A while back, after noticing the existence of [[Category:Wikipedians in Croydon]] as a subcategory of [[Category:Wikipedians in London]], I decided to start [[Category:Wikipedians in East London]]. (I know, that should be 'east', I'll come back to that in a moment.)
Now I see that someone's brought it up on [[WP:UCFD]] and proposed that it should be "upmerged" to the wider London category because "Only one user in this category, I cant [sic] see a Userbox for it either". Is it just me, or are those both absurd reasons to delete a category?
This brings me to a related point, about proposed merges for user categories. When it comes to merging pages, we put proposed merge notices on them and it gets discussed on the talk pages. For user categories, they have (?) to go through this process instead. I feel powerless to defend this harmless little category, because it's accumulating votes (let's not kid ourselves to what they are) there to be removed.
One person comments it's "too specific for collaboration", something I can't understand at all. (Wikipedians in east London certainly exist - including both myself and Sam Blacketer on this very list.) My hope in creating the category was that it would encourage collaboration between Wikipedians in the area. Another person dittoes the nominator that the category should be merged, despite apparently having a hobby in creating nonsense like [[User:Patricknoddy/Userboxes/Chocolate chip cookie]].
I'm going to say here that should this category be upmerged as a result of the "discussion", I think I will simply recreate it, as I don't have any confidence in the process at all.
On a more mundane topic that I mentioned briefly at the start of this mail, I noticed that I'd actually created the category with the wrong name - it should be "east" with a lowercase "e", not "East". However, apparently it's not possible to rename (move) categories. How come? Is it a technical failing or a political decision to defend against possible vandalism?
Thanks,
Earle.