On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch@gmail.com> wrote:

A Commons user began deleting the category "Female politicians" and it was brought up on the Village Pump.

The user even asked what the point of the category was, which entertains me.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Female_politicians_cats_removed_and_asked_for_deletion...

It's gotten to the point where someone declares the concept of "female ____" sexist, and then heads into the way of "but there are categories for "females with cats" and "males with cats."

uh huh..

Accusations of sexism or whatnot aside, I think it's important to understand the instinct for Commons which applies here. The desire of Commonists is to move as many files as possible away from top-level generic categories like "Female politicians" and towards fine-grained categorization like, "Female Minister-Presidents of North Rhine-Westphalia". (That example was a little hyperbolic, but hopefully you catch my drift.) Seeing something as generic as "Female authors" or similar immediately looks in need of cleanup to a lot of Commons editors, and not because they all want gender neutral categories only. ;)

--
Steven