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Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 June 27

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June 27

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Category:Women scientists, Category:Women biologists, Category:Women chemists, Category:Women mathematicians, Category:Women physicists

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus (keep) --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:47 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not enforce gender inequality by subdividing scientists into male and female sections. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 10:39 (UTC)

Strong oppose because of entrenched inequality within society, being a female scientist is inherently notable and should be categorised as such. Dunc|☺ 28 June 2005 14:44 (UTC)
Rename - Replace Women with Female. Andros 1337 28 June 2005 15:20 (UTC)
Rename - agree that Female is preferable to Women, but I cite my post under for Deleting Female Nazis - There is no bias inherent in saying a person is female, would you strip all gender-specific pronouns from articles as well? To claim that designating this category is "Gender Bias" is as ridiculous as claiming Murdered children enforces an age-bias, or that African-American actors enforces racism...quite simply, this is how categories work, they take groups of people sharing a common ethnicity, age, occupation, interest or life-event, and list them together -Sherurcij June 28, 2005 15:48 (UTC)
Rename per Sherurcij. Note that there have been other categories deleted in this anti-gender-bias spurr (For instance Category:Women composers). Shouldn't policy be global - either all female categories go or stay? Karol June 28, 2005 16:23 (UTC)
Comment - by that reasoning, as I said, there shouldn't be a "Murdered Children" subcat, it should simply be "murdered people and/or animals", likewise there shouldn't be a "Soviet Rifles" subcat, because "weapons" is less racist. Sherurcij June 28, 2005 17:39 (UTC)
Comment - I agree with Sherurcij. The bottom line is that categorizing by gender is touchy due to the whole feminist/sexist war. As Sherurcij points out, we don't even notice other, also inherent cases of bias. So the question is whether the question of gender related categorization is touchy enough to avoid it. Personally it doesn't really matter to me if there are female-related categories, but they're as good as any other categories. One more note - why do we assert a bias on homo and bisexualism by having Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people? Karol June 28, 2005 19:51 (UTC)
  • Because, for the people in the GLBT cat, being GLBT is a serious influence to what they do (and if not, they shouldn't be in that cat in the first place). For the average chemist, it is irrelevant to scientific work done whether it's a male or a female chemist. Hence, it's overcategorization. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 21:25 (UTC)
Comment - I'll take both of these together down there ↓.-Splash June 28, 2005 21:09 (UTC)
Comment - I think at its core, we're pretty much dealing with sub-catting as far as we can reasonably go. With "Sunday School Teachers", there's no basis for sub-catting based on gender. For something like "Prime Ministers", "Physicists" or "Nazis", there's the onus that traditionally 90% of these occupations were male-dominated, and the women are therefore a sub-group that should be divided as such. At its core, it's not about saying "These are Actors...but they're *ugh* African-American", it's about taking pride in saying "These are the African-American celebrities who made it to stardom in Hollywood". Same with sub-catting female Physicists, it's about 'celebrating' their achievement in a male-dominated field. Sherurcij June 28, 2005 20:23 (UTC)
Comment - The question should not be 'celebration' or pride. The question should be: "does this (sub)cat extract information of encyclopedic value?". Does it matter that these scientists/whatevers were women? No, not at all: they deserve encyclopedia entries regardless. If they had been Sunday school teachers, they'd never have got an article in the first place: being female would not have enhanced their chances. Being female does not make you encyclopedic and being female is not of encyclopedic note. There are some exceptions, of course; those that changed the course of history are important (e.g. Suffragettes and Womens rights campaigners) precisely because they are women. Most of the entries in these cats are important because they are physicists, prime ministers etc. In short, a subcat of "Women X's" provides no information of encyclopedic note in most cases since the people so categorised are not in the encyclopedia because they are women. As for the examples in the first comment, these, IMHO, make my point. The rifles are of interest because they are Soviet, the murdered because they are children. Most murdered adults wouldn't get a page here - WP:NOT a memorial. In fact, there is no Category:Soviet rifles, nor of any countries other than the US and the UK (and in that case, only WW2 rifles). Nearly all the entries in Category:Rifles are of particular makes and they are not subcatted save for the fact that they are rifles. So the physicists etc need no further subcatting either. -Splash June 28, 2005 21:09 (UTC)
In the past, there were major social obstacles for women in taking up certain professions, such as academic and governmental. Today, there is still a major disproportionality between males and females in science and in alot of other professions - and that is the incentive for creating such orgnizations as Women in Science. Is this not a sufficient reason for promoting those women that have achieved success in those fields? I think that every encyclopedia, by including certain topics, also outlines important social problems. Omitting certain topics equals with stating that the related problems do not exist, and that is simply a matter of opinion. Karol June 29, 2005 06:29 (UTC) (P.S. I am not a woman :D)
Courtland June 28, 2005 23:44 (UTC)
  • Delete as per Splash. Pavel Vozenilek 29 June 2005 00:51 (UTC)
  • Keep. If there enough articles for the subcats and the number of articles in the genderless cat is big. I have no problem. --Error 29 June 2005 02:56 (UTC)
    • Comment In the future, other readers may not view it as a sub-dividing by size, but for gender. I think sub-catting into specialized job functions is more appropriate in that situation. <>Who?¿? 29 June 2005 06:38 (UTC)
  • Comment Perhaps an appropriate compromise would be to delete, say, Category:Women biologists and instead have an article List of women biologists (or female, whatever) within the more general Category:Biologists. The same can apply to all the discussions below, as well. There is a convenience factor here to be balanced with our desire to be non-discriminatory; I remember once in high school being asked to write a paper on an African-American medical professional of my choosing. In such a case, a list like this would have been very useful. StuTheSheep June 29, 2005 19:39 (UTC)
  • Delete. Agree with many of the comments above by Splash and Radiant. I'll add this: These categories indeed are an example of gender bias. I understand that women haven't always been on equal footing as men. Keeping these categories will continue that inequality. "Sure, we have a category for Biologists, but it's men only. We'll just stick you women in this Women biologists category over here." Treating women as equals begins with removing gender-specific categories. --Kbdank71 29 June 2005 19:54 (UTC)
    • Comment It's me again, I'd just like to point out that while you're complaining that apparently the *reason* these have traditionally been male-dominated professions is because of things like encyclopaedia categories (Which is doubtless the reason occupations like nursing, teaching and midwifery were traditionally female) - you overlook the simple fact that apparently Category:Female heads of government, Category:Female singers, Category:Women's sports, Category:Ancient Roman women and Category:Girl groups are apparently "acceptable". I think "Who" sums up the hypocrisy best when he/she says that they support sub-catting by race, but not by gender. Either these things are a source of relevant information, or they aren't. Get wikipedia to agree to delete African-American actors, and I'll agree to deleting "Female Chemists"

I think the fact there are *5* female chemists, and *93* male chemists is enough to denote that as stated, there is a significant achievement worth noting for those few women who entered the field historically. Sherurcij June 30, 2005 04:42 (UTC)

      • So, you're ok with continuing to segregate women? I'd rather put them both on equal footing. If you want to note that apparently there are only 5 female chemists in the world (or is it only 5 in Wikipedia? You decide.), maybe we can note that in the articles. We don't need the categories. --Kbdank71 30 June 2005 14:48 (UTC)
      • Comment Actually I said I support Category:Female singers because (as it is a signifant difference and popular culture), Womens rights and those who the first in their field through great resistance. A male singer and female singer have different singing styles, in their profession, it is a noticable trait, not so in professions such as Biologists. Also, those who have made a specific struggle to overcome sexism/racism are notable for doing just that, and could be cat'd accordingly. As for race, I specifically stated sub-cat'ing of pride and/or nationality as we currently categorize by nationality, and for Category:African Americans, it is both pride and nationality, not a seperation by race, if one so chose,they could decide not to be cat'd there, if they fealt their origins were not of an African descent. For the matter of only *5* female biography articles existing in Chemists, this is a lack of proper categorization or lack of female biographical articles, not a category or gender issue. <>Who?¿? 30 June 2005 05:10 (UTC)
        • Comment in response if pride+nationality is an acceptable reason for subcategorization, then is it not appropriate to support pride+gender as it is (often) a matter of pride for women who struggle against male bias to take up roles in male-dominated fields .. such as biology and government leadership? By that argument we should indeed keep the "women in..." type categories. To do otherwise would be to de-empasize gender below that of nationality as a factor in shaping a person's life, which is exactly consistent with maintaining male-dominated fields as male-dominated. Courtland June 30, 2005 17:14 (UTC)
          • Comment That is a valid argument. Discrimination: To single out a minority or group, or to exclude a minority or group It kind of goes both ways, I think in general there should be no seperation of gender or race, each being equal. However, in certain situations, it is imperative to emphacize the contributions, struggle, pride, of certain people or groups. Not everyone is going to fit into the latter, and to place them there would be improperly categorizing them. If I am a female or male Biologist, and I am known for my career as such, thats all I would want to be known for, not that I'm male or female, as that would not make a difference. However, if I were the first of my gender/race in that field, and endured riducle and sacrifice in order to pursue that field, it would be part of a movement or sense of pride, and therefore should be categorized as such. It is always a struggle to move into a field, even if just locally, if it is a sex/race dominated situation, as there is a general bias, this however is not significant, as it happens to all race/sex depending on the situation. <>Who?¿? 30 June 2005 17:33 (UTC)
  • I don't think we should have female categories, outside areas such as sports where there are separate women's tennis, etc. Nothing wrong with categories such as feminist writers, for example, where the reference is to some position taken; but female scientists here are not notable for being female but for being scientists. Charles Matthews 1 July 2005 10:24 (UTC)
  • Keep I would tend to assume that such categories were created by feminists, but then I think the opposite of Radiant on virtually everything. CalJW 5 July 2005 01:10 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:Female Nazis

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus (keep) --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:25 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not enforce gender inequality by subdividing historical figures into male and female sections. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 10:39 (UTC)


Keep - There is no bias inherent in saying a person is female, would you strip all gender-specific pronouns from articles as well? The fact is that Magda Goebbels *was* female - and much of the female hierarchy were given their own trials alongside other females, and served together with other females during the war at the same concentration camps. To claim that designating this category is "Gender Bias" is as ridiculous as claiming Murdered children enforces an age-bias, or that Category:African American actors enforces racism...quite simply, this is how categories work, they take groups of people sharing a common ethnicity, age, occupation, interest or life-event, and list them together. Sherurcij June 28, 2005 15:35 (UTC)
Keep per Sherurcij. Note also that the category Category:Women composers has been deleted on claims of gender bias, whereas List of female composers and others still exists. Karol June 28, 2005 16:39 (UTC)
  • Delete For resons see the big bunch of women subcats above. -Splash June 28, 2005 16:55 (UTC)
  • Delete. Same reason as the one I gave above. --Kbdank71 29 June 2005 19:56 (UTC)
  • Keep Completely unable to see merit in the reason for deletion stated. To me it would make more sense to use the same argument in the opposite cause. CalJW 5 July 2005 01:13 (UTC)
  • Delete Same reasons I stated above, as well as other comments above. Quote: There is no bias inherent in saying a person is female. There is a very clear inferred bias if we start seperating every single category by gender. If the article or category is not notable for gender specific reasons, then there should be no division by gender. <>Who?¿? 5 July 2005 05:04 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

Category:Women aviators

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:29 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not enforce gender inequality by subdividing pilots into male and female sections. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 10:39 (UTC)


Rename - agree that Female is preferable to Women, but I cite my post under for Deleting Female Nazis - There is no bias inherent in saying a person is female, would you strip all gender-specific pronouns from articles as well? To claim that designating this category is "Gender Bias" is as ridiculous as claiming Murdered children enforces an age-bias, or that African-American actors enforces racism...quite simply, this is how categories work, they take groups of people sharing a common ethnicity, age, occupation, interest or life-event, and list them together -Sherurcij June 28, 2005 15:36 (UTC)
Rename to female. The same argument as Sherurcij and as in the discussion on Category:Women scientists. Note that other categories have ben deleted, such as Category:Women composers (although List of female composers stil exists). Karol June 28, 2005 16:37 (UTC)
  • Delete, for reasoning see the big bunch of women cats a couple of entries up. -Splash June 28, 2005 16:55 (UTC)
  • Delete. I generally support the subdivision of professions by gender where there are social issues related to gender (as there are for women scientists ... and male nurses, for that matter). However, I look on "aviators" as including hobbyists as well as professional pilots. I think one could support subdivisions such as "female combat pilots", "female astronauts" and "female test pilots", but not "female aviators". Courtland June 28, 2005 23:51 (UTC)
Comment - A strong argument, I'm almost tempted to change my vote because of it - I think it toes the line a little because we can't really have "Female Combat Pilots" as a category when Wikipedia only lists 3...but at the same time, sticking them in with the rest of the pilots seems a little unfair. Catch-22 in this case I guess
Therefore, should it be renamed to Aviatrices? :) Karol June 30, 2005 08:08 (UTC)
  • Keep. Considering that there are not all that many woman aviators and that people may want to look in such a category to read about the relatively few notable woman aviators which have lived or are living, I think that this is a useful category. I understand that such a category may appear to be gender discriminating, but it isn't really anymore gender discriminating than talking about "first woman to fly over the Atlantic" or "first woman to circumnavigate the globe". To me, usefulness is more important than the appearance of gender equality. Sjakkalle (Check!) 30 June 2005 09:28 (UTC)
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Category:Text encodings

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

That this category, now unused, existed separately from Category:Character sets was, I believe, based on the notion that "character sets" and "text encodings" were distinct concepts. Someone was trying to enforce the idea that a character set or encoding was specific to computing, whereas there were examples of other text-code applications such as Morse Code and early, non-computer uses of ASCII. This distinction was established by the presence of a text encoding article that was separate from character encoding. However, this definition was nonstandard; it just reflected the views of one Wikipedian, I believe, and more importantly, it quickly proved to be too confusing for people, as noted in the recent discussion on Talk:Character encoding. The text encoding article had a number of errors corrected by Tim Bray, but ended up turning into a redundant summary of the character encoding article. Meanwhile, the character encoding article expanded its scope to include Morse Code and text encodings from other non-computing contexts. Character (computing) also acknowledges that a character is a grapheme or comparable unit from a writing system as represented in "computers and communication equipment," further underscoring the case against "text encoding" being unique.

Therefore I have recently made text encoding just redirect to character encoding (but took care to merge some useful content in the intro paragraphs), and I removed from the ill-defined Category:Text encodings the handful of articles that were in it. The articles mostly belonged under Category:Character sets, and several of them were already there. See also the new descriptive text in Category:Text encodings as well as Talk:Text encoding. — mjb 28 June 2005 04:07 (UTC)

  • Delete now unused category, the necessary work is done. Thansk for your help on this. Pavel Vozenilek 29 June 2005 00:57 (UTC)
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Category:Arizona Cardinals franchise → Category:Arizona Cardinals

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was rename --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:32 (UTC)

To be consistent with all of the other categories regarding sports teams. I feel that "franchise" is unneccesary. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:36, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Rename. --Kbdank71 29 June 2005 19:57 (UTC)
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Category:John Kerry

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 14:38 (UTC)

  • Keep. Al Gore, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have their own categories. Why not John Kerry? Should we delete all those as well? --Blue387 30 June 2005 22:25 (UTC)

I do not feel this deserves to be a category, as it is first a person and secondly part of a larger scope of topics which would better be suited in other categories.

  • To be clear, I am NOT bias against John Kerry.
  • What appalls me, are the articles included and decluded, such as; Bob Shrum (Ted Kennedy doesn't have his own cat), Colin Powell would probably need his own category as well. Of course only examples of other very notable figures, w/o their own cat.
  • I found it while deciding on the Category:Veterans proposed rename, under Category:Vietnam War veterans, are we to say that the rest of them do not deserve their own cat? Sorry for the overload of reasons, but I wanted to be clear that I feel this is a POV category, as I see no other reason for its existance. <>Who?¿? 04:04, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Absolute keep I don't understand the reason for the nomination. These articles are obviously related to John Kerry. SchmuckyTheCat 28 June 2005 06:19 (UTC)
      • Comment I dont feel that any person should have their own category, all relevent info about them should be wikilinked on the page. However, I was wrong about Colin Powell,as he as a fairly empty cat as well. Some of those articles that relate to him dont justify them being categorized "under" him. If anything rename to Category:Kerry family and remove articles that are not in that family. <>Who?¿? 28 June 2005 06:36 (UTC)
    • Weak delete, I think WHO has a point. This is also a rather strange name for a category (a better name would be 'articles related to John Kerry' or something). I think the Kerry family category would be more useful. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 06:57 (UTC)
    • Keep, although not all of the articles seem appropriate for the category. That said, where else would we file John Kerry military service controversy, Sponsorship of legislation by John Kerry, John Kerry VVAW controversy, etc. etc.? -- Visviva 28 June 2005 15:28 (UTC)
    • Keep. What other category will an article like Sponsorship of legislation by John Kerry go in? - SimonP June 28, 2005 21:23 (UTC)
    • I Abstain but want my comments to remain. The comments and votes above state valid points and with further research, it seems quite a few politicians have their own categories, I am still strongly opposed to having individual cats, however, it seems there is a precedent in certain cases. See: Category:U.S. Democratic Party campaigns. It still bothers me to see only one person with their own category under Category:Vietnam War veterans, however this is NOT a categorization problem, just a lack of biography articles and categories correctly categorized. <>Who?¿? 28 June 2005 22:21 (UTC)
    • Weak keep. I disagree with having a category for one person, but I see the point of it. --Kbdank71 29 June 2005 19:59 (UTC)
    • Keep. It is reasonable to have a category for a person when there are several articles concerning that person. Uppland 30 June 2005 18:57 (UTC)
    The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.


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