Category talk:en:Wars

RFD discussion: July–September 2023

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

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Category:en:Wars

Created by Solomonfromfinland who has been blocked for disruptive edits. The category page was created by him and doesn't say anything other than "there shouldn't be anything here". I should also note, he created it after admin Metaknowledge used it as an example on Solomons talk Page as an example of a category that shouldn't exist because it was too specific. سَمِیر | sameer (talk) 09:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay, in fairness to Solomon, because he was told the category shouldn't exist. When he made it he put a disclaimer not to use it and made it into a redirect to an existing category. (Do categories even work like that?) So I don't think it was malicious but it's not very helpful to make a page and say "leave this page blank" (in fact having valid links to invalid categories might be more harmful than anything). And He still created it after Metaknowledge told him the category shouldn't exist. سَمِیر | sameer (talk) 09:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Sameerhameedy Category redirects like this are useful when there's a reasonable chance that something might actually get put in the category, because if you use a hard (i.e. normal) redirect it doesn't get applied to the categorisation itself - the redirect only applies when someone tries to view the category. e.g. if Category:en:Wars was a hard redirect to Category:en:War, and I put a page in Category:en:Wars, it won't get put in Category:en:War even though there's a redirect. Essentially, it makes it slightly more convenient to keep track of things that have been wrongly categorised by virtue of being a soft redirect instead.

However, that's generally only applicable if a category has been moved, and it's still-less relevant on Wiktionary where a lot of our categorisation is automated (unlike, say, Wikipedia). I don't think Solomon was in the wrong for having created it, but as you say it's not very helpful. In situations like this, a hard redirect might actually be more helpful. Theknightwho (talk) 14:25, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I see, so you think a redirect is better than a deletion in this situation? سَمِیر | sameer (talk) 16:07, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it really matters either way, but @Al-Muqanna does make a good point below, actually. Theknightwho (talk) 16:09, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

There are enough entries on specific wars that it could plausibly serve as a set (cf. World War I, Punic War, American Civil War, Vietnam War, etc). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

That would be a good use of the category actually. Though I have no Idea how to put a category into another category. سَمِیر | sameer (talk) 16:22, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

As it stands, delete, but I have no objection if someone remakes it into a set category. Recent discussions may result in set categories being moved to a clearer naming format, though. - -sche (discuss) 00:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)