Jump to content

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 December 15

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Categories for discussion | Log
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MER-C (talk | contribs) at 08:40, 23 December 2019 (→Category:Flora of the Sahara: merged). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
< December 14 December 16 >

December 15

Category:Politicians stubs

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. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:14, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Empty, mistitled ("Politican stubs" category exists with members and child categories) PamD 22:54, 15 December 2019 (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:Maya writing

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: merge. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: upmerge, unclear and redundant category layer. Literature and script are better off when they are directly placed in the languages category. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:07, 15 December 2019 (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:Media experts

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. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:17, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: I'm afraid this is a completely subjective & undefined category, which was created for a single article. That article is otherwise properly categorized. Anomalous+0 (talk) 20:51, 15 December 2019 (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:Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation laureates

Relisted, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 December 23#Category:Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation laureates

Category:Japanese villan actors

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. Not merging due to explanation by Marcocapelle (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: WP:PERFCAT "Avoid categories which categorise performers by their portrayal of a role. This includes...portraying a "type" of character (such as wealthy, poor, religious, homeless, gay, female, politician, Scottish, dead, etc.)" Le Deluge (talk) 19:15, 15 December 2019 (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:Lists of works by Agatha Christie

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: merge. MER-C 08:38, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: These are the only two person-specific Lists of works by ... categories on en.wiki, and they impede navigation by adding an unnecessary step between the Works by ... category and the categorized articles/lists. Lists of works can be categorized directly in the main Works by... category, and there is no need to split out a subcategory for just 1–3 pages. (Courtesy pinging the categories' creators, User:Salarabdolmohamadian and User:Slivicon) -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:12, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I cannot see what you mean by "they impede navigation." That aside, I think there could be many more people like Christie and Beyzai who might have various lists of works. (Beyzai, for example, has 4 very long lists in the Persian Wikipedia, and the 5th is also underway.) I can think of at least 10 world famous people right now who can keep company to Agatha Christie and Bahram Beyzai in having numerous lists of works. All that said, if the "impede navigation" is a really serious problem, I agree with the deletion of the categories.Salarabdolmohamadian (talk) 19:23, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom, and per WP:SMALLCAT. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:49, 15 December 2019 (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:Canadian film directors of Pakistani descent

Nominator's rationale: Triple intersections of nationality, occupation and ethnicity, not a WP:DEFINING characteristic for the purposes of WP:EGRS. Bearcat (talk) 16:38, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Biting insects

Nominator's rationale: There are several problems with this category - (1) It appears (e.g. by being placed under Category:Insects and humans) that this category is specifically for insects that bite humans, but that isn't clear from the category's name. (2) Many of these insects (e.g.Mosquitos) don't actually bite humans (although some do pierce the skin). (3) This isn't part of a wider "Biting animals" category structure. (4) However this category is defined it's likely that the 85 articles currently in it are a tiny fraction of the articles that would be eligible to be in it.  Articles about insects are well categorized by their genus etc (i.e. below flies, moths, bees etc) so categories like this are unnecessary. Note: It may be appropriate to move some articles in this category to Category:Pest insects. DexDor (talk) 11:19, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This and other subcategories of pest insects were intended for articles where it was mentioned that the insect is a pest and for some explicit reason. (Ideally, there wouldn't be any articles under Pest insects, there should always be some reason in the article why it is considered a pest.) Some articles explicitly state the insect bites. For example, "Bed bugs are a type of insect that feed on human blood, usually at night. Their bites can result in a number of health impacts..." Therefore, I think the answers to the above are, 1) Yes, though actually it was created under Category:Pest insects. 2) If the insect does not bite humans, livestock, or pets or the bite is not what makes people consider it a pest, then it should not be in this category. 3) It is under Category:Pest insects, which is under Category:Insects and humans. 4) If it were renamed "Insects with bites painful or dangerous to humans" then a more limited number of articles would belong in it. That might be too long a name for a category. I agree it is problematic that some of these insects are categorized here merely because they bite. I wouldn't see any value in that. Every article in this category should be identified explicitly in the article as being a pest and it should state something about it biting humans, livestock, or pets. --Brambleshire (talk) 15:20, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Can you clarify what you mean by "bite"? E.g. Some of the insects in this category sting or use a proboscis rather than actually biting humans. DexDor (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t have any real knowledge of the subject. The perception of an insect as a pest is not based on the morphology of the insect, it’s an interaction. I’m not qualified to say if an insect bites. The article says it. If the article says the insect bites, the article can be so categorized. Sorry, I know that’s not helpful. -Brambleshire (on mobile)

Category:Heavily tattooed people

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: rename to Category:People known for being heavily tattooed. MER-C 08:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: No specified inclusion criteraia, and any attempt to define criteria would unavoidably breach either WP:SUBJECTIVECAT or WP:ARBITRARYCAT. Inevitably, this category gets applied to people for who it is not WP:DEFINING, e.g. newly-elected Irish parliamentarian Mark Ward (politician), who is known for a surprise by-election win, not for this tattoos.
Note previous discussion at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 April 5#Category:Heavily_tattooed_people, closed as no consensus. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Mark Ward (politician) was added to the category in this good faith edit[1] by Sheila1988. I removed him in this edit[2], per WP:COPDEF. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:06, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This category was for people specifically famous for their heavy tattooing not for those editors subjectively feel have a lot of them. Abyssal (talk) 19:37, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If that is the intention then I suggest the category is renamed to Category:People notable for being tattooed or similar to make it clear it is not to include other notable people who just happen to be 'heavily' tattooed. Thoughts @BrownHairedGirl, Abyssal, and Marcocapelle:? GiantSnowman 08:13, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GiantSnowman: I like the idea of some such clarification. However, the proposed title is a bit of a self-reference to the internal Wikipedia concept of WP:Notability, which I am not comfortable with. I tried a search for other categories with "notable" in their title, and didn't find any other content categories; the results are all various forms of administrative categories. So I could support this only if there was some other form of wording ... but I can't think of one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:44, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Category:People known for being heavily tattooed ? DexDor (talk) 17:54, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Notes on category pages dont have much effect. Rathfelder (talk) 21:10, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (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:Flora of the Sahara

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: merge. MER-C 08:40, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This category (which was created by an editor who is now blocked) is a flora category that does not follow the relevant wikiproject's categorization scheme. Example similar previous CFD. Note: I don't propose to upmerge to Category:Desert flora because some of the articles (example) probably don't belong in that category. Note: I suggest adding a note at Category:Sahara referring to Category:Biota of North Africa. Note: The main way in which articles about species are categorized is by tree-of-life categories (they are much more complete than most of-region categories). DexDor (talk) 20:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There is an agreed system for categorizing plants by distribution. Random creations of extra categories by the now banned user Look2See1 had no consensus and disrupt the system to no good purpose. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:01, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Potentially keep -- Biota occur by region. In this case it will be strongly related to drought tolerance. Desert flora ought to be a container, because the flora of the Australian outback; Arizona and New Mexico; Gobi desert, and Sahara will be quite different. It may be that this category should be purged (into a broader category) of plants that occur both in the Sahara and elsewhere. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:11, 4 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment What possibly can be seen here is that there are two different categorizations in play. If all one cares about is the WGSRPD then one doesn't care that the biota of the Mediterranean coast is rather different from that of the desert itself; but there are other schemes in which the Saharan biota is a thing unto itself, e.g. as I see in Armen Takhtajan's regionalization. Mangoe (talk) 00:31, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The editor time to create/maintain regional categorization (as well as, for example, Category:Plants by habitat) is limited so it's better to use one regional categorization system that may have a chance of being reasonably complete rather than have multiple systems that are likely to cause confusion and be very incomplete. DexDor (talk) 08:57, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep unless we create a list of plants found in the Sahara as readers might want to know about the plants found in the Sahara as deserts have more plants then people often think Dq209 (talk) 15:23, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone is welcome to create such a list. According to the Sahara article the Saharan flora comprises around 2800 species of vascular plants so anyone creating such a list wouldn't be helped much by the category which currently contains about 30 articles about plants some of which might (depending on how "Sahara" is defined) not belong in the list. DexDor (talk) 07:22, 13 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (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:Personal finance websites

Nominator's rationale: Not all the articles can be properly regarded as about personal finance, and there isn't another category. Renaming would fit better into Category:Works about finance Rathfelder (talk) 20:26, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Classic television networks

Nominator's rationale: Changing to something without the non-neutral descriptor "classic". Trivialist (talk) 18:14, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. While it would be non-neutral for us to describe certain films or television programs as "classic", the term is an accepted (self-)label for this type of programming. Most of the articles mention classic television, films, and/or programming in the first two paragraphs. In addition, a rerun is a "rebroadcast of an episode of a radio or television program", and most television networks show reruns. Plus, at least some of these networks focus largely (or primarily) on films. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Star Trek planets

Nominator's rationale: Populated fully by redirects, so no need to upmerge. TTN (talk) 14:22, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Buddhist behaviour and experience

Nominator's rationale: This was renamed from "Buddhist practices" to "Buddhist behaviour and experience". Apart from the British spelling which some might object to, the new name is too vague to be useful, and "practices" sounds much more like the terminology used in Buddhist and religious studies. I have yet to read a book or article about Buddhism mentioning Buddhist behavior. (If the old name is too limited for some articles in this category, splitting may also be a solution.) Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 18:00, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Farang Rak Tham: - I like the idea of renaming it as "practices", since I am personally more used to hearing "religious practice" rather than "religious behavior and experience". It would be interesting to read about why it was originally changed from "practice" to "behavior and experience" though; was that discussion held on a Wikipedia talk page? Omanlured (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Omanlured: it was nominated on the Speedy page to be renamed for consistency with others. – Fayenatic London 23:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
'Religious behavior and experience' seems to be a term primarily used in behavioral psychology. 'Practice' is more conventional in the study of religion and in English-language Buddhist literature. I don't think we necessarily have to widen the discussion to the other categories, but I would support making the change proposed as a starting point to that discussion if it's necessary. --Spasemunki (talk) 02:52, 6 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you @Spasemunki: that makes sense. I didn't realize that it was a formal academic term. I'm not sure if it would cause problems if this category was different from others in the same group. Omanlured (talk) 19:51, 9 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Religious_behaviour_and_experience_by_religion currently contains Category:Sikh practices and Category:Bahá'í practices, so I don't see any reason why it would be problematic. Looking at the contents of the category, it seems to me that most of the articles are talking about the history, motivation, and interpretation of intentional behaviors that are aspects of a religious tradition, rather than investigating reactive behavior from a psychological or anthropological perspective. --Spasemunki (talk) 02:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Category splitting may not be a bad idea. Consistency is really my biggest concern here. As Spasemunki pointed out, if "practices" is a more acceptable term when applied to religion, perhaps that should become the norm for all religion categories. –-InvokingvajrasInvokingvajras 12:20, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MER-C 10:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not think that splitting is meaningful. These categories contain nothing (or hardly anything) written from a psychology point of view, so renaming to "practices" for all religions is probably the most practical solution. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:54, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedia Hebrew script templates

Nominator's rationale: For the sake of unification (see the other categories in its supercat), I suggest the category be renamed to Category:Hebrew script templates. Also, the subcategories should mention the word “template” in their names. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 09:29, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematical functions

Nominator's rationale: Do we need a category only owning redirects? 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 09:04, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Additional categories for deletion:
  • Additional category for possible deletion:

Additional categories listed by Anomalous+0 (talk) 22:35, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Yes, by all means, we do. The category system is to systematically categorize a field of knowledge, not to be an index of existing articles. For the category system it is completely irrelevant if the entries in a category happen to be full blown articles or redirects into articles, discussing the topic at hands. Article or redirect is a question of contents organization (and this may change over time), whereas the category system is about the organization of an area of related themes by characteristics. It spans over a more or less broad topic in a more abstract manner, and thus is much more static in nature. What counts is that the entries are relevant for the category (f.e. characteristic keywords recognized by a reader who browses the category system in order to quickly find the info s/he's interested in), and also that the category fits in nicely and logically in the hierarchy of categories, conditions which are both true for the category at hands. The category follows the same orthogonal scheme as f.e. categories Category:Inverse trigonometric functions‎ or Category:Inverse hyperbolic functions. Not having this category would leave an unsystematic gap in the category system, and would be a disservice to readers searching for inverse functions or trying to mind-map elliptic functions. For a further readup on categories, please see WP:CAT.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:57, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If, for you, the navigational benefit is zero, then you are missing out some of the most powerful ways to use the category system to find relevant information (in areas where it is properly defined such as this one). You seem to be looking at this from article context backwards through "What links here?" etc., not from the perspective of a user in the context of the category system remembering (or only guessing) some defining characteristics or keywords trying to find the relevant information by walking down (and up) through category hierarchies (or moving sideways to parallel categories through crosslinks). The user cannot (and "by design" should not) know how contents is organized in a target article, as this is subject to change with the addition or rearrangement of contents any time, whereas the category system is defined by characteristics and therefore remains for the most part static. See WP:CAT.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, you are missing out some of the ways the category system is used for navigation and exploration purposes. See reply below.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And lastly, Category:Trigonometric functions - 65/69; which may need to be dealt with separately/differently from the others.
I strongly suspect that there are even more <shudder> of these categories out there. Perhaps Matthiaspaul would be kind enough to point them out for us? In the mean time, I am going to add the above categories to this CFD, since it is still new and the basic issue is the same for all of them. Anomalous+0 (talk) 22:16, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This view seems to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the category system (and redirects): The primary purpose of the category system is not to be an index of existing articles per se (although there are similarities and it can often be used as partial index); it is a hierarchical meta-structure alongside essential characteristics WP:DEFINING a topic area in order to logically/semantically group entries and allow navigation and exploration alongside those characteristics. For the purpose of being entries in a category, there is no difference between full blown articles and redirects. In fact, redirects are often used to let articles with otherwise misleading titles (from the viewpoint of a category) match the particular semantics of the category. This is a deliberate feature of redirects, not a defect. See WP:REDIR and WP:RCAT, in particular WP:RPURPOSE and WP:RCAT#Article categories:
"Alternative names become a redirect and get categorized the same way as their target. Another example is when a single article covers things known by multiple names [...] It is sometimes helpful for redirects from common alternative names to appear in the index list [...] Some subtopics of articles have well-known names and, over time, may expand to become separate articles. Many articles cover several topics that have been combined. This can happen following a merge of several related articles. Often there are redirects pointing to these subtopics. These redirects can be categorized."
Another feature of redirects is to abstract encyclopedic relevant entries from the actual contents órganization inside articles, so that the contents can be arranged differently from the relevant titles and can easily grow and be rearranged (f.e. split off into new articles or be merged) later on without having to rework the whole infrastructure. This is also why articles can (and should) have multiple incoming redirects catching all the encyclopedic relevant keywords. Just like an article (or redirect) can be in multiple categories, a category can have multiple relevant keywords pointing to the same article. What's relevant for inclusion in a category is the relevance of an entry's title in a category, not the organization of contents in target articles. See WP:CAT:
"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."
That is, not all subtle capitalization or spelling variants of a name which might be covered by redirects should appear in the category system, but those which have defining characteristics certainly should. In our case, this includes the symbolic mathematical function names as well as their expanded function names (and, where applicable, also the Latin or other name variants which are historical relevant and found in the literature), because we don't know which keywords are known or recognized by the reader.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oculi, afaics no-one has said that arccn etc aren't useful (targeted) redirects. The question is whether a content (articles) category should exist for a topic about which we have no articles. If there was (and there isn't) a general rule to categorise redirects "as if they were articles" it would lead to many categories consisting mostly of redirects for alternative names for some topics (thus making the categories less useful). DexDor (talk) 09:05, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? Your statement is in fundamental disagreement with relevant guidelines like WP:RCAT or WP:CAT (already cited further above). While certainly not all redirects need to carry categories, it is perfectly okay for those redirects which are relevant entries (by their very title) to be included in categories. This is a deliberate feature of redirects, not a defect. In this context, there is zero difference between redirects and articles.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete (upmerging any articles if necessary). The statement above that "The category system is to systematically categorize a field of knowledge, not to be an index of existing articles." is a complete misunderstanding of WP:CAT etc which say things like "Opera is a topic category (containing all articles relating to the topic), while Operas is a set category (containing articles about specific operas).". I would probably be in favour of having a simple rule of no redirects in article categories as their misuse probably outweighs any use. See also WikiData. DexDor (talk) 07:07, 18 December 2019 (UTC) DexDor (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of misuse?!? There is no misuse here - the use of redirects as entries in categories is a feature explicitly described in our guidelines, see f.e. WP:RCAT (already cited above).
Describing a usage which is explicitly supported by our guidelines as "misuse" is an assumption of bad faith I take issue with, because when I carefully set this up, I specifically followed the guidelines.
In your quoted text above the guideline uses the word "article" and from this you seem to derive that this would not apply to redirects as well. However, this is just a relaxed usage of vocabulary (in other parts of the guideline they use the word "page" in order to avoid this misconception). A bit further down the guidelines states:
Categorizing pages: Every Wikipedia page should belong to at least one category. (However, there is no need to categorize talk pages, redirects, or user pages, though these may be placed in categories where appropriate.) In addition, each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs.
This is exactly what I wrote above: Certainly not all minor spelling variants need to be categorized, but encyclopedically relevant names (like function names) for sure should.
You are entitled to your opinion, but deletion discussions must be policy-/guideline-based - personal opinions are irrelevant. So, if you want to have a rule not allowing redirects in page categories (which does not exist at present), you will first have to overturn the existing community consensus in an RFC or on the talk page of the respective guideline WP:RCAT, which however currently states the exact opposite and explicitly encourages the usage of redirects as entries in categories (as already cited further above).
Also, in order to convince people (or me), it would be helpful to state what actual problem you run into using redirects. Otherwise it boils down to IDONTLIKE, which is very unhelpful in a deletion discussion. Your link to Wikidata is also not very helpful, because Wikidata is not Wikipedia, but a different project mostly out of our control (f.e. I can't even log in there any more for technical reasons). Our category system existed before Wikidata and is (and has to be) independent of it. Finally, our guidelines and the category FAQ describe that the different ways to find information (links in articles, list articles, category system, search box, nav boxes etc.) are not mutually exclusive and should exist in parallel, because different readers have different needs and preferences. Therefore, unless you have a (yet to be described) use case, which is inhibited by the very existence of the categories above, it is not particularly useful to propose the destruction of essential infrastruction which is useful to others (including me) when exploring this area of knowledge.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:00, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:TLDR. "The category system is to systematically categorize a field of knowledge, not to be an index of existing articles." is just wrong. DexDor (talk) 12:46, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I'm a bit shocked about some users' misconception regarding the purpose of the category system. Above, I have cited the relevant guidelines regarding purpose and usage, and they explicitly describe the usage of redirects as in the example at hands.
But for a constructive discussion, let's become specific:
Per WP:CAT, the essential defining characteristics of the group of so called special functions discussed here are either (some of them are also elementary):
The elliptic functions can be further grouped into:
All of these functions happen to have inverse functions:
The entries actually listed in these categories are encyclopedically relevant and follow one of these patterns:
  • Symbolic function names (sin, sinh, etc.)
  • English function names (Sine, Cosine, etc.)
  • Latin function names (sinus, cosinus, etc.)
  • (In some cases other common major naming variants found in the contemporary or historic literature, but not every possible spelling variant, only the major forms)
The essential defining characteristics as well as the names of entries listed in categories are common usage and can be found in the relevant mathematical literature. Therefore, they are in perfect agreement with WP:CAT, WP:RCAT and WP:RPURPOSE.
What is a bit unusual here is that some of the target articles discuss many functions in context instead of having separate articles for each of these functions. However, per WP:CAT, the category system is following essential defining characteristics, not how contents is actually organized in articles. Otherwise, the category system would have to look completely different depending on if the functions happen to be discussed in separate articles or in huge combining articles - this would render the whole idea of having categories ad absurdum.
Also, if we would remove these categories, this would create considerable damage to the infrastructure: Users browsing the category system would no longer be able to switch back and forth between, say, trigonometric and hyperbolic functions, or Jacobi and Lemniscatic functions and recognize symmetries and differences almost visually. They would no longer be able to easily find the inverses of functions. They would not find out by exploration what is specific about elementary special functions, that f.e. Hacoversine is a trigonometric function, cosinus amplitudinis is a Jacobi elliptic function rather than a trigonometric function (and therefore not find the relevant information in this encyclopedia except for by using the search box - however, search box and category system should exist in parallel), and so on. However, browsing the category system and exporing relations between groups of relevant entries is one of the very purposes of categories as described in WP:CAT. What should be the advantage of keeping readers for using the category system to its full extent? What is the actual problem some seem to be seeing? So far, nobody stated an actual issue they run into except for that they "don't like it". That's not helpful.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:00, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • First, users browsing the category system would be able to switch back and forth between types of functions, we have Category:Types of functions for that.
Second, I thought I was clear about the problem earlier on. The existence of a category suggests that Wikipedia has a lot of different articles about the topic. In this case readers who click every redirect in the category in the expectation of finding new content are only to arrive at the same article time and again. That is just frustrating and feels like deception. Marcocapelle (talk) 04:27, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The idea that removing this categorization would "create considerable damage" is ridiculous. Redirects such as Arccosine have existed in wp for many years without being placed in any article categories; that is the norm in wp categorization. DexDor (talk) 15:41, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Veritas (political party) politicians

Nominator's rationale: Unnecessary and tautologous disambiguation. None of the other uses at Veritas (disambiguation) is likely to be mistaken for a political party. It has been stated that "it is customary to retain the dab in category names" but I have never found any naming policy to support this, despite asking for directions. Opera hat (talk) 01:48, 15 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If this "naming policy" is so well-established, then why isn't it included in the guidelines at Wikipedia:Category names? WP:Category names says that standard WP:Naming conventions apply, and these include naturalness (the current title is ludicrously unnatural), precision (titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the [category], but should be no more precise than that) and conciseness (The title is no longer than necessary to identify the [category]'s subject and distinguish it from other [categories]). All of this is English Wikipedia policy. A custom that parenthetical disambiguation that is necessary for an article title, as in Veritas (political party), should be carried over to a category where it is unnecessary, like Category:Veritas (political party) politicians, is not policy. Opera hat (talk) 01:18, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is policy, determined by consensus at many cfds over many years, and is a speedy criterion. Oculi (talk) 12:21, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I should have been clearer: it is not WP:POLICY. Opera hat (talk) 18:42, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Oculi, to match Category:Veritas (political party). Consistency of naming makes categories much easier to use. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename per nom -- The article has to be at Veritas (political party), because Veritas (Latin for truth) potentially has other uses. However there is no reason why the disambiguator has to be carried into the politicians category, as only a political party will have politicians. We have Birmingham categories at Birmingham, West Midlands, so that Birmingham, AL articles are not added by mistake, though the article is at Birmingham. This is the converse situation, where a disambiguator is unnecessary for the category, though needed for the article. The party only existed for about 10 years as a splinter of a small party, so that its further population is unlikely. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:29, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Hans Baldung

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. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:14, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: per WP:OCEPON, and if I'm not mistaken this is an unneeded parent. Ewulp (talk) 00:50, 15 December 2019 (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:Adolph Menzel

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. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:15, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: fails WP:OCEPON. Ewulp (talk) 00:40, 15 December 2019 (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:Stefan Lochner

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. (non-admin closure) DannyS712 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: per WP:OCEPON; if I'm not mistaken this is an unneeded parent. Ewulp (talk) 00:37, 15 December 2019 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_December_15&oldid=932080398"