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December 5

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Category:Alumni by educational institution

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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. WP:SNOW keep. (non-admin closure) UnitedStatesian (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: and every single one of the sub-categories (and every single sub-sub-category, etc...). This is a textbook example of a category-tree which has almost all of the problems which could lead to deletion; and it being long-standing or widely used does not address any of these concerns.

First, and most importantly, in nearly all cases, this plain and simple fails WP:DEFCAT. Categories, as nicely explained at the relevant page, provide navigational links to Wikipedia pages in a hierarchy of categories which readers, knowing essential—defining—characteristics of a topic, can browse. I have yet to see anybody notable where the defining characteristics of their notability [as in the guideline example of Caravaggio, an Italian artist of the Baroque movement] include the place they went to school (the few exceptions might be something like "first women to graduate from X" or something like that, but those would invariably be WP:SMALLCAT). Like articles, categories are not there for WP:ITSINTERESTING factoids which serve little encyclopedic value.

Second, these categories are blatantly misused to an exceedingly large degree, showing how problematic they are. In many instances, these "alumni of X" categories are not even mentioned in the body of the article (showing how clearly they are WP:NONDEF - c.f. point 1). In other instances, the "mention" in the article sums up to an unsourced listing in the infobox (failing WP:CATVERIFY). In either case, the issue is widespread enough, and combined with number 1 and the sheer quantity of them, there's no reasonable way to expect this fundamental issue can be fixed. And, if something would require far too much editor time and ressources to be fixed, it is entirely justifiable to get rid of it, as it is helplessly broken.

The proliferation of such trivial-mention categories only accentuates WP:OVERCAT problems: there are plenty of examples of attributes which are both verifiable and which are notable intersections (even for world-famous institutions, ex. List of University of Oxford people) without them being defining characteristics of their subjects (to continue ex.: neither Edward VII or Edward VIII attending colleges at Oxford is defining for these persons). This should be obvious from the fact that attending an educational institution is not a claim to notability.

Finally, to rebut any argument that this might be repurposed into something useful, Category:Lists of people by school affiliation exists, and is usually already present on the few lists where such a categorisation is legitimate.

In short, this category-tree A) fails WP:DEFCAT B) is widely misused in practice and C) can be replaced by an existing more appropriate category in the few cases where the use is legitimate. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:16, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, I don't have AWB either, so I have asked for help on the talk page. TSventon (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -the nominator should link to previous discussions (many of them). If there is no mention of the institution on the article then the category is unsupported and should be removed, as is the case with any category. All the subcats should be tagged. We routinely categorise by many factoids which have nothing to do with definingness: eg nationality, year of birth, year of death, and in any case it would be an incompetent article on Prince Charles which did not mention Gordonstoun or Trinity College. Oculi (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And instead of using it as a deflection which is truly a false equivalence, you would do well to address the counter-argument that A) nationality is a characteristic which in most cases is commonly and consistently given by sources (so for example, Winston Churchill was a British statesman; Napoleon was a French military and political leader; ...) B) birth and death years are plausible search terms, and are also consistently and commonly given by biographical sources (even if they are not nice adjectives or nouns...). Even if your comparison was somewhat accurate, we're not discussing those categories, but this one. Prince Charles' defining characteristics are his being heir to the British throne; not which schools he might have attended. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:04, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I have tagged some of the UK university alumni categories for deletion, listed at Categories for discussion/Log/2021 December 5/alumni subcats. Prince Charles has many defining characteristics, including 7 or 8 years at Gordonstoun, and 3 years at Cambridge. Oculi (talk) 15:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The correct link is Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 December 5/alumni subcats. DuncanHill (talk) 16:10, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep – this is a defining characteristic for me and all the people I know. I suspect for anyone that thinks otherwise, the information is not generally available. This is the sort of information that normally appears in biographical dictionaries, obituaries, etc., i.e., "one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having" (WP:DEFCAT). —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 11:07, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:ILIKEIT is not a good argument. Something appearing in an in-depth biography (along with many other facts, not each of which is worthy of an independent category) is not a sign this is a "defining characteristic". Encyclopedic subjects (unlike you and your friends) are not usually notable for their education. A defining characteristic is something that the article subject is mainly known for, something that if you asked someone to describe [x] in a few words would come to mind first (as explained by WP:CATS: The central goal of the category system is to provide navigational links to Wikipedia pages in a hierarchy of categories which readers, knowing essential—defining—characteristics of a topic, can browse and quickly find sets of pages on topics that are defined by those characteristics.. To take back the example, Edward VII and Ed. VIII are known for being British monarchs [and the latter for abdicating, IIRC], not for having gone to Oxford, something which most people [i.e. the "readers" referred to in WP:CAT] don't know nor care about.). If you can honestly pretend that there are more than very few nearly-hypothetical cases where "school X went to" is a defining characteristic, then you should demonstrate so (since positive proof of the contrary is much easier to find, if you are correct, than proof of the negative). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest Keep. An utterly ridiculous nomination. Very clearly defining. I wonder what the nominator does actually think we should keep? This sort of nomination is an attack on the whole principle of categorisation. Many people are very definitely known for going to a particular school or university. In the example above, Churchill very famously went to Harrow. Frankly, this is the sort of nomination which makes me wonder why I bother to work on this encyclopaedia, and certainly why some others bother. The reason, if you're interested, is to impart information! Not to delete it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Very much an ad lapidem dismissal (with an unjustified appeal to ridicule) which does not address any of the concerns. There are plenty of interesting things which are unfit to be either articles or categories in an encyclopedia. WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE also applies: an indiscriminate amount of categories is not helpful, like an indiscriminate amount of wikilinks. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:25, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep, education is a strongly defining factor in many people's careers, and the connexions made there which are reflected in the categorisation are significant. The example of Prince Charles is silly - if the defining characteristic is that he is heir to the throne then that is the only category we should have! Building on the use of Churchill as an example, that Churchill was a Harrovian who never went to university is actually a significant difference from all the Eton and King's types, or Balliol men, who infest our history. If, as OP claims, there are cases where a category is being used that is not supported by the content of the article, then the correct action is either to mention and source it in the article, or to remove the article from the category with an appropriate edit summary, not to delete the category. DuncanHill (talk) 15:32, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep per others and perhaps the majority of editors on wikipedia. Experience counts for adding categories for BLPs/bios. Once notability of the person has been established, educational categories are almost always added by wikipedians, slowly, democratically and by consensus. It is unlikely categories for people linked to educational establishments can be dealt with in a systematic way. Millions of articles would be affected, so it's not an issue that can be reversed in one fell swoop here. I've listed the BLPs/bios I've created: α, β, γ, δ, ε, ζ, η, θ, ι, κ, λ, μ,ν, ξ, ο (omicron!), π, ρ, σ, τ, υ, φ, χ, ψ and ω. For BLPs, WP often isn't reliable. At random I chose someone I know well John Clayton Taylor (Richard Taylor's father). There's a link to the 2022 Who's Who entry: "Selhurst Grammar Sch., Croydon; Peterhouse, Cambridge (MA)" and "Lectr, Imperial Coll., London, 1956–60; Lectr, Cambridge Univ., and Fellow of Peterhouse, 1960–64; Reader in Theoretical Physics, Oxford Univ., and Fellow of University Coll., Oxford, 1964–80 (Hon. Fellow, 1989)". Why no mention of University College, Oxford on WP (Jpbowen's alma mater)? For other sample bios/BLPs, see I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, etc. Mathsci (talk) 15:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Such categories are very relevant in the UK where "old boys" from Eton and Oxbridge colleges, for example, are over-represented in the establishment. It is also interesting to see the achievements of less elitist institutions such as Burslem School of Art.--Thoughtfortheday (talk) 16:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep, Education establishment attended is clearly a relevant, defining feature for biographical articles.14GTR (talk) 17:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • None of the above are more than dignified WP:ILIKEIT/WP:ITSINTERESTING and appeals to tradition, and they all fundamentally misinterpret categories. As already explained, categories are much closer to index terms or keywords (for example, the keywords of this random short paper would probably be something like "Johann Sebastian Bach", "BACH motive", and maybe the pieces which are more prominently discussed, but not the names of other people trivially mentioned). To take the example of a random article here on Wikipedia, (from those given above) Charles Sanford Terry (historian) would best be described by the keywords "English", "historian", "musicologist" and probably "Bach scholar". That he went to St Paul's, King's College or Lancing are clearly not defining characteristics in the sense intended by policy ("something not fit to be in the lead is probably not a defining characteristic"), as they are not more than trivial mentions which you could just as well replace with other names without changing anything significant in the article. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy/WP:SNOW Keep per longstanding common practice, but amend WP:DEFCAT to clarify that it is indeed the standard practice to categorize individuals by institutional affiliation for education and teaching. BD2412 T 19:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Enshrine into policy something that only leads to excessive, often times problematic, and definitively non-defining categories? No thanks... As for the "longstanding common practice", I am explicitly disputing the reasons for this, and any reasonable closer should disregard such an unsubstantiated appeal to tradition (because the tradition is wrong). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep. This is a solution in search of a problem, as discussed above. I am rather troubled by the increasingly subjective assessments of whether ABC is sufficiently "defining" to be worthy of inclusion - this is the kind of inconsistency, in fact, that policies are there to circumvent. 21:04, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong keep for the university ones. Normal keep for the school and religious institutions ones. I have no objection to weeding out any categories that pertain to specific non-notable or only minimally notable institutions but, for notable institutions, these are perfectly normal, relevant categories that are a net benefit to the project. If the policy on this is unclear then I agree with BD2412 that it would make sense to clarify it. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:02, 6 December 2021 (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.
  • FFS, nobody addresses any of the concerns of the nomination. Simply stating that something is "obviously defining" (despite the multiple counter-examples where it is clearly, objectively, not) and justifying this flagrant problem by the fact "this is how we've always done" is incredibly poor argumentation... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:21, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Horticulture and gardening

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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: do not merge; diffuse per Option A, with each Gardening category as a sub-cat of the corresponding Horticulture category. – Fayenatic London 17:41, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The issue in the below speedy discussion is inconsistency between the top layer (not diffused to horticulture on the one hand and gardening on the other hand) versus the country subcategories (which are diffused to horticulture on the one hand and gardening on the other hand). There are two opposite options to solve the inconsistency:

As nominator, I have a weak preference for option A, I understand the two topics are related but they are also distinct. Though option B is still better than the status quo.

copy of speedy discussion
List of horticulture subcats

@Aidan721, Johnbod, Oculi, and TSventon: pinging contributors to speedy discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Horticulture" is certainly the larger topic; it includes in particular the growing & breeding of agricultural plants - really arable farmers are "horticulturists" too. A scheme with Gardeners as a sub-tree below them may be the simplest way, and is defensible. The vast majority of the articles in these trees relate to gardeners/garden horticulturalists (rose breeders etc) rather than wheat breeders etc. The current name is such a mouthful - if anything it should be "Gardening and Horticulture" reflecting the balance of the articles, and the alphabet. An awful lot of bio articles are in both trees, which is not necessary - we could try to define the terms more tightly. Personally the "inconsistency" doesn't bother me in the slightest, but I dare say there will be future drive-by attacks, although this is the first in 11 years. So almost anything, except the proposed speedies - which should certainly never have been proposed that way. Johnbod (talk) 03:46, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I created Category:Horticulture and gardening 12 years ago, and looking back at the brief discussion, it was because there was some overlap between the terms horticulture and gardening. While there are articles which are on gardening, and articles which are on horticulture, there were some which were more diffuse. Before deciding to remove Category:Horticulture and gardening it might be helpful to look at the articles contained within that cat to see if all of them can unequivocally be moved into Category:Gardening or Category:Horticulture. I agree with Johnbod that the terms should be defined more tightly - at least for Wikipedia's cat scheme. The description I wrote for the cat back in 2009 was "Horticulture and gardening involves cultivating fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants in a public or domestic garden. It is a sub-set of agriculture." That may be a useful description for Gardening (both hobby and professional), while Horticulture may need a new description, one which seeks to distinguish between a horticulturist and a botanist. Horticulture seems to stand in a pale trembling patch of ground between gardening and botany. SilkTork (talk) 13:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not a key issue here, but I don't like that definition (which has not survived). Rather, arable agriculture is a sub-set of horticulture, which covers all forms of plant-growing (so also forestry). Whether botany, as the theoretical and scientific side, is the level above or below horticulture I'm not sure. The current category description: "Horticulture and gardening involve the aesthetic cultivating of ornamental plants, native plants, fruits, vegetables, and flowers in public and domestic gardens and landscapes. They combine agriculture, environmental design, botany, and the applied arts." is also wrong. It would do for gardening, but horticulture is wider. Johnbod (talk) 17:30, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge both to Category:Horticulture. The two terms as essentially about the same thing, as hortus is merely Latin for a garden. There may be an ENGVAR issue over the meaning of garden, as British English would apply this to pleasure grounds around a house, which Americans would call their yard. Horticulture might be used for professionals, including specialists in appropriate growing mediums (including fertilisers) and preventing disease, pests, weeds, etc. with gardening implying a more amateur or less skilled activity, but market gardening is a variety of commercial horticulture, differing from that of a commercial nurseryman. The two concepts are so closely related that splitting would be impossible. I found gardening items in the horticulture tree and vice versa. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:46, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I note there are a lot of speedy noms on subcats: can the closure of these be held off until this is closed? Peterkingiron (talk) 17:46, 9 December 2021 (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:Islamic psychology

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Relisted, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 December 28#Category:Islamic psychology

Category:Country navigational boxes

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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 (non-admin closure); @Grutness: feel free to nominate the target. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Basically identical categories. —— Eric Liu（Talk） 16:32, 5 December 2021 (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:Security units of Nazi Germany disestablished in 1945

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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 consensus. – Fayenatic London 08:23, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Per local consensus reached at Talk:33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne#"Military" unit. Scope of the proposed titles remains the same and is more precise. —Brigade Piron (talk) 12:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks TSventon, much appreciated. I can only comment on the categories I have seen, but I would personally suggest that the category tree be renamed accordingly with non-Waffen-SS units migrated to separate categories, if necessary, on a basis to be decided. —Brigade Piron (talk) 21:00, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Brigade Piron, the nomination would be stronger if you looked at the other subcategories of Category:Bandenbekämpfung I have linked above and suggested how to deal with them. TSventon (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2021 (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:Group 4 silicates

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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: soft merge (non-admin closure) Marcocapelle (talk) 06:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT, only 2 articles out of a possible 3, if rutherfordium is excluded for obvious reasons. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 08:43, 5 December 2021 (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:Doctoral students of Emmy Noether

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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. – Fayenatic London 08:25, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Delete Newly created category that is an WP:OVERCAT (we have no other similar categories by teacher) and WP:NOTDEFINING for any of the members of the category. UnitedStatesian (talk) 01:17, 5 December 2021 (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.
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