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Revision as of 18:18, 2 August 2005

July 30

Category:Soviet spies

List consists of names found in KGB files and other sources. Most have not been confirmed as Soviet Spies, merely that information from them turned up in KGB files, not the same thing Cberlet 19:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep but rename to "Suspected Soviet Spies". Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 20:18, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep TDC 20:19, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

  Note:The above information was copied from Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Category:Soviet spies --Allen3  20:37, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep but rename per Flcelloguy. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and rename as suggested. David | Talk 23:11, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but rename per any consensus. "Category:Americans named in VENONA" should also be started separately. --TJive 23:40, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, but Rename per Flcelloguy. -Splash 01:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Also create Category:Suspected Soviet spies, and move most of it there - leave this cat for the known spies like Aldrich Ames.
• Keep. And by the way, if you are listed in KGB files with a codename, called a resource, a source of information, etc. you are a Soviet agent! Dwain 19:31, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • Ah, just having a codename doesn't mean you are an agent/source. If you look at the VENONA decrypts, there are a number of people given codenames there who are clearly not agents/sources (e.g. BOAR = Winston Churchill). Noel (talk) 17:58, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep for proven spies (e.g., those charged/convicted of espionage), and create a "suspected" category for all others. siafu 15:12, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep As Is "alleged" or "suspected" is entirely a different class, and probably unethical or unencyclopediac. nobs 17:29, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It's actually not unethical in that it's more accurate. "Spy" has a very specific meaning with specific legal consequences; if that meaning hasn't been established clearly, then the person is only an "alleged" spy. Obviously each article would have to explain why this person is, in fact, alleged to be a spy. siafu 17:34, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
    • It wouldn't exist and shouldn't exist if they were not confirmed. nobs 17:44, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• HEY, people, help me out here. If you want to rename the category, place a vote to Rename. If you vote Keep, I take that to mean keep as is (and don't rename). Thanks! --Kbdank71 17:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
• Not sure what the right thing is here. The problem is that there is a continuous spectrum from "professional officer" through "network head" (i.e. someone who recruited others) through "witting source" to "unwitting source"; the term "spy" is so poor at describing all the subtle shades. The topic is clearly one worthy of the application of the category system, so the issue is simply what categories to create, and how to decide who gets which label. I'd like to see Soviet intelligence officers (e.g. Pavel Sudoplatov) in a different category from sources (like Klaus Fuchs), though. Perhaps we can have a meta-category, say Category:Soviet Intelligence, which would include sub-categories for the various classes of people? Also, I think I agree that there's utility in a category for "suspected sources", but it could be the source of a lot of disagreement as to which category some people belong in. Perhaps drawing the definition of the other category tightly, and with a fact-based divider (e.g. only those who confessed, or were convicted) would help with that. Noel (talk) 17:58, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

unfortunately we are stuck with the Hollywood & fictional use and understanding of the term, until someone does better; this is an extremely valid point Noel makes. For now, "spy" is the only term we got. nobs 18:18, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:Close U.S. presidential elections

Vague and not particularly useful. A list of elections by closeness would be far better. - SimonP 18:49, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Abstain

Just a bit of history, in case it helps people make up their mind. Back in February and March 2005, people were adding a set of links to the "See also" section of various U.S. presidential election articles. For example, this is taken from the history of U.S. presidential election, 1800:

• Other close U.S. presidential elections: 1824, 1844, 1876, 1884, 1888, 1916, 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004

This seemed to me to be ideal for transformation to a category, and so I replaced these link sets with this new category. I have no special attachment to this category: I was just happy to get rid of the link set. My one concern with losing this category is that the link sets would come back.

I'm also interested to know how SimonP plans to go about defining the closeness of a presidential election. How would he compare the elections of 1800 and 1824? How about 1824 and 2000? How about 1876 and 2000? Do you define the closeness of the election by popular vote? electoral vote? Number of popular votes that would need to be reversed to change the election? Number of votes on the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts that would need to shift?

— DLJessup 22:15, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep provided a definition of "close" can be agreed upon (for example, less than 5 percentage points between the top two candidates in the popular vote and/or no more than 5 electoral votes' difference). --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:30, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Any way of working out what is 'close' is bound to be arbitrary. David | Talk 23:11, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete; I don't see how 'close' can be absolutely defined. One can only say that some given margin was smaller in one election than another. Is there an article like Comparison of American Presidential elections? -Splash 01:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Listify. A list would enable all the relevant statistics to be available at one time - popular and electoral college votes, candidates, parties, percentages. Having the category means that each article has to be opened separately and comparison is less easily available. Grutness...wha? 01:17, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete No clear definition available. CalJW 16:43, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete (and listify) - fails to satifsfy (from Misplaced Pages:Categorization) If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why it's there? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?. Lists can be created that are explicity sorted on whatever crtieria of closeness one desires, in fact one article could present multiple such lists (by popular vote count, popular vote percentage, electoral votes, etc.). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:51, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Shlager

Currently empty, and I do not see much potential in it. Was created 15 June 2004. --Ozan Ayyüce 13:03, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete if articles come up in the future, it can be recreated. ∞Who?¿? 15:24, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete (should be it about music hits or what?) Pavel Vozenilek 18:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, it's misspelled anyway. If there were a category for this it should be at Category:Schlager (see Schlager). --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Utterly useless. Punkmorten 06:49, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:Women rulers

Tag added by PatGallacher 10:04, 30 July 2005 UTC, then an anon attempted add to cfd page. Anyway, just listing it here. ∞Who?¿? 11:00, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, don't categorize by gender. Come to think of it, this would probably require a larger discussion (after the one on 'thing of country' completes). Radiant_>|< 17:16, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per Radiant. Pavel Vozenilek 18:01, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, it is still rare enough for a woman to be a head of state or government that I think categorization by gender is justified in this case. If Angela Merkel becomes Chancellor of Germany this year, she'll be the first woman to lead Germany in over a thousand years. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Actually I was not opposed to categorization by sex. The problem with this category is that the large majority of those who might fall into it also fall into 1 of 2 more restricted categories: Queens regnant and Female heads of government (we also have a category Empresses). At present we have only one person who does not: Isabella of Antioch, who was technically a princess regnant, ruler of the relatively short-lived Crusader principality of Antioch. I suppose we might include female regents, which includes e.g. Marie de Guise, and female figurehead presidents e.g. Mary Robinson. Should this category only include female rulers who don't fall into the 3 existing categories? Or should we allow an overlap? Or should we create some new categories e.g. Princesses Regnant? Or should we stretch Queens Regnant or re-name it? Or what? PatGallacher 23:53, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
  • (Comment - no vote) Others that wouldn't fall into either of those subcats are people like Silvia Cartwright (Governor-General of New Zealand), and a case could probably be made for Joan of Arc. Grutness...wha? 13:53, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, ad Angr: The categorys subcategories, namely Category:Female heads of governmentexists, Category:Queens regnant, Category:Empresses as well as Category:Current female heads of government should be sufficient. --Ozan Ayyüce 00:45, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, categories by gender are too broad. Needs a wider discussion as Radiant! says, though. As to the Angela Merkel point, this would certainly be an historic event, but it can just be mentioned in the relevant articles; it doesn't justify a cat by itself. The same applies to other female heads of state-Splash 01:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep It's a pain that we don't categorise by gender. Gender is often very signficant, whether rulers or singers are in question. CalJW 16:42, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:United States Merchant Marine ships

Currently empty, created in Oct 2004, no telling if it was used previously. ∞Who?¿? 10:50, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, its parent category looks wrong, btw. Pavel Vozenilek 18:03, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Not sure about the parent cat, it was in a redirect cat, I just corrected that, no sense in fixing it if it gets deleted. ∞Who?¿? 23:09, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete; can't we speedy delete empty categories? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Per Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion policies, not unless their only content has consisted only of links to parent cats. It's very hard to know when a cat was emptied anyway, unless someone leaves a note in the cat (they don't have a membership history, unfortunately). We had our fingers burned just recently when a user emptied a cat they didn't like (despite a no consensus CfD) and managed to get it speedied into the bargain. -Splash 00:51, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:Extraterrestrial Wikipedians

Patent nonsense. — Davenbelle 05:47, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

OPPOSE A small sense of humor haven't hurt anyone, it ment to be a gag. Since there are categories for countries I really do not see what this violates. --Cool Cat 09:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• BJAODN. Radiant_>|< 09:24, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Comment I'm all for humor and Wikipedian cats, but I'm not sure how to handle this one. If users want to use it, assuming more than 2, then I would say keep. Don't see any harm, unless it causes a rash of other non-sense cats. ∞Who?¿? 10:50, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy, CFD is already overloaded enough. Pavel Vozenilek 18:00, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
  • So why are you overclutering it more with more votes. Just remove this entry from here speedie. --Cool Cat 10:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy per Pavel Vozenilek. Not funny enough for BJAODN. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• BJAODN as per Radiant and ext discussion. ∞Who?¿? 23:04, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete absurd. -Splash 01:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Category:Peerage

→ Category:British Peerage

Seems to be purely British centric (along with alot of the ill-named categories and articles contained within), but with articles like Peerage of France, and categories like Category:European Peerage, this is obviously an incorrect usage of a parent category for British domination. I think Peerage should be kept as a parent, but everything or thereabouts needs to be moved out. 132.205.44.134 01:04, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• Concur. Radiant_>|< 09:24, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
• I feel a tad offended by the manner of the posting ("ill-named categories") and its abruptness. A lot of time and effort has gone into crafting the organizational framework of the peerage project, and I really think a better approach would have been to begin a discussion on Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Peerage. This isn't the best place for such a discussion, particularly as the posting user has made no effort to alert interested parties. Oppose, for the moment. Mackensen (talk) 13:12, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
  • WikiProject Peerages is solely for UK aristos, and uses generic aristocratic titles as names for generic UK titles, causing a distinct bias towards things British. If you look at List of Baronies, it doesn't even suggest that there were such things as barons in Europe at all! The entire WikiProject seems to not take notice that there is a world outside of Britain, and that the names they use for things might have uses outside of Britain. 132.205.45.148 16:09, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
    • The fact that List of hereditary baronies (please note that List of Baronies is a redirect) only lists British baronies has nothing to do with bias and everything to do with the hard work of users on this site to document the British peerage. It's not our fault that no one has made a similarly comprehensive effort with Continental nobility, although I know that work is being done. There's also the problem of listing a European title. Take someone like Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz. Freiherr is usually rendered as baron, but there's no one holder because it isn't grounded in primogeniture. How would one list his title? And, for that matter, avoid conflict with the similar title baron (as in the case of Friedrich von Holstein? As for the matter of peerages, the peerage is a specifically British concept, as Deb noted below, and infinitely better known than, say, the French peerage. Moreover, peerage comprehends the entire British system of nobility (excepting the squirearchy), while the French peerage does not. Mackensen (talk) 17:10, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
      • While the British peerage is larger than the other ones, I'm highly uncertain how one can say that the peerage is a specifically British concept. The word is of French origin, and the French peerage was, so far as I understand it, the original peerage. Even at present, there is a country besides Britain which has a currently function peerage system - Spain. john k 20:17, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Proteus (Talk) 13:44, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the reasons given above. -- Emsworth 14:39, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

• completely oppose IMHO a ridiculous suggestion that shows no understanding whatsoever of the topic. FearÉIREANN\ 15:14, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose Peerage (as opposed to other systems of nobility) is specifically British/Irish. Deb 16:47, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Rename I took a look at the project, and it states at the top: This WikiProject primarily aims to standardise pages about Peerages in the United Kingdom and Ireland (including the former states of England, Scotland, and Great Britain), and their holders. This seems to me that it is mostly British. This is the perfect place to discuss categorization and naming. If the project and articles contain British peerage, then the cat should be named to reflect that. I agree that they probably should have discussed it with the project first, but this is the forum for categories, and if they have not participated with the project, may just mean that they did not know about it. ∞Who?¿? 15:21, 30 July 2005 (UTC)