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:merge as nominated. I'm essentially treating this as part of the same discussion as the one for founders. Good Ol’factory(talk) 09:00, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: As at Category:Founders of companies of the United States (which was listed for CFM a couple of days ago), I came across this the other day and redirected it to the nationality category as a duplicate of another category that already existed — however, that has since been challenged on the grounds that the defining characteristic in the "nationality" tree was the nationality of the person, while the defining characteristic in the "country" tree is the location of the company. But as with the founders situation, this is not a helpful or encyclopedic distinction on which to maintain two separate category trees — the overwhelming majority of people involved end up filed in both trees simultaneously with each other, violating WP:OVERLAPCAT, and for the very few who aren't also American citizens the location of the company fails to constitute a WP:DEFINING characteristic of the person. For example, the US category would have to include any foreign CEO of any foreign multinational that merely happens to have a subsidiary in the United States. And as I've pointed out in the other merger discussion, there is no place in Wikipedia's category system where "X by country" and "X by nationality" both exist as sibling subcategory schemes for the same X — so this is not "breaking an established categorization scheme" as one editor alleged in that discussion. So as far as I'm concerned, it's still a merge as an unhelpful duplicate of another category on a criterion that doesn't constitute a WP:DEFINING distinction. Bearcat (talk) 22:33, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Follow outcome of earlier discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:55, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Or if the earlier discussion results in a reverse merge, we could here still follow the merge direction as nominated. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:26, 25 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge both to Category:Chief executives of Afghan companies etc. It is the nationality of the company that matters, not the nationality of the chief executive. There are American CEOs of British companies and vice versa, so that the distinction does exist, but the nationality of the CEO is better dealt with by directly categorising him as an Afghan citizen, etc. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is not helpful to populate two trees that overlap so fully. Manual merge to exclude any expatriates who don't belong, or split to new Expatriate categories, e.g Michael Woodford (executive) would belong in Category:Expatriate chief executives of companies in Japan, which is rather notable and defining. – FayenaticLondon 12:10, 24 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to the by nationality category. People should be categorized by what their nationality is, not the national affiliation of the company they run.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:40, 30 December 2015 (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:House of Cards characters
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.
Nominator's rationale: Category whose only contents are two characters, a character list and an WP:OC#EPONYMOUS subcategory that's serving only as duplicate categorization on the same character list and has been separately listed below. Category:Drama television characters by series is not a tree in which every drama series automatically gets a dedicated category the moment one or two characters have articles — a category like this should not be created until there are already enough characters with articles to clear the WP:SMALLCAT bar. The only other potential addition here, however, is Francis Urquhart — but a single category that conflates characters from the British and American versions would not be any more appropriate than two separate SMALLCATS. Delete, and upmerge all contents back to Category:House of Cards. Bearcat (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2015 (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:List of House of Cards characters
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 empty category. The contents had apparently been upmerged already, which is in line with the discussion below. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:45, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Propose deletingCategory:List of House of Cards characters (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale:WP:OC#EPONYMOUS category which is serving only to hold its eponym, which is already in Category:House of Cards characters as it is. (And even that one's of uncertain value, but will be listed for discussion separately so the distinct issues don't get conflated.) A television series does not automatically get one of these the moment a character list is created; there would have to be at least three or four distinct character lists before a category for the character lists was warranted. The only other potential addition here is List of House of Cards trilogy characters, but (a) two lists isn't enough to justify a separate category for the lists, per WP:SMALLCAT, and (b) I question the value of conflating the very different UK and US programs into a single category. Bearcat (talk) 18:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This category will never be viable; ther's no need for a list category for such a small topic area. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:46, 20 December 2015 (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:Rivers of Strafford County, New Hampshire
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. – FayenaticLondon 22:21, 29 December 2015 (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.
Centuries and millennia in Spanish Sahara
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, along with Category:Establishments in Spanish Sahara by millennium which will also become empty. – FayenaticLondon 13:29, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Propose deleting Category:Centuries in Spanish Sahara
Propose deleting Category:Establishments in Spanish Sahara by century
Propose deleting Category:20th-century establishments in Spanish Sahara
Propose deleting Category:20th century in Spanish Sahara
Propose deleting Category:Millennia in Spanish Sahara
Propose deleting Category:2nd millennium in Spanish Sahara
Propose deleting Category:2nd-millennium establishments in Spanish Sahara
Nominator's rationale: delete. Unnecessary to create a split by century or by millennium for a polity that existed for less than 100 years. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:04, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support All This doesn't aid navigation. RevelationDirect (talk) 14:21, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all -- the remaining Spanish Sahara categories (annual, decade, etc.) should be parented by the category for Western Sahara, the present name of the polity. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:24, 20 December 2015 (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:Cancer deaths by country
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 - there is no clear consensus about deletion; there is, however, a clear consensus that, if kept, the tree should be renamed. Od Mishehu 18:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This is follow-up to complete the rationalization of category names under Category:Deaths by type of illness, as follow-up to CFD 26 July 2008. These categories should be consistently named in the pattern Deaths from <illness>, which from the previous CFD seems to be consensus. Big_iron (talk) 03:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, too common cause of death, hence not a defining characteristic. Similar to cardiovascular deaths by country which also have been deleted (see 1, 2 and 3 discussions). Marcocapelle (talk) 07:56, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The first two discussions above were US-centric; the third one was a bit of a "me too". Wikipedia has been trying to take a more balanced global view of things lately, though. Also, your argument in the preceding RFDs applies more to Category:Deaths from cardiovascular disease which, in fact, still exists, not specifically to the breakdown by country. --Big_iron (talk) 19:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing ... there were about 56 million people who died in 2012 but we still have Category:2012 deaths so commonness in itself is not sufficient as an argument. To reside in one of these categories, the subject must be notable and the cause of death must be known, most of these categories in fact are sparsely populated. In the brief listings that appear in Recent deaths, cause of death is generally reported when it is known - we don't say "It's cancer, that's too common, why mention it?" .--Big_iron (talk) 22:24, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Death in 2012 isn't really as common because the death may occur in 2011 or 2013 instead (it's the year that matters in this example, not the death). Marcocapelle (talk) 23:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Deaths in 2012" incorporates two things - first, death and, secondly, the year that it happened; they both matter. My point is that the combination of those two applies to millions of people so just commonness is not a sufficient argument against the existence of a cateogry. --Big_iron (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a reason to categorize individual biographies. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this information may be, for two reasons: first, there is a relationship between geography and cancer; secondly, unlike method of birth, for example, over which the person has no control, to a certain extent, lifestyle choices affect the likelihood of cancer --Big_iron (talk) 13:24, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's not an argument against the commonness of the disease. Marcocapelle (talk) 23:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is an argument for using geographic location in combination with death from cancer. --Big_iron (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, you didn't read far enough - the section you quote says "However, location may be used as a way to split a large category into subcategories. For example, Category:American writers by state". People who died from cancer may not be placed in other categories if a more specific diagnosis is not provided. --Big_iron (talk) 15:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure "notability" is the right word to use here? Also, deaths from cancer category would still exist, here we're talking specifically about the "deaths from cancer in [country]" categories -- and someone's cause of death and nationality are two unrelated things. — Jeraphine Gryphon(talk) 13:50, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the above argument is stated in terms of "death by specific type of disease" where the disease is common, so the question is more about "Deaths from cancer" than the country aspect. And, in fact, it has been demonstrated that there is a link between cause of death (cancer is actually a good example) and country of residence. Hence, for people living in the United States (and some other places), these categories ares not significant (notable). --Big_iron (talk) 14:25, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see how that relates to this discussion. --Big_iron (talk) 21:51, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete All Death from a common disease is not defining for biography articles. RevelationDirect (talk) 14:27, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned, we are not talking about "Deaths from cancer" which still exists and will likely continue to exist since it is a container category for more specific cancers, this is "Cancer deaths by country". --Big_iron (talk) 15:01, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete -- There are regrettably too many deaths from cancer for it to be remarkable; hence worthy of a category. The cause of death would need to be very unusual to merit a category. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:27, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Remarkableness is not a criteria for the existence of a category. For example, it is not remarkable that someone was born in China (or died in 2012). --Big_iron (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all - I agree with Marco, Revelation, and Peter that this is not defining and thus should not be a category at all. Neutralitytalk 21:03, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Defining characteristic" is defined as "one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having". Commonness is not described as a factor in deciding this. In fact, some characteristics, such as nationality, can be very common. After someone has died, the cause of death is frequently included in most non-trivial articles on the subject. --Big_iron (talk) 14:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Obituaries tend to include cause of death, place of burial and what to send in lieu of flowers and leave out criminal convictions, children out of wedlock and financial failures. Even when they're published in otherwise reliable newspapers, they don't tend to be reliable sources themselves nor do they focus on what is defining. We clearly disagree here and I don't expect this to change your mind but maybe that better explains where I'm coming from.RevelationDirect (talk) 20:15, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While it is true that obituaries tend to include cause of death, this information also frequently appears in biographical dictionaries and encyclopedic sources, which also may or may not include children born out of wedlock. --Big_iron (talk) 21:04, 23 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per WP:NON-DEFINING, WP:DNWAUC etc. If not deleted then oppose rename as I don't see any advantage in the proposed new name that outweighs the cost (watchlist noise etc) of changing so many articles. DexDor(talk) 08:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Any argument about "watchlist noise" would presumably apply to deleting categories from so many articles. --Big_iron (talk) 12:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the short-term yes, but in the longer term reducing overcategorization should (amongst other benefits) reduce watchlist noise. DexDor(talk) 14:59, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One benefit of proposed renaming of categories is consistency which is an important aspect of encyclopedic works. In this instance, combining geography and cause of death carries two pieces of information in one category; if articles are correctly categorized in the first place, there should be less noise generated. --Big_iron (talk) 16:42, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all as non-defining. We should only categorize by a few, defining ways of death. We have way too many death categories at present.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, dying of cancer is a "defining" way of death. There are specific cultural tropes associated with having cancer. It's treated differently (mostly more kindly, but with extra pressures to "fight" and "be positive") than dying of chronic heart disease. Celebrities announce their diagnoses much more often for cancer than for heart disease. It is a much more "remarkable" way to die, meaning that people actually do remark upon it more often than other forms: for example, "My grandmother died at age 75 of breast cancer" but not say "My grandfather died at age 75 of heart disease" or "My uncle died of a stroke". It's not the only cause of death that catches the public attention ("My aunt was killed by a drunk driver" also happens), but it's a big deal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Rename rather than delete. Deleting these category trees would lead to a loss of valuable information. I think the naming should be consistent and I have my reservations about some of the structure, but generally this should be kept. Overcategorisation is a risk, so making a structure that limits the number of categories in each article would be welcome. JFW | T@lk 12:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this whole discussion (like many other CfDs) is so dysfunctional I don’t even know where to start:
Of course these categories are not wp:Defining - I doubt there are too many biographies on Wikipedia that are notable just because the subject died of cancer. But does this make this category not useful to have? I am sure many researchers would like to know that country X has a much larger proportion of cancer-related deaths than country Y, or that many more people die of heart disease than those who die of cancer (the list goes on)
Why are we discussing each category in isolation without looking at the big picture: If you go to the trouble of actually clicking the category that is proposed for deletion here you will see that its parent category is Category:Deaths from cancer, and its sister category is Category:Deaths from cancer by type - is the intention here to delete this whole category tree, step by step as to not overwhelm the discussion with editors who object?
Why does the nomination say rename but so many are voting Delete?
Where is the link to historical similar CfD "discussions"?
I guess I better stop here since in my experience this forum is not the place where rational decisions are made. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:47, 1 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
The Wikipedia categories aren't useful for epidemiological research since our articles tend to favor sports people, celebrities, and people from English speaking areas. If a higher percentage of English Wikipedia articles died of cancer from Ontario than Quebec, you can't make any real world comparisons there about cancer rates in the general population. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:44, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not disputing the difficulty with using Wikipedia to draw any conclusions about causes of death in the general population but the fact that there is serious systemic bias in Wikipedia is considered to be a problem and efforts are being made to try to address that situation (countering systemic bias). --Big_iron (talk) 02:01, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Rename for consistency, or Keep if that's too much hassle, but don't delete. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I should also point out that it is irrational to propose deletion through this discussion since all of the listed categories are tagged as renames and not as deletes, so anyone who reads the notice on the category would have been misinformed if a deletion were to occur. I shouldn't need to tell anyone that but better safe than sorry. --Big_iron (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We try to salvage categories nominated for deletion by renaming them all the time. Maybe we should have some general notices that a category is under discussion, like the notices you posted on the WikiProject pages. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:49, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
keep Clearly a useful category to have as with any cause of death. It being a common cause of death or not "defining" is a silly reason to delete something useful (and yes, the cause of death of most people is quite defining). slightly favor rename. Hobit (talk) 21:11, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Cause of death is (in most/all cases) non-defining (in the way that term is used in wp). I've just looked at some sample bio articles for sportspeople - all mentioned clearly (usually in the lead sentence) the sport played and the nationality (the things that the person is known for), but most (example) of the articles made no mention of the person's cause of death. DexDor(talk) 06:13, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is seriously flawed logic to dismiss a class of categories based on a sample of a specific subgroup of individuals, even if that sample was somehow representative of that subgroup. However, even for sportspeople, there are situations where the cause of death may become as significant as the individual's career - some of the repetitive concussion cases come to mind. In the case of the general population, for cancer specifically, but also for other causes of death, there can be a high correlation between the cause of death and the individual's chosen profession and lifestyle. Speaking generally, people have more control over their eventual cause of death and place of death than they do over where and when they were born even though we have categories for both of those attributes. --Big_iron (talk) 00:42, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But Terry Fox is all about the cancer that he died from, and his (FA) bio is in one of the affected cats.
Obviously, if the cause of death is not very important to an individual subject, then you don't put that article in the cat. But your "delete" vote amounts to saying that since the cause of death isn't very important for most sportspeople's bios, then Wikipedia should completely refuse to have a cat available for the athletes for whom it is extremely important. I don't believe that anyone agrees that this is a valid deletion rationale. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep how one dies is just as important and defining as where one was born or in what year. Whether or not how one dies is defining or not, it is of basic biographical information that categorization is appropriate. Presumably, it's immaterial whether someone is born December 31, 2015 or January 1, 2016, but we categorize on birth year so twins born minutes apart over New Years end up in different categories on birth year - like that defines them; also birth place is someone born (or grew up) in Los Angeles somehow different that one born (or growing up) just over the city limit in Burbank? We categorize on where someone's from. Basic biographical information is defining for that reason: where & when born and where, when and how die seem basics. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Rename for consistency per nom. Miniapolis 20:42, 16 February 2016 (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.