Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion

See also: WT:CFD/W, WT:CAT, and WT:CATP

See also: Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/User and WT:CFD/W/M

XFD backlog

V	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
CfD	0	0	129	0	129
TfD	0	1	18	0	19
MfD	0	0	1	0	1
FfD	6	10	14	0	30
RfD	0	0	134	0	134
AfD	0	0	9	0	9

How to rename Category:Wikipedia glossaries?

Category:Glossaries is defined as for published glossaries, while its subcategory Category:Wikipedia glossaries is for stuff like Glossary of cricket terms. I don't think the current names, in particular, "Wikipedia glossaries", are good. We don't have "Wikipedia lists" or such; the name implies it's a glossary of Wikipedia namespace terms, which is not the case (Wikipedia:Glossary is under Category:Wikipedia directories). Any thoughts on how to clen up this mess? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:50, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

It makes sense to me. It's like Category:Wikipedia timelines and Category:Wikipedia categories. If anything, I think Category:Lists probably should be at Category:Wikipedia lists, and the latter should be named something else. Mclay1 (talk) 04:08, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Proposal for additions

Current text

  Important: Do not depopulate a category once it has been nominated at CfD. If you modify the population of a category, or in other ways edit the category while it is subject to a CfD discussion, note that you did so in the CfD (for transparency), and be prepared to revert your edits upon community request. Such editing can hamper other editors' efforts to evaluate a category and participate in the discussion.

Proposed text (additions formatted)

  Important: Do not depopulate a category once it has been nominated at CfD, unless there is an urgent reason for it. If you modify the population of a category, or in other ways edit the category while or just before it is subject to a CfD discussion, note that you did so in the CfD (for transparency), and be prepared to revert your edits upon community request. Such editing can hamper other editors' efforts to evaluate a category and participate in the discussion. Urgent reasons for depopulating are for example vandalism and WP:BLP violations.

Alt text

  Important: In general, do not depopulate a category when nominating it for CfD. If, during (or just prior to) the discussion, you modify the population of a category, or in other ways edit the category while it is subject to a CfD discussion, note that you did so in the CfD (for transparency), and be prepared to revert your edits upon community request. Such editing can hamper other editors' efforts to evaluate a category and participate in the discussion.

- added simpler updated text option. - jc37 13:14, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Ping

@Smasongarrison, Mclay1, Fram, and Johnpacklambert: pinging a few regular CfD participants. By all means feel free to ping more editors. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:09, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Seems completely unnecessary, we have only one editor who misinterprets this even after repeated explanations. And even then his statements are about a different scenario, claiming that you may not remove a BLP violation from a cat if that would depopulate it, even if wasn't already at CfD. Policy text or guidance text shouldn't be made more and more lengthy to accommodate each and every situation, we are not writing law but guides to be applied with common sense. No type of discussion requires one to keep BLP violations or vandalism around. Not CfD, not AfD, not MfD. Fram (talk) 08:35, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

• Support – I think that's a good clarification. While some editors may feel rules are obvious, they're not to many other users, and there's no use not clarifying something. In particular, there are many users (such as myself) who are very active in categorisation but not so much in BLP and so aren't intimately familiar with the rules on the latter. Reading the original text, I would have assumed the rule to not depopulate a category took precedence, since it is written emphatically and with not exceptions. Additionally, because there's no exceptions, the second sentence contradicts the first, making it confusing. In the new text, it's clear that there are some exceptions. Mclay1 (talk) 08:47, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support This is a much needed clarification. If there are acceptable reasons to not follow a rule it is best to spell them out clearly and make it obvious when people can do things. We would be best off not having a rule that says to do things one way and just expect people to know intuitively that there are exceptions. If there are exceptions we should spell them out clearly.John Pack Lambert (talk) 11:41, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
• No. CfD, like all discussions on Wikipedia, are collaborations. And with that in mind, categories often get modified, purged, updated, etc., during the CFD discussion. Compare this to how articles get developed during an AFD. What we're trying to avoid in this text are those who completely overhaul or empty a category, which prevents informed discussion. That said, I agree that the text could be clearer to explain essentially what I just noted. - jc37 13:06, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

• @Jc37: would you be willing to formulate a better alternative text? Marcocapelle (talk) 23:07, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

• Happy to. I placed some basic alt text above. How additionally would you like it updated? - jc37 23:39, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
• I went ahead and added the proposed alt text. Happy to discuss further editing, such as if we need to explicitly note standard policy exceptions, like blp. - jc37 00:39, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

  I think those alt changes are a good alternative, but I think the final sentence of the original is an important clarification, because whether or not BLP violations should be removed immediately or left in to illustrate the point in the CfD is what led to this discussion. Mclay1 (talk) 14:16, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

  Could you please link to the discussion, so that I can better understand the context. - jc37 02:37, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't remember which CfD discussion it was. There was a disagreement between two users a little while ago. Mclay1 (talk) 06:45, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

  • @Jc37: it was between User:Fram and User:Johnpacklambert, that is also why I pinged the both of them. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:16, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

• • I believe the discussion was specifically on a 1 article Egyptian category in a case where an actor had played a role that had a given trait but there was no statement in the article the actor had that trait. I stated this case was an example of why we really would be better off not having 1 article categories at all, at least in cases where they were likely to contain BLPs.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

• Support in spirit. I think that a clarification could be helpful, but I'm not sure which of the proposals would be more effective. ^SMason_Garrison 13:53, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
• I am perfectly ok with the alternative text. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:17, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

"Foo people" for individuals mass C2D violation

Recently, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 December 22#Croats and Serbs was closed as no consensus. In my opinion, the explanations in favor of the current obfuscated practice were rather incoherent, and I'd still like to see this inconsistency with the main article space attended to. There is no single parent category to nominate, however. What would be the best forum instead? A mass CFD for all affected categories? Village pump RFC? --Joy (talk) 13:05, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

It's not really a "violation". WP:C2D doesn't say category names have to match article names. Outside of a few edge cases, such as the discussion you linked, the naming for articles and categories on nationalities and ethnicities is fairly consistent. Articles such as Germans are about the group of people, whereas the category Category:German people is a set category for articles about people. While the category may link to the article as the "main article" for the category, the category is not a topic category about the same topic as the article. The difficulty arises when we try to distinguish between nationality and ethnicity, but for the most part, we categorise people by nationality not ethnicity. Mclay1 (talk) 06:55, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not even arguing against using the primary redirect in the category names. I'm arguing against giving extra meaning to the fact we'd be doing that.

In other words, if we want to have this extra meaning in category splits - some being for individual biographies and some for more general topics - this needs to be indicated in plain English, not by playing some sort of a semantics game with the readers. --Joy (talk) 08:52, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I think biography categories should have a banner at the top indicating that that's what they're for. Topic categories can be explained with some text at the top and a note about adding people to the people subcategory. There will be some cases where the current categorisation isn't organised as best as it should be, and topics and people are mixed together. Mclay1 (talk) 14:07, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Sure, but trying to explain confusing terminology doesn't fix the confusing category labels in the footers of the articles themselves.

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking: Use a link when appropriate, but as far as possible do not force a reader to use that link to understand the sentence. The text needs to make sense to readers who cannot follow links. Users may print articles or read offline, and Wikipedia content may be encountered in republished form, often without links.
• Wikipedia:Readers first: Try to avoid jargon – but where it is particularly relevant or where it is necessary, explain all jargon clearly on the article page – a link to another article is not enough.

If an article uses the terms Fooians and Fooian people interchangeably, linking categories about these shouldn't deviate from that, requiring the readers to keep checking for redefined terms. --Joy (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

There's an elegant solution available, actually. "German people" should mean "the German people" whatever that is—don't look at me; I'm an individualist personally, whereas a category for articles about individual Germans should be category:German persons. In general we should use "persons" as the unmarked plural of "person"; "people" can sometimes be used as a plural for "person" but it has other baggage as well, as is rather sharply illustrated in this conversation. I don't expect this will fly; folks will say it's too legalistic or too American or something, But it would neatly solve the problem. --Trovatore (talk) 19:04, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

We can also have Category:German individuals or Category:Biographies of Germans or any number of other descriptive phrases that spell out clearly what the intent is, without requiring the readers to jump through any hoops to understand it. --Joy (talk) 20:39, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

It's a more general peeve of mine, really. I think we should use "persons" as the plural of "person" in all Wikipedia-internal contexts and most internal-adjacent contexts like this one. It seems to be a bit of a mix. For example Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons is correctly named, but then it has a section talking about "transgender people". --Trovatore (talk) 21:05, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

• @Joy and Trovatore: I would not mind changing to e.g. Category:German individuals or Category:German persons if done consistently in the whole tree, but I would also not mind keeping things as they are. For sure a lot of effort is needed for what I see is a minor improvement. If you wish a next step would be a mass nomination at WP:CFD. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:58, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Expanding C2D paragraph

Suggest to add the text: "Disagreeing with the article title is not enough reason for opposing C2D. Instead if someone disagrees with the article title they can start a WP:RM procedure on the article talk page and they can request the CFDS discussion to be put on hold while the RM discussion is running." @Smasongarrison, Mclay1, Fram, Johnpacklambert, and Jc37: pinging a few regular CfD participants. By all means feel free to ping more editors. There is currently a discussion on WP:CFDS related to this with User:Dudley Miles and it happens more often. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:34, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

In general, I'm fine with this, but I don't want to entirely lock out opposition - sometimes, it's better to not match an article title. For example - the target name of merged cats, or due to overlap cat; Due to matching similarity grouped cats; intersection of multiple parents; cat redirects aren't cheap, like article redirects are, so sometimes cat names need more precision; container cats sometimes need "extra words, as they group things, compared to articles, which explain things; and so on.

All that said, we could probably write in a general note about exceptions due to WP:PRECISION, and dealing with cat grouping/containing things vs article explaining things, and that cat redirects aren't cheap. Does that cover it, or am I missing examples?

I think this is at least somewhat said or at least alluded to in C2C and C2D. - jc37 09:50, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with the addition. As expressed above, there are sometimes reasons why a category should not match an article, but I don't think the proposed addition changes anything in that regard; there are still valid reasons people can object. I think also we need to slightly expand the information about how to oppose to make it clear that objections need to include valid reasoning behind why the request does not meet speedy criteria or include an alternative proposal that the objector actually plans to go through with. Sometimes objections simply amount to WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and there's nothing stopping people from writing "Oppose: Purple monkey dishwasher". Currently, whenever there is any sort of discussion or disagreement at speedy that doesn't result in a definitive agreement, the request is indefinitely stalled. Forcing something that should obviously go ahead into a full CfD is wasting the time of other editors and the CfD admins who are already strained with the normal load. Admins should be able to use their judgement when it comes to overruling invalid objections. Mclay1 (talk) 12:05, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Category creation proposal

Is there a place where we can discuss the creation of yet unexisting categories? I want to propose creating some more hidden maintenance categories and am not sure where to raise this issue. Just to let editors know what I am thinking, I find the Category:Articles lacking sources category very useful. I think it would be helpful to have more hidden categories that are tied to tag placements (such as one source tags, more citations needed tags, etc.) I'd like to see more automated hidden category placements attached to the various tags put on articles so that a) editors can find articles needing improving b) coordinated editing/article improvement drives can be implemented. Not sure where to propose this type of thing. Best.4meter4 (talk) 19:22, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

@4meter4, at Wikipedia talk:Cleanup? Qwerfjkltalk 18:13, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

Small categories

There was a recent question at helpdesk about what the current guidance on small categories is. I asked for help at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Small categories, any advice would be appreciated. TSventon (talk) 14:28, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Reverting JJMC89 bot III

There was rough consensus to rename a category at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 January 20#Category:Fantasy books by series to reflect its contents. After this, I recreated the category (Category:Fantasy books by series) for a completely different purpose. In this case, the actual purpose its name suggested in the first place: a container category for Categories by work, a purpose which is already widely established throughout the category system (Mass media by franchise, Films by franchise, Television series by franchise, American television episodes by series, Drama television characters by series, Action films by series, Comedy films by series, Science fiction films by series, Video games by franchise, Literary characters by work, and so and so on.) I worked diligently to accurately divide the existing articles and categories between Fantasy novel series, Fantasy novels by series, Fantasy book series and Fantasy books by series. And I only just now noticed that JJMC89 bot III undid my work. Of course anyone is free to nominate that new category for CfD. And I know why JJMC89 bot III deleted the category, but it is not appropriate that it did in this case. And certainly not appropriate to merge its contents with the other category. How can I restore my edits? Οἶδα (talk) 21:49, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

The bot follows instructions at WP:CFDW. In this case Ymblanter told the bot to do that merge with no edit summary. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:14, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

I was probably implementing the result of a CfD. I do not remember why I asked the bot to merge it whereas the CfD result was "rename", I guess both categories existed at the time in which case rename was not possible, only merge. Ymblanter (talk) 02:50, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I see, it stayed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working because we were too slow with checking and fixing backlinks, and the bot treated the new category as an old one and processed it as well. There should be some way f reverting the second merge keeping the first one, but I do not think I have technical skills to do it (except for manually). We probably should ask the bot owner. Ymblanter (talk) 03:03, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

(Now I removed the category from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working, so it should be safe to recreate). Ymblanter (talk) 03:04, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, Ymblanter!! Οἶδα (talk) 04:07, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Cfd § Template-protected edit request on 17 April 2026

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Cfd § Template-protected edit request on 17 April 2026. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Category:Defunct Mexican League teams

Can someone in the know take a look at the above cat. It seems to have fallen thru the cracks. I believe it was supposed to be bundled with this discussion. Rgrds. --BX (talk) 11:46, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for reporting, I have nominated it for speedy move. Ymblanter (talk) 20:52, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Category:Hokkaidō Prefecture articles missing geocoordinate data

This category has a lot of transclusions, and I can not figure out where they are coming from. Could somebody please help me to remove this category from the transclusions? Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 11:58, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Looks like it's coming from {{coord missing}} and can be resolved with an edit like this. Shouldn't be too hard to fix—I can run a quick AWB job probably sometime tomorrow if no one beats me to it first :). GoldRomean (talk) 12:29, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 20:43, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

The template automatically resolves the category redirect so it shouldn't be an issue. Mclay1 (talk) 00:24, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I made that change to the template in 2022, so that there is no need to make any edits to the pages. Just add {{R from template-generated category}} on the category redirect (like this) to identify why the redirect should be kept.

Gonnym argued at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Redirect/Archive_7#Resolving_category_redirects that this is a bad practice; Qwerfjkl offered support in a specific situation; no consensus was reached. – Fayenatic London 10:41, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

C2F merge issue

When a category merge is processed, the articles in the merged category have the merged category replaced by the target categories, keeping the same sort key. When this happens for C2F (a category with only one eponymous article being upmerged to its parents), the sort key is often a space to sort the article at the top of its eponymous category, then when it's upmerged, it ends up being erroneously sorted at the top of the parent categories, and I've found that many editors don't follow up to fix that. Is there a way that User:JJMC89 bot III could remove a space sort key when it's speedy merging or some other automated solution? Pinging the owner of the bot and CfD admins: User:JJMC89, User:Ymblanter, User:Pppery, User:Fayenatic london. Mclay1 (talk) 00:34, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

• We could add "If the member page currently has a special sort key e.g. a space to ensure top-sorting, remove it" to the C2F instructions at WP:CFDS, but it would be better to automate this. @JJMC89: is the above suggestion re speedy merges do-able, please? – Fayenatic London 12:06, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Unhiding a hidden category

Is CfD the correct venue to propose that a hidden category be unhidden, or should I try boldly unhiding it and be prepared to bring it here if reverted? Mjroots (talk) 07:58, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I would say you should go ahead and unhid it. Ymblanter (talk) 19:18, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

 Done Category:IMO numbers and Category:MMSI Number have been unhidden. Mjroots (talk) 10:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Reconstructing history of instructions of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy

I would like to be able to see the history of how the instructions and criteria at WP:CFD/S have evolved over time and to see easily if they change in the future without adding Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy to my watchlist. Because of how WP:CFD/S is organized, the page Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy is edited a lot, which makes it impossible to inspect the history of the instructions near the top of the page using the regular tools. I posted about it before, but now I finally have the technical means of reconstructing the history of the page. In particular, I have a very good idea of how the code of User:andrybak/Scripts/Unsigned helper could be adapted into another tool to find each edit which changed the "header" part of the page Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy.

technical details

At the time of writing, the history of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy has over 160000 (one hundred sixty thousand) revisions (see page statistics). The way "Unsigned helper.js" works under the hood is very slow but it is fast enough for the purposes of this project – loading the metadata-only (without wikitext) for all 160000+ revisions takes about 10 minutes. There are probably ways of speeding it up that I haven't considered – my knowledge of queries available through mw.Api is fairly limited.

As a proof of concept, I used the existing "Unsigned helper.js" to find a couple of older edits:

1. the word "criteria" appeared for the first time in Special:Diff/12471728
2. the first time the word "category" spelled in all lowercase was added in Special:Diff/20030600
3. the wikitext '''speedy renaming''' or '''speedy merging''' appeared in Special:Diff/618596512 and got capitalized in Special:Diff/849567929
4. the first mention of G7 was in Special:Diff/504687000, but the wikilink to WP:CSD#G7 was added later in Special:Diff/516786295.

As it exists right now, Unsigned helper cannot be used to reconstruct the whole history of the page. It is explicitly implemented to only be able to search for wikitext that is present in the latest revision of the page. That's why a new script would be needed.

I want to gauge whether this is something that users of CFD and CFD/S would find useful, before committing time and energy to this. Suggestions of how this could be better achieved are very welcome. The overall plan is:

1. Implement the (non-existent at the moment) script described above
2. Gather a list of diff links using the script. It would also be useful to have someone else validate the list of the diff links before proceeding to the next step.
3. Create the page Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Header revision by revision by using content from the diff links, with attribution to them. It would be a kind of extremely tedious manual import.
4. Replace most of the content above the section § Current requests with a transclusion {{Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Header}}.

The separate page Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Header then can be put into watchlist by users interested in keeping an eye on any changes to the criteria, procedures, and instructions. —⁠andrybak (talk) 16:24, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

The speedy rules used to have their own subpage, but it was merged into the main page so that, when viewing old requests, the rules show up as they were at the time. If we transclude the rules like we used to, old diffs of requests will show the current transclusion rather than how it appeared at the time. As you say though, it does have the downside of making it quite hard to find the edits of changes to rules. Using the edit history of the old subpage, you can at least see how the rules have changed since then compared to now. Mclay1 (talk) 07:42, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Category:National Football League

Anyone know if there was any previous discussion about the mismatch between Category:National Football League and its sub-categories (non-C2D)? Gonnym (talk) 06:34, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2025_March_4#National_Football_League_>_NFL * Pppery * _{in solidarity} 06:43, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Gonnym (talk) 06:57, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

How to merge more than two categories

Hi I would like to propose the merger of three categories into another. How do we do that? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 19:17, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Which categories? Blueboar (talk) 13:42, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

• @Davidstewartharvey: propose renaming one of the three, and propose the other two to be merged to the new name. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:56, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:XFDcloser § Add to CFDW action

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:XFDcloser § Add to CFDW action. Trialpears (talk) 18:10, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Query to editors involved with categories on whether "pruning" is needed

Hey all,

Over the past few days, I've been trying to make sense of our categories on terrorism. Cleaning this area up has been attempted several times in the past (see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 April 5#Terrorism in the 1990s, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 May 2#Category:Right-wing terrorism in the 20th century and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 February 27#Category:Terrorism by year) but they were limited in their targetting of categories in certain branches if the terrorism category tree. I'm interested in consolidating branches of the tree and getting rid of confusing ones, are redundant or that overlap. So, even though there are thousands of categories involved, I'm just going to list branches of terrorism that are organized by decade to get a general idea of what hierarchy is and so we can look at the entire tree and not individual categories. I hope after reviewing these and offering your opinions, we could formulate another mass nomination. So, here goes:

• Category:Terrorism by decade
• Category:Terrorist incidents by decade
• Category:Political violence by decade
• Category:Nationalist terrorist incidents in the 20th-century (this is actually divided by decade)
• Category:Right-wing terrorist incidents by decade
• Category:Right-wing political violence by decade
• Category:Right-wing terrorism by decade

While this might seem like Wikipedia has an outweighed focus on right-wing violence, it looks like these category branches were created and expanded first, we actually have thousands of terrorism categories divided in different ways by time (year, decade, century, millennium), geography (country, continent), religion (Muslim, Christian) and ideology (right-wing, left-wing, communist, anti-communist, take your pick). I just hope by reducing the thousands of categories to the bare bones, we could more easily decide whether, for example, "Nationalist" overlaps with "political violence" or whether "right-wing terrorism" was covered by the other right-wing categories. I look forward to hearing your ideas before we come up with a mass nomination. Thank you for reading this and considering the questions it raises. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:44, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Don’t cut and paste when relisting

Can we stop cut and pasting relisted discussions to new pages?

When did this practice start? Was there a formal discussion to do it?

it has downsides of:

1. Hides relisted backlogged discussions from the backlog.

2. Breaks watchlistlisting

The notion that moving old discussions to the top of the daily lists attracts more attention is flawed. People who follow the daily pages already saw it, and it makes looking at the new entries less attractive, which is a barrier to newcomers to CfD.

- SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:37, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The instructions are at {{Cfd relisted}} and were written in 2016. TSventon (talk) 00:40, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks!

That was done by User:Tavix.

It doesn’t seem to have been flagged here at WT:CfD, but Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 16#Closure script seems related.

- SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:56, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

That sounds like an argument to stop relisting completely. I think there's merit to that. -- Tavix ^(talk) 02:56, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I argue, don’t relist unless you relist with a re-focusing comment, or to correct an error such as failure to list properly or notify properly and this impacts minimum closing time. But most relists seem to have because procedural and pointless.

But when you do list, leave it on the original nomination date.

I don’t mean to criticise your fixing of scripts and bots in 2016. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:11, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Incomplete cleanup by JJMC89 bot III

Further to my post at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 17#Bad edits by Cydebot. The bot has changed (it's now JJMC89 bot III (talk · contribs)), but the problem remains.

Every week (sometimes more often) there's an update to Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories and it's usually quite short - ten or so entries, of which three (specifically, these three) are permanent, and the remainder usually fall into two groups: (i) newbie errors (failure to understand the cat tree) where the only category on the page is itself; and (ii) the result of a CFM where a category was merged into one of its own parents. Regardless of the group, it's normally a matter of minutes to work out and fix these issues. What I can't do is prevent them from happening again.

Today's report is much longer than usual: it has 96 entries, and most of these are of the form /Category:Works set in .*/ - when there are several similar titles in the report, this is a giveaway to a CFM or CFR that either wasn't thought through properly, or was not fully processed.

A week or so ago, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 June 22#Fiction set in $YEAR (nominated by LaundryPizza03 (talk · contribs)) was closed by Timrollpickering (talk · contribs) as Merge/rename all. Accordingly, JJMC89 bot III was tasked with performing the moves and ancillary edits. Unfortunately the job was either not properly prepared for, or not carried out completely, with the result that many categories are now members of themselves. Consider for example Category:Fiction set in the 1090s. This was moved to Category:Works set in the 1090s. The cat page contains only {{Fiction set in decade category}} which puts the Category:Works set in the 1090s into itself.

Please could somebody:

1. Work out the best fixes for these categories, and apply them
2. Supply detailed instructions that can be included on WP:CFD#NOM, WP:CFDAI, or both, on how to prevent re-occurrence and what to do when categories are dumped into themselves

Thanking you all in advance. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:47, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

This should have been posted to Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working where more technical eyes can be found. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:16, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Obviously, the solution is to update the templates that populate those self-categorizations. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:22, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Replace all instances with {{Category series navigation}}, as seen at Category:Works set in the 1890s. See also Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2026_July_18#Template:Fiction_set_in_year_category. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

All of these templates can be replaced with AWB. If there are instances of a category being manually placed in itself, those can be cleaned up using AWB as well. Requested at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Replace_a_template_at. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:35, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I have just updated the templates to use the new name and avoid circular categorization. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:27, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

It's still happening. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:51, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Obviously, this is happening because of a downmerge. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:19, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Speedy nomination not fulfilled

Most of the categories in this request were renamed... except for Category:Rock, Rock, Rock! character redirects to lists, which was missed (it should be at Category:Rock, Rock, Rock! character redirects). Pinging Timrollpickering, who put the batch on CFDW. -Brainulator9 (TALK) 23:49, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, must have deleted it when clearing out the excess text. It's listed now. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:20, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

People by district or neighborhood

Category:People by city district or neighborhood correct me if I'm wrong, aren't these normally considered too granular? I've seen similar deleted and have nominated my own for deletion for that reason. I just didn't realize there were this many categories for district/neighborhood. grapesurgeon (talk) 10:45, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Would it make sense to have these as non-diffused subcategory, without the "by" diffusing category? If there's one district or neighborhood that's a particularly prolific source of some sort of person, it would make sense, but that doesn't mean there needs to be a (often trivial) category for each other district or neighborhood in the same larger entity. The existence of "Broadway actors" or "Greenwich Village poets" wouldn't imply that there whould be "Actors by New York City neighborhood" also having the subcat "Canarsie actors", or "Poets by New York City neighborhood" also having the subcat "Far Rockaway poets". Largoplazo (talk) 11:24, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

This should depends on if it's conventional to see the same people described in reliable sources as being from that place. If a city district has a substantial history and many residents, and is equivalent to any other historical subdivision, I don't see why it would be too granular. If it's a small neighborhood of a small city where we can't see such identification in the sources, then it should be removed as WP:OR. --Joy (talk) 14:47, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Categories missed in batch nomination

Hi, the below categories were tagged for a batch nomination for upmerging into Category:People from Podolia Governorate, but somehow got missed/their tags got reversed and ended up not being upmerged with the rest. Can someone figure out how to get these upmerged without going thru another nomination (three batches got merged with no opposes).

• Category:People from Yampol uezd
• Category:People from Ushitsa uezd
• Category:People from Vinnitsa uezd
• Category:People from Proskurov uezd
• Category:People from Olgopol uezd
• Category:People from Letichev uezd
• Category:People from Litin uezd
• Category:People from Gaysin uezd
• Category:People from Bratslav uezd
• Category:People from Balta uezd

Thanks, Renata•3 21:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Any best practices for giant CfD nominations, with 2700+ proposed renamings?

At Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Rename all userbox categories, I outlined a plan, that involves creating a single category renaming nomination for over 2700 categories, which are in the category tree of Category:Userboxes.

Could anyone please give advice on how best to proceed with such nomination? Just straight up nominate all of them at the same time using AWB/JWB/wAwB (I have access to the latter two, but might end up asking for help at WP:AWBREQ)? Or maybe do something fancier: e.g. nominate only the very top of the category tree (19 such categories directly in Category:Userboxes), and after successful renaming do 2700+ speedy renaming nominations per C2C: Consistency with established category tree names? Or maybe something in between? —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:03, 7 August 2026 (UTC)