needs a subcategory for albums, and is in no way comparable to whether an albums category needs a subcategory for redheadness: "LGBT music" is the thing that needs to be diffused, and "albums" is the diffuser, not vice versa. Bearcat (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's another "foo-related" category so no-wonder it gets articles that are (in your opinion) clutter. DexDor^(talk) 21:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"In my opinion"? Clutter is an objective fact, not an opinion. Bearcat (talk) 21:01, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Assuming they weren't being disruptive) the editors who added the category tag to the articles thought it was appropriate (i.e. not clutter). DexDor^(talk) 21:31, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Everything in that statement is true up to, but not including, "i.e. not clutter" — the definition of clutter has to do with the number of articles present in the category, not whether the category seems "appropriate" or not. For example, if every writer in the Category:American writers tree were to be uploaded directly to Category:Writers, that wouldn't be inappropriate per se, because the "writers" category wouldn't strictly be wrong — but the "writers" category would have too many articles in it to be useful, and would be far better managed by having that content grouped together in a dedicated subcategory for "American writers" instead of sitting directly in the parent itself. That's what category clutter means: a category can be "appropriate" and still cluttered, because clutter is measuring the number of articles in the category, not its rightness or wrongness as a characteristic. Bearcat (talk) 18:10, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, if that's the definition of "clutter" you're using then in my 2 comments above replace the word by "inappropriate". My point still stands; editors disagreeing about what articles do/not belong in the category is an inherent problem with "-related" categories. DexDor^(talk) 19:30, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep on this cat, due to semi-congruity with Category:Albums by artist nationality; but Delete/Rename all the "-related" named cats. - So after reading the above, I went looking to see if I could find a better name for the parent, and discovered the underlying issue. LGBT is not a genre or style of music that I was able to find on Wikipedia. See also Category:Music genres and List of styles of music: G–M. In looking at the contents, I think that the goal are musical works with LGBT themes. So using "related" in the name is the real overcat problem, and it goes all the way up this structure to Category:LGBT-related media. These cats are apparently catchalls for anything which has an LGBT character or theme or creator or performer, or an event perceived to be related to an LGBT topic. The category description claims: "LGBT-related (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) media, directed at the LGBT community." Categorising by target audience? This is severe overcat. I think it is salvageable with some renaming to specify/narrow each cat's inclusion criteria (Category:LGBT-themed works as a possible parent/container cat, could be a start), but it really should not stay as it is. - jc37 00:02, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think the congruity is very limited as by-nationality is a comprehensive categorization scheme (for contrast, we wouldn't have an Albums-by-non-LGBT-artists category) and it fits under Category:Works by nationality (there is afaics no Works-by-sexuality category). DexDor^(talk) 06:53, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]