Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion

Recently, JJMC89 bot III (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) went about removing Category:events in San Diego and replacing it with Category:organized events in San Diego saying only per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy. Nothing at that page explained this change. Looking at the bot's edits, it also seems that it changed this for a lot of other "events in [place]" categories, changing them to "organized events in [place]".

I just want to call out the possibility for miscategorization based on my experience: while the 1995 San Diego tank rampage certainly was an 'event in San Diego', it definitely wasn't an 'organized event in San Diego', despite this recent automated recategorization. (I have, of course, already removed the latter category.)

I haven't the experience with categorization discussions (speedy or not), nor with bots and their machinations, to know if this is widespread or not, but I though it prudent to bring to somebody's attention. My apologies if I needn't've. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:15, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

@Fourthords, to my understanding this is standard practice. @Marcocapelle tagged the category at Category:Organized events in San Diego (Diff ~1301355778) and added it to the speedy page at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy (Diff ~1301353870). It was then removed after then appropriate time had passed with Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy (Diff ~1301996304), and the bot then processed it accordingly. — Qwerfjkltalk 12:18, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

There was a discussion that determined that all events categories should be changed to organised events. Anything that doesn't fit the new name should be removed. Mclay1 (talk) 02:34, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

I haven't created a CfD before and wanted to ask first how to proceed.

Have a look at Category_talk:Articles_needing_additional_images#Category name and, if you would be so kind, tell me how you would proceed in this case. Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 11:04, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi. Category:Lists of people by populated place in England was moved to Category:Lists of English people by populated place. I can't seem to see the discussion on why it was moved but it seems to be an error. The new category title is about English people per place, but if you look at the Category, it contains lists of people from English towns and cities not individuals. And when you drill down into those lists, not everone on these lists are English. For example Robert Williams Buchanan, the Scottish poet is on List of people from Southend-on-Sea, as he lived and died there but was born in Scotland. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Davidstewartharvey Category:Lists of people by populated place in England was moved after a speedy nomination of a set of categories here by Kaffet i halsen. The reason was "C2C: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 March 15#Category:People by first-level administrative country subdivision and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 July 24#People by region subcategories."

WP:CFDS says "If you belatedly notice and want to oppose a speedy move that has already been processed, contact one of the admins who process the Speedy page. If your objection seems valid, they may reverse the move, or start a full CFD discussion." TSventon (talk) 00:17, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

I am probably the only one right now. I would advise to start a full discussion with the above arguments. Ymblanter (talk) 13:11, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

I understand there are benefits to mass nominating categories for speedy renaming or deletion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy, but it's hard to sort through everything in 48 hours when there are several mass nominations of dozens of categories being made at essentially the same time. While the creator of the category is probably being notified, it might be wise to also notify relevant WikiProjects to seek feedback from them. The size and pace of the nominations have a WP:MEATBOT feel to them (at least it seems that way to me) even if they're being made with the best intentions. How to oppose a nomination is also confusing when challenging one page of several dozen pages being nominated at the same time. There doesn't seem to be much guidance regarding mass nominations at the top of the "Speedy" page; so, perhaps such a thing should be discussed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:20, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy#Opposed requests is pretty hard to navigate given that its one large thread dealing with multiple speedy rename/deletion requests. I just had a post mistakenly deleted by another user using a tool/script trying to simultaneously the same page by adding a new mass nomination. This really isn't a good thing per WP:TPO, and it's something that shouldn't happen, even unintentionally. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2025 (UTC)

I've noticed a recurring thing where a category will be renamed at CfD, but its subcategories are left even though they should have been renamed at the same time. Then when the subcategories are nominated for speedy renaming, the renaming is opposed by someone who didn't like the original move. Is there a process for dealing with this? Why is one person able to unilterally prevent a CfD result from being fulfilled, thus forcing another discussion about the same thing? If they want to overturn the previous consensus, they can start a new CfD after the appropriate amount of time, but surely the result of the original decision should be completed first. Mclay1 (talk) 02:31, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Mclay1, the correct thing to do is to list the subcategories at the original nomination, so they are all renamed together. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:08, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. But not everyone does that. And also sometimes there are so many subcategories that only the higher-level categories are nominated. Mclay1 (talk) 13:27, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

@Mclay1, nevertheless, that is the easiest way to prevent this. You do not need to be the nominator to correct an improper nomination. And also sometimes there are so many subcategories that only the higher-level categories are nominated. Even so, all subcategories should be at least tagged for the nomination, and listed with {{cot}} / {{cob}}. Qwerfjkltalk 16:08, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Note that the protection level of the above page has been reduced from admin to extended confirmed (not by me). The idea is that extended confirmed users can help to clean it up. If you want to help and do not know how just ask here, there are a few users who could give advise. Ymblanter (talk) 15:13, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Ymblanter, the protection level was reduced to allow for extended confirmed users to clean it up, but presumably this would also allow non-admins to implement CfD nominations? With the potential for mass vandalism I'm surprised it was decreased. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:23, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll ping Favonian who actually changed the protection. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:24, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

– Favonian (talk) 15:27, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I've restored the full protection. Favonian, Zackmann08, you're on the wrong side of Chesterton's fence and meddling in a area you clearly don't know what you are doing in. See Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Working/Archive_2#Protection_of_WP:CFD/W,_take_3 for the previous time this doomed perennial proposal was tried.

On top of that, the actual effect of this would be to disable JJMC89 bot III entirely (per Line 788 of the bot's source code). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:29, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. I’ll focus my efforts elsewhere. — Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:05, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Cfr § how to modify the call to cfr full after a merge. -- Joy (talk) 09:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Ymblanter Per BRD, could you kindly elaborate on why you disliked the layout change? FaviFake (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

You added several clicks to my workflow:

You removed the main header, and now I can not open the section from which I need to move the categories for processing;

You moved the link to Categories for discussion/Working, where I am expected to move them, into a collapsed section.

Once both have been rectified, I am fine. Not sure about other users though. Ymblanter (talk) 16:58, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense, thanks. Most of my improvements were to the text of the page, so I'll leave the rest as-is. FaviFake (talk) 17:01, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I do not have any issues with the text, thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 17:05, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

My issue with the new layout is that some of the headings are no longer editable, which makes it harder to just edit the Current Requests and move stuff from unopposed to one of the other headings. You now have to edit the whole page. Mclay1 (talk) 04:11, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

 Fixed, you should now be able to edit all sections below "Admin instructions", including "Current requests", freely, even when the page is transcluded into WP:CFD :) FaviFake (talk) 13:56, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

• @FaviFake: "unopposed requests" is confusing, because the nominations are listed to give editors the opportunity to oppose in this section. I am open to alternatives, but if there isn't anything better then let's go back to Current requests. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:09, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  I agree it's not perfect, but Current requests isn't clear either because all requests, even the opposed ones, are current (as in, open for more comments). Does anyone have a better idea for distinguishing all open requests from new, "opposable" requests? Maybe "new requests"? FaviFake (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  • @FaviFake: "New requests" would be fine. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:27, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

     Done FaviFake (talk) 15:35, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

I restored the reminder to add Template:Cfr-speedy to all nominated categories. Woko Sapien (talk) 17:06, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I didn't mean to remove it, it must've been lost in the copypasting :) FaviFake (talk) 17:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

It's all good! Woko Sapien (talk) 17:59, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

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)

Speedy criterion WP:C2F currently applies when "the category contains only an eponymous article, list, template or media file" and results in an upmerge to the relevant parent categories. Should this criterion be expanded to any category that contains only one page or subcategory (providing the nominator has checked to see if it can be further populated)? There are frequent CfD discussions to upmerge categories that contain only one article or subcategory, and these are generally uncontroversial. It feels like a basic clean-up process that could be moved to speedy to save time and effort. Alternatively, if not any category containing only one child, then perhaps just container categories in the X by Y format that contain only one subcategory. Mclay1 (talk) 23:35, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Pinging regular contributors to try to get a conversation started: @Johnpacklambert, @Marcocapelle, @WikiCleanerMan, @Ymblanter, @Woko Sapien, @Place Clichy, @OpalYosutebito, @1857a, @Kaffet i halsen, @John of Reading, @Wikihistorian, @Gonnym, @Smasongarrison, @Pppery. Feel free to ignore if you don't care, and I won't ping you again. (If I missed anyone, it wasn't deliberate.) We've altered and added speedy critera in the past, but it seems harder to discuss now that there's no dedicated talk page for it. Mclay1 (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

• I like this proposal. Although I think we need some description of what adequate checking is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:21, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Wikipedia_talk:Speedy_deletion/Archive_92#c-Pppery-20250930023700-BodhiHarp-20250930022800. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:33, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  I like the idea, but I'll have to oppose per Pppery's rationale :( - OpalYosutebito 『talk』 『articles I want to eat』 22:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

  Agree that the idea has merit, but it sounds like this has already been litigated. Woko Sapien (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2025 (UTC)

  @Pppery, fair enough then that on rare occasions we keep categories with one article. What about categories with only one subcategory? Surely that's not helpful as that subcategory can just be directly in the parents of its parent. And surely it's never helpful to have an X by Y category that has only one subcategory. For example, "Category:Cats by village" if "Category:Cats in Smallville" were the only subcategory (and there were no others that could be added to populate). There would be no prejudice against recreating the categories if more contents became available. I think discussing this is sufficiently different from that previous discussion to not defer to that outcome (which had minimal participation anyway). Mclay1 (talk) 02:29, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

  No objection to that in principle, but not really involved enough with that area to support * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:34, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Today, I asked the bot to move Category:Persigo Gianyar players to Category:Persegi Bali F.C. players following the request at CFDS which was unopposed for 48h. As far as I see, the bot created the redirect at the former location (which I since then deleted, hoping there was an edit history there - there was none), but did not move it to the destination. Now I am not sure where the edit history is and how I can locate it. An admin help would be appreciated, non-admins can not see deleted edits which are probably essential for resolving the issue. Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 10:12, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

Courtesy ping the nominator, @OpalYosutebito: Ymblanter (talk) 10:13, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

I wonder if the nomination was a typo for Category:Persegi Gianyar players? Anomie⚔ 13:27, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

This might very well be the case, but this category has not been processed. Btw the original redirect was recreated by the bot. Ymblanter (talk) 16:28, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

What's to process? There are currently no pages in Category:Persigo Gianyar players, which is part of what makes me think it was a typo. Anomie⚔ 20:25, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

May be, but right now we have a broken redirect. Ymblanter (talk) 23:32, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

Hi! Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help - OpalYosutebito 『talk』 『articles I want to eat』 19:29, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

@OpalYosutebito: Can you double check whether you intended Category:Persigo Gianyar players in the first place, rather than Category:Persegi Gianyar players or some other category? Anomie⚔ 20:26, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

I wanted Persegi Gianyar players to be moved to Persegi Bali F.C. players, if that helps. I don't recall ever touching the Persigo category :( - OpalYosutebito 『talk』 『articles I want to eat』 23:22, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

I only tagged the Persigo category for speedy deletion because it's empty - OpalYosutebito 『talk』 『articles I want to eat』 23:27, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

This one has never been nominated as far as I see. Ymblanter (talk) 23:33, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

This has been happening since I added some items yesterday afternoon, not sure why every entry is being treated as a reply now. Reviewed my entries (here and here) and don't see anything out of the ordinary. WinstonDewey (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

WinstonDewey, try unsubscribing from the page (Special:TopicSubscriptions). — Qwerfjkltalk 21:00, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot, thanks! WinstonDewey (talk) 21:19, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

How many weeks after a discussion is closed does it take for a rename to happen? DuncanHill (talk) 01:05, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

It varies, and it depends on how complex the implementation of the result is. If it's a simple deletion or rename and the closer is an admin who uses a semi-automated tool to close the discussion, it can happen fairly quickly after the close, because it's usally added to a list for a bot. If a non-admin closes the discussion, it needs to be listed on a special page for an admin to take care of whenever they can. If the implementation requires manual work, sometimes that can get kicked down the road for a little while before it's eventually done. When things take an unexpected amount of time, I've found that it's usually because someone has made a mistake in how they've closed the discussion or because there's a formatting error in the listing for the bot. Mclay1 (talk) 08:38, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)