Wikipedia talk:User categories for discussion

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Contents 1 New string of nominations by User:Patricknoddy 1.1 Patricknoddy acted properly. 2 Trivial renaming 3 Keeping up 4 Userbox transclusions

[edit] New string of nominations by User:Patricknoddy

From what I can tell almost every single category nominated by Patricknoddy today was created by himself from a redlinked category he found that was populated. Someone needs to explain to him that this is not what should be done, and also speedy close all the nominations of categories he created due to original author request. I'll be busy for a while but I will help when I am done. VegaDark 20:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I left a note on his talk page. Haven't looked at the creations. Xiner (talk, email) 20:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

What? This is acceptable here! Those categories aren't needed at all. Plus, VegaDark created many categories via redlink. And all she did was paste {{cfd(or m or something else)-user}}. Therefore I protest this! - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 11:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Use {{Db-author}} to speedy delete the categories. They don't need to be discussed here at all. If you created them just to nominate for deletion, please don't do that. –Pomte 12:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point, or earn a Barnstar, as the case may be - that could be borderline on a block.--WaltCip 12:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

In response to PatrickNoddy: 1) I am a he, not a she, and 2) I have never created a category from a redlink as to nominate it as UCFD, I have only nominated categories that have already been created by someone else. VegaDark 20:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, VegaDark, just 'fess up. Seriously, though, Patrick, this is looking like a WP:POINT thing. Please be careful or you may be blocked next time. Xiner (talk) - —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Xiner (talk • contribs).

This is not a WP:POINT thing! Grr. You are so uncivilized. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 13:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, all categories already exist when there are pages in them. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 11:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

No. Though that's a common misunderstanding. A category may be a grouping of members, but the category page is a page. What they are talking about is that you created the category pages. Users may be able to place themselves in a category for which the category page does not exist, and thus be in a redlinked category (due to technical reasons), but by doing so, that doesn't create the category. I hope this helps clarify : ) - jc37 12:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Just because I created the page doesn't mean I created that certain category. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 13:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Right. The complaints above are that you created the pages. The general request is: "please don't". - jc37 01:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Patricknoddy acted properly.

The UCFD process is needed to justify depopulating a user category (except for categories solely populated by a userbox, a process is necessary to justify editing other users' user pages), so these categories should have been nominated. A nomination _requires_ adding a template. This was absolutely the right course of action and I don't see what else you think he should have done. --Random832 15:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

For example, instead of creating Category:Wikipedians in USA, Patrick should've simply modified the relevant pages to Category:American Wikipedians. Xiner (talk) 15:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be needed to justify depopulating a redlinked category. I say just remove redlinked categories from all user pages and templates. If a UCFD were necessary in each case, that would require many, many more times the number of categories that he already created and nominated. It also sounds like a huge loophole that could be taken advantage of: If someone wanted to, they could add themselves to hundreds of redlinked categories and we would need to create each and then go through a 7 day UCFD for every one if what you say is true, which would develop a huge backlog and a lot of unnecessary work. VegaDark 00:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivial renaming

Would this process be faster/preferred for trivial renaming such as alma mater: Edit the userbox to use the correctly named category, create it, and then WP:CSD#C1 the old empty cat after 4 days. –Pomte 17:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that what you're suggesting is in the blurred area between Speedy and being bold, since it merely involves editing a template. If, by editing the template, the category no longer has members, then I presume an admin could delete it at any time due to C1 - empty. (I've been doing this myself, though mostly as a result of WP:UCFD discussions.) The thing is, an edit to a template can be reverted, so the guidelines at WP:BOLD would seem to apply. - jc37 01:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically, empty categories are supposed to stay empty for 4 days before being speedied. But I don't see a problem with doing that for uncontroversial renames in the interest of improving the encyclopedia, per WP:IAR. VegaDark 04:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping up

I've realized we've had some deletions, but they never took place. We need a bot or something like that to keep up with the deletions, mergers, etc. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 12:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

We do have bots (WP:CFD/W, but they are imperfect, especially when templates such as userboxes are involved. Sometimes it's just easier to do it by hand. Xiner (talk, a promise) 15:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The bots don't do their work at all, or so I don't believe. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 13:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Please remember that we're all volunteers here, so things may not happen as quickly as you may like : ) - jc37 04:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox transclusions

I've gone through quite a few userboxes adjusting categories to match current consensus (most recently, the native language programming language cats). I've found that if the userbox has a double redirect (as due to userfication, for example), the cats take a LONG time to depopulate, even though the userpages show the new, updated category. Obviously we should avoid deleting a category before depopulating it, however, I've found that if I go through every remaining member of the category, and find that each's category has changed, but this just hasn't been reflected (yet) in the category listing, then it's safe to delete, with the presumption that the servers will eventually catch up, and depopulate the category. Just thought I would mention this for anyone else who may have had similar issues.

PS: A way to "speed up" the process would be to actually "dummy edit" each usepage, since that will update the category, but I don't think that that is a good idea due to (among other things) the large number of userpages involved.

Hope this helps : ) - jc37 01:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)