Misplaced Pages

I have edited the list; several of the categories appeared more than once in the earlier listing; there are 368 categories and subcategories, not 567. Still not done; will update as soon as I am.—Chidom   04:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I have tagged all the subcategories. (I have also formatted the list into columns to make scrolling to the comments easier.)—Chidom   05:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, Adding these categories to the ends of articles would be incredibly unwieldy. For an animal occurring in every country on the list, the article for the animal would need 132 categories listed at the end of the article. Creation of these categories cites a CfD that I can't find.—Chidom   05:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Changing my recommendation

(moved information to top under withdrawal notice)

Update I'm hopeful that the sheer number of the subcategories (567 368 total categories and subcategories) is evidence that this is extreme overcategorization and that some will reconsider their "Keep" response as a result.—Chidom   17:34, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Further update It makes no sense to me to categorize fauna (or flora or biota, for that matter) by artifical political lines rather than geographical or topographical boundaries. Categorizing "Desert fauna" with subcategories listing fauna specific to a particular desert makes sense. For example (and I'm making up species here, bear with me): Let's say fauna common to most deserts includes "Desert skunk", "Desert minotaur", etc. The Mojave Desert has specific fauna, i.e., "Mojave skunk" and "Mojave minotaur". The "Desert fauna" category would include the "Desert skunk/minotaur", but not the "Mojave Desert" fauna. The "Mojave fauna" category would include the "Mojave skunk/minotaur", but not the other "Desert fauna". It makes no sense to separate fauna into states or even countries unless that is their specific and unique location; if information regarding the fauna within a political boundary is desired, it should be an article. Certainly, "Fauna of Eastern Texas", "Fauna of Northern Texas", "Fauna of Southwestern Texas", and "Fauna of Western Texas" are overcategorization.

As to the comment that there are only a "handful" of species that would fall into several different countries, I beg to differ: for example, here is a partial list of the articles that are in the category Category:Fauna of Scotland. There are more than 200 articles listed in the category, the following are 150 of the ones that I believe are to be found in widespread regions all over the globe, let alone countries: (I'm not familiar with the remainder of the list, they may well be specific to Scotland; given it's proximity to mainland Europe, however, I would very much doubt it.)

Just to take one case, the European polecat article is included in the following additional categories:

• Category:Mustelids
• Category:Fauna of Belgium
• Category:Mammals of Estonia

What is to prevent this list expanding to include every country? Wouldn't it be more practical and useful to include information in the European polecat article with regard to how widespread it is? And create articles along the lines of Fauna found throughout Europe, Fauna found in the English Isles, etc. that would list species found in widespread areas? The article would have a few categories and be listed in relevant articles regarding the more common species to be found in a region's fauna.

hmmm - i disgree. Although i agree that some of the categories you nominate are indeed pointless, i think it is very valuable to know what fauna can be found within certain countries even if they are not endemic and even if in the case of "Scottish" birds they can fly across borders. Agreed that if you want info on a particular bird it may not NECESSARILY be valuable to know if it appears in Scotland, BUT it could certainly be useful if rather than looking at a specific species, one is taking a broader look at the ecology of an area (country, island, continent, etc). It could be argued that researching say birds in scotland is not very scientific (maybe), but most people aren't scientific. I bet there are a number of people out there (in Scotland?) who want to look up what birds appear in Scotland. The fact that these birds don't respect human-created political boundaries, or even the English Channel makes the list no less interesting to them. And to have the same species also listed on say an Irish, English or French category is not problem for me either. It shows where the bird can be found and is a great navigational tool. --Merbabu 01:07, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The point you make is quite valid, but the argument is not about whether lists of fauna by country/state/province should exist — they clearly should and they are useful — but whether categories rather than list articles are the best way of doing this in Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages:Categories, lists, and series boxes suggests that: "An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used, however — categories become less effective the more there are on a given article." Like you said, animal don't respect political boundaries and that's why I would be in favour of categorization by broad biogeographical region, but not by small countries and political/administrative divisions. Luigizanasi 03:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, i did not interpret this as a list vs. category debate - i can't see that in the proponent's reasoning. Rather, he saw the main category as worthy of deletion and hence ALL subcategories are therefore pointless without even looking at them individually. Sure, some are highly pointless, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of all the good ones too. Maybe I have missed something.

Secondly, my point is that although animals do exist across borders, readers are interested in what (political) countries various species exist. Sure, maybe this is not that scientific, but it is a reader interest issue.

Either way, this nomination whould have been better served had the proponent commented on each of the 500-odd categories he has listed for removal, rather than this blunt "they are all bad" one-size-fits-all approach. Yes, that is more work for him, but that is his responsobolity to justify it properly, right? I fear that good categories will go because people agree there are some bad ones. --Merbabu 03:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

As for "the proponent of the deletion has to do a whole lot more work", if Category:Fauna by country is deleted as proposed, the subcategories will be "broken" and, in the case of the ones that are useful, will need to be recreated. The additional reason for tagging all the subcategories is to get input from anyone who is monitoring any of the categories/subcategories (I finally got it, Kbdank71).

Who would then be redoing these categories - furthermore, who is going to record what info was in these sub-categories before they are deleted? This is the whole problem with this proposal. Rather than a blunt top-down down approach, should "the proponent" be going through and weeding out the poor ones???? The proposal is ridiculous. --Merbabu 07:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Lastly, please review Misplaced Pages:Categories, lists, and series boxes for an explanation of the differences between the three and the advantages and disadvantages of each.—Chidom   06:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - The category that you nominated was created per Misplaced Pages:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 August 20#Category:Animals by country. Do you mean that one or all the subcategories? --After Midnight 02:22, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Response - My nomination was intended to include all the subcategories of Category:Fauna by country in the nomination for deletion; why keep subcategories of a category that's gone? I'm not sure what the purpose of the creation of these was; instructions for their use would have to be explained over and over and over to avoid someone putting scads of them at the end of an article; that explanation is unlikely to happen, thus creating more cleanup tasks.—Chidom   04:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Your response is the crux of the problem with your proposal. Just because 1 sub-category may be poor, (eg, Category:Avifauna of South Dakota doesn't mean that other highly valuable and useful subcategories must therefore also be removed (eg, Category:Fauna of Australia & Category:Fauna of Indonesia. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. You say that 567 sub-categorie mean they all need to be deleted - what about the good subcategories?? I think you need to be a bit more discerning. Nominate specific sub-categories, not all of them. --Merbabu 12:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, I would propose the Azerbaijani solution: make articles out of these instead of categories. Great topic for an article, but having categories on all of these would either get unbelievably unwieldy or require somewhat arbitrary inclusion criteria ("OK, this animal is in 180 countries, but lets just put it in Fauna of X because its important to X" or something to that effect). Recury 14:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Some of these are essential, eg Australia, Madagascar. Wimstead 18:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep, Is this a mass nomination? If so, you need to tag every single subcategory (many of the subcats are also further subcategorized). These categories are not for animals that can be found in every country (and I don't think anybody has used them that way). They are for species (subspecies in many cases) that are native to only one or two countries. I think the issue you mention is nonexistent. If somebody has added an animal that can be found across the world to loads of these categories, then the cats should just be removed from the article, but I don't see any reason to delete all these useful categories. --musicpvm 22:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Response I'm unaware that all the subcategories of a category nominated for deletion need to be nominated individually, the instructions for nominating a category seem to indicate otherwise, but aren't very clear on this point.—Chidom   04:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC) (Requirement has been made clear.)—Chidom   17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

ResponseThe categories don't state that they are only to be used for "species (subspecies in many cases) that are native to only one or two countries" and obviously, somebody thinks they are "for animals that can be found in every country"; as somebody has actually "used them that way". See the references by Pavel Vozenilek below.—Chidom   17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

is just the worst. I deleted all items from "Czech Republic" as either completely nonsensical or not endemic. This is unmaintainable. Pavel Vozenilek 23:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Grossly misused - look at this example. If kept add text requiring that the animal must be endemic for this or that country into every subcategory. Also add information where to put animals that could be found over several countries. But even with this I expect poor to absurd results.

Possibly working would be classification by large region like Sahara or North Asia or Madagascar, not by political entities. Pavel Vozenilek 23:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - Deleting this category is innaproproiate without discussing the subcategories first. If you want to delete the subcategories, tag all of them and start over with a new nomination. Also, per musicpvm, if they are being misused, address that through culling, instead of deleting the category. --After Midnight 02:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep A useful part of each country's menu. Brammen 09:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete or Rename to Category:Endemic animals by country for the use of Madagascar, Australia, etc. Some animals are found in more than a hundred countries, we really shouldn't have 100+ categories for each of these animals. bogdan 13:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The rename could be also solution. Pavel Vozenilek 21:19, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Or possibly Category:Endemic animals by region. In some cases, the region is the same as the country, but not always.

That sounds as the best solution. Either this or delete. Pavel Vozenilek 17:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

House mouse would have to be in virtually *all* the country categories, because they can be found in almost all places inhabited by humans. (currently, that article is just in Category:Mammals of Estonia...) bogdan 22:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The description of each category should state that it only includes native animals. Categories are for navigation, and it would be useless adding introduced animals to a category. --liquidGhoul 14:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep for now, bring back the appropriate ones for renaming to "endemic" and then reconsider. Note that the Biota and Fauna categories need to be looked at in the same way. Golfcam 22:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Subcategories not tagged. I'm relisting this for another week. Someone might want to go through and tag the subcats. Original discussion here. --Kbdank71 13:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - these are very useful categories. Species distributions are almost always discussed by country. It's far better to have the categories at the end of the page, then it is to list all the countries in the article. As for the idea that "many" animals are found in "over 100 countries"...really? With a handful of exceptions, this is false, even if you count the naturalised range of a species in addition to its native range. Rather than delete all the categories, just don't use them on rats and houseflies, and the problem disappears. Guettarda 21:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
  • In such cases (housefly, etc) it may be enough to name the countries, if any, where the animal does NOT occuur. Lycaon 07:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. I don't think anyone is intent on listing absolutely every animal that is found in any particular country (especially since not every animal even has a category). These categories are extremely useful to someone who is looking for information on a country, and by the coloring of the list of categoriues above, it would seem that there are very few of these categories that actually exist. I completely agree with Guettarda, above. I don't think they should be renamed, either, as the current titles are concise and to the point. Making the category titles even longer is absurd when the concise existing titles work just as well, if not better. ···日本穣 07:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Rename from "by country" to "by geographic region" (or something like that). As stated above, it shouldn't be by political boundaries (too many cats, and waaay too much overlap), but it's valuable as a regional list (australia, sahara desert, etc). This means deleting all country-based sub-categories that aren't geographic regions (like australia). - jc37 07:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, overcat. >Radiant< 09:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• (very) Strong Keep - i don't really understand the arguments for or against the "by country" categories, and to be honest I am not too concerned. BUT, i am strongly in favour of categories for each country. I often use Category:Fauna of Indonesia - i see no reason why that should be removed. Furthermore, the argument that no-one is going to label all these is pointless - Indonesia is a clear example of it having being done - there are over 200 species listed. To remove all those cats would be a huge loss, how would we replace them all?. it is also an important subcategorie of Category:Natural history of Indonesia. Removal is lunacy --Merbabu 11:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep natural part of Enviroment of country, quite useful.--Lokyz 16:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I understand the problem but this is the wrong solution. Take a look at the articles in Category:Birds in Britain - these clearly belong in that category, and we do not have the problem which (as I understand it) is the reason for this deletion proposal. Removal of articles which are not of the type "<species X> in <country Y>" from categories entitled "<higher-level taxon encompassiong species X> in <country Y>" is the answer. SP-KP 18:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I note that each example for keeping has been a island region which also is a country (Australia, Indonesia, Britain). I agree that these (and ones like them, such as the US regional ones - northeastern/southeastern/etc) should stay, but Rhode Island, or Macedonia? It's too much. Over-categorisation. If this "too large" nomination is "keep", I think it should likely be relisted, with that clarification. (I think it's too late to try to modify the existing nomination at this point.) - jc37 19:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Distribution at the level of country is commonly used in biogeography and macroecology, especially when there isn't data for sub-national units. The science that studies distributions uses country-level descriptions. Presumably you are speaking on the basis on professional qualifications in the field? Guettarda 03:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep for now per SPKP. Also why is
• I've already said I am a strong keep on this, but now I am questioning even the need for the "must be endemic" for inclusion. Why? The fauna of a particular country is not less important to it, nor is the distribution of particular species in a country any less significant just because it is not endemic. --Merbabu 02:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and convert to lists (except island groups - Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, Indonesia). It seems to me that this is one case where lists would serve much better. Once they are done, they're done. For example, Puma would have to be in every country in the Americas, and practically all of the US states and Canadian provinces. Similarly, the Grey wolf would be in every country in the northern hemisphere. Somewhat absurd. I would not be opposed to categorizing by some type of broad ecological region, but categorizing countries/states/provinces is silly. Luigizanasi 04:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Slightly before my time, but wheren't categories introduced to avoid long lists? Personally, while I agree with your sentiment the usage of many of these, deleting some of them is a bad idea, especially island groups like Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand etc. Incidentally, there is an underused category, Category:Cosmopolitan species, for wide ranging species. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that island groups could use their own categories. In my mind, each one is "a braod ecological zone". I note that those who find the categories useful only mentioned the island groups and Australia, although I believe Australia could be split in different regions/zones. Hence the4 change in my vote. The problem with using Category:Cosmopolitan species is that it doesn't lend itself to creating lists of animals in each country, which seems to be the intent of most of this categorisation. While a list of animals in, say, Vermont is a good thing, it's not going to be very different from New York State, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachussets, Quebec (although Quebec will also have Arctic species), Ontario, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. For North America, we could have, for example, categories for animals and birds of the Arctic, Subarctic boreal forest, Pacific Cordillera, Great Plains, Northeastern forests, Southwest and Northern Mexico, Southeast, Gulf of Mexico. Even then there would be considerable overlap. Luigizanasi 02:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep and standardise the bird cats to use one format (Avifauna sounds horrible, so I'd move them all to Birds of X).--07:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I use them, so they are useful. I would find the deletion incredibly annoying. For any future reference, I use Category:Frogs of Australia, which is a great example of what these categories should be like. Don't use the bad examples as reasons to delete. Clean them up, it probably takes less effort. On a side note, I agree with the splitting up of Earth based on geographic, not political, boundaries. I brought up a discussion on it at WP:TOL recently, if anyone is interested. The problem with this, however, is how to split up the world. The US state categories are ridiculous. Australia has larger states, with more endemic species, and doesn't need to split up categories. I would support the merging of North America into geographic regions (may be a good experiment to see if that type of splitting up works!). Thanks --liquidGhoul 14:14, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Yes, there are problems, and inclusion criteria need to be specified, but this blanket proposal throws out the baby with the bathwater.--Curtis Clark 14:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - The error is in the categorization process and not in the categories. --Berton 14:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete but if any categorization is comprehensive, convert to list. Most categories seem to be randomly added to various pages. Careful regional faunas are invariably entered as lists along with references and citations. Shyamal 15:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: Would an ---in article--- template better serve this as oppose to a Category? E.g. A template saying "This animal/plant can be found in the following countries:" or "Countries this animal/plant is found in" or "This animal/plant is native to the following countries" (and include a template similar to the one that lists all the "Members of the World Trade Organisation") As seen here -- CaribDigita 19:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: There is already a range map where this is (or can be) indicated pictorially. Shyamal 08:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete This becomes increasingly useless when a species is found in many areas (I'd hope no one will add these categories to Tyto alba...) Ucucha 19:13, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Isn't that something of a "baby with the bathwater" issue? Sure, there are likely to be a handful of problematic species, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad system for vast majority of species. Guettarda 03:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep No good reason is given to delete these categories; just because there are (of necessity) many of them is no reason to delete them! Whether native or not, having plants, animals, etc identified with their country is certainly appropriate for an encyclopedia. Where else would a student or other reader go to find such information? Thanks Hmains 02:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
• Very Strong Keep No good reason has been given for the deletion of these categories. I mainly use Freshwater fish of Australia and find it particulalry useful to locate new articles in that category, amongst other things. Especially for this category which mainly consists of endemic species and which it is generally useful to consider as a group I would be very strongly opposed to its deletion. The "problems" posited as the reason for deletion of all these categories are trivial, whereas the problems created by deleting them will be very real and clumsy in the extreme to maintain. These categories are logicial, intuitive and work far more often than not. I am afraid that deleting the categories not only looks like a baby with the bath-water scenario, is rather looks like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.Nick Thorne 08:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The link is Category:Freshwater fish of Australia, for convenience. (This is a comment, as altering other editor's comments is a no-no.)—Chidom   17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Ultimate Keep There are more good categories than the bad ones, therefore deletion is not a good option. The best thing to do is to separate the categories that need attention and not delete the whole thing. This is like a mass deletion, which I believe we should avoid. Cheers -- Imoeng 11:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, but also applaud the nominator for going to such remarkable lengths in tagging the subcategories. I think it is reasonable to consider deleting or reformatting those categories which correspond to solely political boundaries, but these need to be dealt with case-by-case. The grey areas are not limited to islands; consider Korea, Italy, Florida...-- Visviva 13:59, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Response Thanks for the applause.

The category names are based on political boundaries, which is what is unworkable. As for your examples, Korea, Italy, and Florida are peninsulas, with outlying islands which would be geographic regions, not political ones.

The area comprising Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, etc. should have fauna classified by that geographic region, not the individual countries.

Other valid geographic regions would be ""Fauna of the Alps", "Fauna of the Shenandoah Valley", "Fauna of the Rocky Mountains", etc. These may more properly be sections in articles on the regions or articles of their own. Large regions could be broken down into subcategories/article sections or, separate articles, e.g., "Fauna of Northern Appalachia", "Fauna of Southern Appalachia", "Fauna of the Eastern Alps", "Fauna of the Western Alps", for example. Category:Fauna of Indonesia, being a geographic region as well as a country, should definitely be a category or have an article of its own; it was created as a subcategory of the category that I'm nominating, which as now structured is completely useless.

Other subcategories are valid as well, but they are the ones where geography defines the country name, not the political border: Australia certainly qualifies, and, as someone has commented, could have subcategories/article sections, or separate articles on specific geographic regions within the country/continent: "Australian Outback" comes to mind, but I'm not that familiar with Australian geography. (Similarly, I'm not sure New Zealand should be its own category/article, or be included in a "Australia and New Zealand" category/article; I'm unfamiliar with how specific species are to the two. I'm aware that there are unique species on Papua New Guinea; surely Malaysia would be a better choice rather than country, Papua, West Irian Jaya, which are all part of a different political boundaries.

Rather than dividing what surely must be common fauna along a horizontal artificial line, "Fauna of Great Britain and Ireland" would encompass England, Scotland, Ireland, and the outlying islands in that area.

Portugal, Spain, and Andora are located on the Iberian Peninsula; that is the appropriate category/or article, not categories based on the countries. Similarly, "Fauna of the Mediterranean" (or "Western Mediterranean" "Eastern Mediterranean") would be legitimate, as would "Fauna of the Black Sea", "Fauna of the Red Sea", etc.

Articles on countries already include information such as, "Spain is part of the Iberian Peninsula" (see the article for Spain); the Iberian Peninsula article could contain a "Fauna" section or a link to a separate "Fauna of the Iberian Peninsula" article.

If people feel that these categories should be renamed or merged, their Response should reflect that, not just Keep or Delete, and if one of those alternatives is the consensus, that would be the outcome of the discussion. (Rename and merge; Rename, merge, include in/create articles, etc.)—Chidom   17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Chidom, i think it makes things very difficult if you either try to change your recommendation part-way through the process (ie, as you request above) or people are asked to respond differently. I am not suggesting you have been careless, on the contrary, but possibly this proposal needed (even) more thought. Similar to what I have said before, although you make some valid points (yes, do we need Birds of Rhode Island or Sinola? - lol - these aren't countries anyway), your solution is inappropriate as it is too blunt an instrument. And yes, the fact that to delete a category one must delete ALL sub-categories is one of my arguments against the proposal. One doesn't kill the whole village to punish one (or several) criminals. --Merbabu 02:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Rebecca 00:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. Well, what a useless nomination. It's a "mass murder". — Indon (reply) — 07:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep. There would be endless tags to common species. We should have a complex voluntary policy in this regard. Such as Keep Endemic Lists, Keep lists of zoogeographical regions (Oriental) or larger geographical groupings (say South Asia rather than India, Pakistan etc), keep lists where a WikiProject is working actively, (say... Arthropods of Watachamania). I strongly second the suggestion made in earlier discussion that these categories should preferably be made into articles, which would bring real info into Misplaced Pages. AshLin 14:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I am moving the following discussion from my User talk:Chidom page:

Deletion of Category:Fauna of Indonesia

I understand that you do not want the category "Fauna By Country" but could you please explain why you don't want SPECIFICALLY the Indonesian category? I have learnt so much from that category. The tag you inserted said that the proposal only applies to the "main" category of "by country". Please explain why Fauna of Indonesia should be deleted. I don't care so mch what you think of all the countries - perhaps you have a point with "Fauna of Lithuania" or "Fauna of West Virginia" but not Indonesia - one of the richest ecological zones in the world. How do you justify the removal of this category??? --Merbabu 12:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I am nominating Category:Fauna by country and all its subcategories. If the subcategory Category:Fauna of Indonesia is an important one, it can be created as its own category, not as a subcategory of another category. And, by the way, West Virginia is awfully close to my original home. It's not that any of the fauna anywhere are unimportant—it's just that these categories are unmaintainable.—Chidom   02:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, as long as we don't have to re-insert the category into the current 189 listed articles under "Indonesia". I still don't know why you specifically want to have Fauna of Indonesia removed - you may or may not have a point with "by Country" but your proposal to remove EVERY sub-category seems very heay-handed and blunt. I think a better strategy (and unfortunately more work) would have been to nominate the categories individually. You seem to acknowledge in principle that "important" categories can be kept. What are your criteria for important? --Merbabu 03:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

If the parent category (Fauna by country) is removed, all its subcategories will cease to exist or work. All the subcategories have to be nominated in order to have everyone interested in their own category discuss the removal of the parent category.—Chidom   04:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Lol - your logic is twisted, round the wrong way. It is clear then that you shouldn't remove remove the main category as it will mean, as you say, "all its subcategories will cease to exist or work" - rather remove the offending individual sub-categories. If you are too lazy to do that, then don't delete the good valuable work of others who have put together the good sub-categories. ie, you do know the expression "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". The reason i remove the tag is because you have not stated a reason to remove Fauna of Indonesia, only a reason to remove the main category. --Merbabu 04:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Please stop. Every time you add a comment here, my macro breaks. This discussion belongs on the discussion page, not on my talk page. I will make further comments there when I am done nominating the subcategories. Thanks.—Chidom   04:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I will not "stop". I don't care about your macros - you started the issue. And i don't care how much work you "have" to do. You need to provide specific reasoning for EVERY category you nominate. If you choose to nominate 100s of categories for deletion then you can do then work and comment on each one. You have only provided your reasoning for the broad "by country category" and A FEW obscure and admittedly pointless categories that suit your purposes - yet you use this to justify the removal of Britain, Indonesia, Brazil and Australia??? The point is simple - if you put a deletion tag on one category then you need to answer it. If you do not address every category individually then I will be reporting this to administrator. --Merbabu 23:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

You say you will not comment until you finish nominating - that is not the way to do it. You need to comment AS you nominate. Please provide reasoning. I am in the process of expressing my concerns to admins and asking that they check on your dodgy method of "nominations". I note you still have not provided your reasoning for category fauna INdonesia's removal --Merbabu 00:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how many times I have to explain this. In order for me to nominate Category:Fauna by country I have to nominate ALL of its subcategories, one of which is Category:Fauna of Indonesia. I didn't create the system, but I do have to work with it. As for my reasoning, I have been very clear that I don't think grouping fauna by such artifical boundaries as countries is appropriate. It's not a question of individual countries, states, etc.—my proposal is that the structure of Category:Fauna by country is unworkable and needs to be done differently. Category:Fauna of Indonesia may very well be an appropriate category regardless of the decision about Category:Fauna by country, as Indonesia is a geographic region in addition to being a country.

As for contacting administrators, they will explain exactly the same thing. However, if you'd like to avoid being the topic of conversations with adminsitrators, please take care that you are more civil in these discussions; I don't think that "I don't care about your macros" falls into that category. I was trying to finish the task that I was required to do and asked politely that you stop posting messages here as it was preventing me from doing that. I am responding as quickly as I can with the time I have available to spend on Misplaced Pages. Thank you.—Chidom   06:48, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, having just read your comment on another talk page, characterizing me as "psychotic" is just unacceptable. If you can't communicate with me or about me in a civil manner, please don't communicate at all. Please pay attention to what has been said over and over and over again. It's not about whether individual subcategories are appropriate or not; in order to nominate Category:Fauna by country, all the subcategories have to be nominated as well. This has been stated many, many times, both here and at the discussion page.—Chidom   07:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, i realise your technical constraint - please don't explain again. But one doesn't rip up roads to scrap a few old cars. The problem with your tagging is that you have NOT provided a reason for the deletion of the individual sub-categories. Yes, i think your actions are kinda physcotic although i could have used less colourful language (come on - 567 sub-categories for nomination all for the SAME reason), but I did not say you were physcopath. This is mainly in response to your "please stop" which i do not think falls into the so-called "civil category" (btw, does wiki stalking also fall into you "civil category"?).

As for contacting you here on your talk page it is because I am very concerned about your proposal yet, you are communicating or replying to comments on the discussion page (which you directed us to use). As for not caring about your macros, well, I guess it is not really my problem. It seems your macros does not do its job if it is not providing a any reason for the removal of each category. If the sub-categories are fine (many of them anyway), why delete the main category.

As for reinstating good categories, who is going to that? Do you have a list of good ones? Could I see it? Do you know which 189 species to put back into Indonesia? Should other editors have to do it?

I hope I you have not taken anything else as being uncivil - it is not my intent (although, may I ever so slightly politely suggest you are being a bit sensitive. if your categorisations were as sensitive it would be a smoother process, IMO). yes, i think it would be more appropriate to discuss this on the Discussion page but i haven't seen you discuss any of this there. If you did, i would no longer feel the need to bother you on your talk page. --Merbabu 08:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I have discussed the deletion of subcategories here; if you haven't seen me "discuss any of this there", you've obviously not read all my earlier comments, or you'd see that. Just for the record, one more time: this isn't about the individual subcategories. It's about the structure of the Category:Fauna by country and all its subcategories. They are simply unmaintainable and need to be restructured in some way if they are to be of any use or worth. Since I don't know what the appropriate replacement for them should be, I nominated them for deletion; as the structure as it stands isn't workable. Once again: in order to nominate the Category:Fauna by country for deletion, each subcategory has to be nominated. This whole discussion was moved here from its original posting because that hadn't been done. Now it has.

I am not wikistalking you; I have no interest in comments you are making on other topics nor where you are making them; butting in on all of your comments would qualify as stalking. The link to your talk page appears as part of your user ID in the page histories; I checked the history of your User talk:Merbabu page to see if we had engaged in discussions there as well and saw the ""Category:Fauna of Indonesia" edit summaries. I went to read the comments themselves as they were on this topic; those prompted me to check your contributions to see where else you were discussing this particular topic, not all your discussions in general, which would be wikistalking.

Surprisingly, I found that you made a comment on the User talk:Rebecca page that you titled, "Psychotic category deletion nominator, both as the comment title and the edit summary.font color="FF6600">—Chidom   16:02, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yet again, I understand that to remove a category one must remove a sub-category. But this is the flaw in your proposal which you have not addressed. The mere fact that the removal of a category requires the removal of good sub-categories just proves that the category is valid. Once again, who is going to reinstate these useful categories (which you yourself have acknowledged?). Are you going to do it? The fact that your method requires deletion of all sub-categories (good or otherwise) surely suggests that you should be targetting specific individual sub-categories (that may be problematic) and leaving the main one intact? Once again, who is going to reinstate the good sub-cats? That would be no simple revert (not from my understading anyway). Furthermore, after sometime of being ambivalent about some of these poltical nominations (ie countries) I am now becoming more convinced that they ARE worthwhile. It has been stated that they are "unworkable" but that argument is not very convincing. Sure, some sub-cats aren't good but the system is fine if implemented appropriately. The above-list of Birds in Scotland as i mentioned is a great example of a valuable category even though animals don't respect boundaries. Ie, Myself, and others no doubt, are interested in what is in what country - ie, what birds can be found in SCotland is very interesting - it doesn't matter if they can be found in another country too - someone else may be interested to know they are in England too (or whereever). Yes, some categories are too specific - I agree with that. But just because Birds in Rhode Island (or wherever) may not be good sub-cat is no reason to remove the other valuable sub-cats - say fauna in Indonesia. Yes, EVEN if one cannot remove the main cat withot removing every sub-cat. In that case, leave the main cat & remove only the offending sub-cats. EDIT: lol - i see we have sub-cats by states of Mexico. OK, that is indeed stupid (IMO) but doesn't change the need to remove the specific individual offending sub-cats not everything. The fact that these, and the US sub-cats, are states and not countries shows that they are flawed - so get rid of them individually - not the nuclear bomb method being proposed here. I also accept that some categories are underpopulated. But does that highlight a need for removal or, as I suggest, a need for more work to fill the categories up.

--Merbabu 01:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Here are some great cats (or sub-cats). Given that the proponent is now acknowledging that some sub-cats are good but need to be removed for technical (idealogical???) reasons, will he reinstate them himself? These are the only cats i clicked on and to some extent they reflect my interests. No doubt there are many more but i don't have time. Under the proposal, these would all be lost.

Category:Fauna of Israel and Palestine

Category:Fauna of Italy

Category:Fauna of Malaysia

Category:Fauna of Myanmar

Category:Frogs of Australia

Category:Fauna of China

Category:Avifauna of Fiji

Category:Extinct animals of Australia

Category:Mammals of Australia

Category:Freshwater_fish_of_Australia

Category:Fauna of Vietnam

Category:Fauna of Venezuela

Category:Fauna of Uzbekistan

--Merbabu 01:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Fauna of Trinidad and Tobago

As above, I am requesting an explanation as to why this category was nominated for deletion. I have never heard the assertion that "all subcategories" must be deleted if a parent category is nominated for deletion. In fact, it runs contrary to all of my experiences with categories. Guettarda 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Categories for discussion#Subcategory procedure. Trust me, I tried to convince the powers that be that this didn't need to be done, but it did. Otherwise, you wouldn't be aware of the discussion and if the consensus was to delete, then Category:Fauna of Trinidad and Tobago would no longer work and you would have no idea why.—Chidom   23:43, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Woah, stop. All subcats DO NOT have to be deleted if a parent category is nominated. I NEVER said they had to be. This is what the nominator said when he nominated Fauna by country: My nomination was intended to include all the subcategories of Category:Fauna by country in the nomination for deletion; why keep subcategories of a category that's gone? I just told him that if he wants to nominate all the subcats, then all the subcats need to be tagged. --Kbdank71 01:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It's an important clarification to make. The propronent himself has repeatedly pointed out (that he has repeatedly pointed out) that his motivation for nominating all-sub cats if because that (as far as he understands) it is the only way to remove the main cat. Is that not the case afterall? --Merbabu 22:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I suggest that this nom be withdrawn and relisted for several reasons. The main three would be: 1.) confusion of what needed tagging (categories on WIkipedia are not a tree structure, as KBdank71 has clarified); 2.) With all the reformatting, it's just incredibly difficult to read; and 3.) the nom has changed several times in the duration. Just relist, and we can start over : ) - jc37 10:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Do we really have to start over? lol. Given that Keep outnumbers Delete almost 3 to 1 (I've listed the names of those in favour and against), shows that there is strong interest in some sub-cats. Why not nominate specfic pointless sub-cats? Even I as one of the proposal's strongest opponents could support that - I'd even help as a sign of good faith, lol. Eg, the sub-cats of apparently every US state (and even Mexican). And then there is the issue of if cats by country really are that bad. eg, the birds of Scotland example is very useful. --Merbabu 22:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Given that Keep outnumbers Delete almost 3 to 1 . CFD is not a vote -- Drini 06:28, 29 September 2006 (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.