The merge targets are all quite small. AFAICS, the biggest category after the merge will be Category:2013 establishments in the United Arab Emirates , which will grow from 14 to 18 articles ... and most of the merge targets will still have less than ten articles.
Abu Dhabi is a city with a current population of about 2 million. In the 19th and 20th centuries it was a de facto part of the British Empire, as one of the Trucial States. The Trucial States became independent in 1971 as the United Arab Emirates, whose 2013 population was 9.2 million. Wikipedia's coverage of events there is limited, so subdividing the chronology categories by city makes lots of small categories which impede navigation. We don't have by-year categories for any except the very largest cities, and establishment-by-year categories for cities have repeatedly been deleted (see e.g. 2012: London, 2019: Philadelphia & Pittsburgh).
In this case, every single "Category:YYYY in Abu Dhabi" or "Category:YYY0s in Abu Dhabi" is functioning solely as a container category for the corresponding establishment category, and will become empty if the establishment categories are merged. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:45, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Laurel Lodged: For the record, we did not have both of those; one was a redirect to the other. Thanks for the reminder, as that decade was inconsistent with the rest of the hierarchy; I have now revised the close at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_August_26#Category:1908_establishments_in_Poland, and reversed the redirects. As you evidently feel strongly about ahistorical categories in Poland, please make a proposal somewhere with a list of historical territories and dates for which chronology categories might be useful, in order to seek consensus at an RFC. – FayenaticLondon10:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not so, @Nyttend backup/Nyttend. First, these categories are named for the city, not the Emirate, so this is a Pittsburgh equivalent. Secondly, the number of articles in scope is way way smaller than for Pennsylvania. Just look at the size of these categories, and of the merge targets: the biggest category after the merge will be Category:2013 establishments in the United Arab Emirates, which will grow from 14 to 18 articles. That is too small a set to split up.
The point is that the nomination, and the support votes, rely on a false impression of the situation (not accusing you of bad faith, just of a misunderstanding). See the airport comment below for proof. Imagine that "Establishments in Quebec by year" were small, and someone nominated it for deletion with the above rationale. It would be a thoroughgoing bad idea to delete a provincial category tree merely because a few people believed that the City of Quebec was too small to warrant its own establishments-by-year category. It's fine if people conclude that a country's primary subdivisions are too small to warrant their own categories; I'd heartily support such a nomination if we had an "Establishments in Yaren District by year" category, for example, and were the nomination and the support votes saying "we don't need separate categories for each emirate", I wouldn't have come in at all. I just don't want to see this category tree abolished because of a misunderstanding. Nyttend backup (talk) 22:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nyttend backup and Nyttend: I don't think that the comparison with Quebec quite works, because the naming issues are differently constructed in the two examples.
But more importantly, it is also irrelevant, because no matter which definition is used, the categories will be small. This nomination is indeed based on the proposition you say would support, viz that this country's primary subdivisions are too small to warrant their own categories, with "small" measured by "number of articles in scope" — a set where the largest combined size is a mere 18 pages is too small to merit subdivision. If and when en.wp's coverage of Abu Dhabi expands by a factor of 5 or 10, then a split would become viable ... but I see no reason to expect that happy day to occur nay time soon.
Votes to "delete because we don't do such categories for cities" are based on false premises, which the closing admin must ignore. Imagine that a bunch of people said "delete this category because it can only ever have one entry" and then a bunch of additional articles were added that clearly belonged. If a closing admin deletes such a category on those grounds, we go to DRV because the entire basis for those delete votes has been disproven, so they must be ignored. Same here: disproven votes must be given zero weight, so the only thing that matters for deletion is your opinion (in response to my statements) that these are still too small. If others come along and agree with that statement, no objections (I don't have an opinion on the question), but deletion based on false premises is inappropriate and will result in a DRV if they're counted. Nyttend backup (talk) 15:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nyttend backup: that is one of the most risible and disingenuous exercises in wikilawyering I have seen in a long time. It's studied effort to avoid the central point of the nomination: NARROWCAT means scope is too small. You seek to treat a difference of interpretation of titles as a nullifying factor for everything else.
This sort of bad faith, timewasting and wordplay of deliberately-missing-the-point crap is what turns some XFDs into unconstructive sprawling word heaps. This is a consensus-forming discussions, not a children's catch-me-out game, and it is very sad to see an admin indulging in such blatant disruption. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny; I merely said that we mustn't count votes that don't understand the situation and noted that your new argument on "too small" grounds was entirely different, and yet you thought it appropriate to attack me. Block requested. Nyttend backup (talk) 18:06, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nyttend: it's astonishing that even after several rounds of discussion, you sustain your flow of FUD even to point of claiming that I have new argument on "too small" grounds. Like so much else of the drama you are working so hard to manufacture, that is either an outright lie or evidence that you have a serious reading comprehension problem. As anyone can see, "too small" is the core basis of my nomination. The fist two and a half paragraphs of the nomination — 8 sentences — are all about that. It is bizarre that you have made such a drama out of a falsehood. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:14, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm neutral on the proposal; although the categories are fairly small, they still strike me as viable and marginally useful. Disambiguating these categories to "establishments in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi" has some attraction for me, although I would favour a discussion to rename the main article, after which city-related topics would belong in "Category:Abu Dhabi (city)", and the concisely-named nominated categories could stay put. – FayenaticLondon11:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Fayenatic london: it seems to be that they are well below the viability size:
Nominator's rationale: Only one article. No real reason to expect more. Though its a significant issue it doesnt really generate articles. Rathfelder (talk) 09:27, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: merge/delete per WP:OVERLAPCAT, Karlskoga Municipality has 30.000 inhabitants, of which the city of Karlskoga has 27.000 inhabitants; and no villages are mentioned in the municipality article. Buildings, people and populated places of the municipality coincide with those of the city. In option A: keep the parent categories of both (by city and by municipality) for the merged category. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:15, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support B per BrownHairedGirl. While it's not comprehensive, we appear to have a good collection of categories for Swedish municipalities, and it would be a bit silly to get rid of one of them merely because most of the municipality is a city with its own category. Nyttend backup (talk) 22:53, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale:delete, redundant container category with only one subcategory. There is no need to merge, the subcategory is already in appropriate trees. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:14, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
