Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:02, 13 November 2007

13 November 2007

Geobox categories

Geobox categories (restore|cache|CfD)

I was the closer of this discussion, and am requesting a review following complaints by the maintainer (User:Caroig) of the {{geobox}} template, which had been adapted to auto-populate a series of categories listed in the CfD, including Category:Geobox Range, Category:Geobox River, Category:Geobox Valley and Category:Geobox Settlement.

The nominator (User:Darwinek) described the categories as "redundant" and "violates several Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines WP:NC, WP:ASR, WP:CAT".

Other "delete arguments included:

• Categories in the main namespace are intended for the reader, but these are intended for editors
• We don't label articles based on the infobox they use, unless someone finds a good reason
• Geobox", an in-wikipedia abbreviation, should not be part of content displayed in main namespace

These geobox categories refer not to an attribute of the article's subject, but to the use of a presentation feature, so I examined the debate to see if there was a strong consensus and/or persuasive argument to override guidelines in this case.

I didn't see anything persuasive. Arguments for keeping included:

1. The precedent of the maintenance categories "Articles with unsourced statements since September 2007"
2. The categories don't "trace the usage of the Geobox template but rather denotes articles in a given area which are described using easily parseable geodata"
3. anyone commenting on Geoboxes as such to at least have a look at what they are before suggesting such a far fetched measure as to ditch the whole system
4. To keep track of what's done

None of those arguments looked well-grounded in guidelines.

1. "Articles with unsourced statements since September 2007" is one of a number of categories identifying articles in need of attention, but these categories were for articles which had already received attention: they tracked what was done, rather what was left to do.
2. denoting articles which have geobox data is a self-reference
3. looking at the geoboxes as a whole seemed a bit superfluous, because there was no proposal to delete the {{geobox}} template; the issue at CfD was simply whether geobox should auto-populate these categories
4. We don't have other mainspace categories for jobs done, only for critical jobs awaiting attention

In closing the debate, I noted that in addition to the guidelines cited, there were many precedents at CfD for either deleting or moving to talkpages categories which referred to sourcing of data or features of how the articles were structured,most notably CfD 2007 March 24#"By-source categories".

There were three !votes for deletion, 4 to keep, and one to rename, but per Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators#Rough_consensus, I attached little weight to the arguments of the "keep" voters, whose arguments run counter to the existing guidelines; in particular, they offered no reasons for making geobox an exception to the principle of avoiding self-references which could not be equally applied to many other infoboxes.

So I closed the CfD as "delete", noting (because of the strength of feeling expressed) that I expected some editors to be dissatisfied and asking any concerned to raise the matter on my talk page. I received one message from Caroig (see Deletion of Geobox categories). I was wary of replying, because so much of what was raised seemed to have little to do with the deletion, and more to do with other related disputes; so I set the issue aside to think about, but unfortunately got sidetracked and didn't return to the issue.

The next point thing I heard was a note from Darwinek that the categories had been re-created. The names were slightly different, but all included the word "geobox" and were substantively the same, so I took these to be re-creations and speedy deleted them per WP:CSD#G4.

Subsequent discussion with Caroig, (on my talk and on Caroig's) shows that Caroig is deeply dissatisfied. My suggestion of a DRV was declined, and Caroig says that this requires arbcom and ANI etc, but I thought it would be helpful to seek a review here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

List of nationality transfers in football (soccer) (closed)