Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/01/Category:College basketball teams in the United States by name

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Category:College basketball teams in the United States by name

Currently, the way that college sports teams are categorized on Commons, there is a parent category for a given school's sports program (e.g. Southern Methodist University athletics for the SMU Mustangs), and then there are subcategories for all the teams at that school (e.g. SMU Mustangs football, SMU Mustangs men's soccer, etc). However, there is a special case: sometimes, the men's basketball team and the women's basketball team will have a combined category (e.g. SMU Mustangs basketball, which has subcategories SMU Mustangs men's basketball and SMU Mustangs women's basketball).

These combined basketball categories are unuseful and thus I am proposing they be deleted. There is no such thing as the "SMU Mustangs basketball" team; there is only the men's team and the women's team. The men's and women's basketball teams at any given school are not particularly linked to each other; they have separate players, separate staffs, separate histories, separate achievements, and sometimes even separate stadiums. There is almost never a case where it would make sense for an image to be in any school's "basketball" category; it would be better placed in either the men's or women's category (or, if an uploader is unsure, it can just go in the parent category for the school). These categories do not aid discoverability, as they are not linked to any Wikipedia articles, and we can simply add the "men's" and "women's" categories to all the same parent categories.

The downsides of these categories are great. To get from a given basketball team to the parent athletic program, you must go up two levels in the category tree instead of just one, which is cumbersome. This is usually a very needless step, as usually the "basketball" category has very little in it (just one or both of the men's/women's teams, and sometimes a stadium). These categories also create confusion: if you are looking at Duke Blue Devils men's basketball, you can find some of their historical home venues (Alumni Memorial Gymnasium and The Ark, which predate the existence of the women's team), but you cannot find their current venue (Cameron Indoor Stadium); you need to go up one level to Duke Blue Devils basketball to find it. This is a problem for every school where the men's and women's teams share a stadium; it is cumbersome to have to go up a level to find the stadium.

Thus, I think they should be deleted. Additionally, 11 schools have a "basketball players" category, which combines the "men's basketball players" and "women's basketball players" categories, and 2 schools have a "basketball coaches" category. I think these should be deleted for the same reasons. See below the fold for some minutiae about the deletion process.

Deletion details

Before deleting the "basketball" categories, all the parent categories that each "basketball" category is currently tagged in should be copied to the "men's" and "women's" categories (except for Category:College basketball teams in the United States by name, as that category should also be deleted). So for example, each of SMU Mustangs men's basketball and SMU Mustangs women's basketball would be added to Southern Methodist University athletics and Basketball teams in Texas. Any stadiums found in the "basketball" category should be added to both the "men's" and "women's" categories (e.g. Cameron Indoor Stadium should be added to Duke Blue Devils men's basketball and Duke Blue Devils women's basketball).

Some edge cases:

There exist 2 shared "basketball coaches" categories: Butler Bulldogs basketball coaches and Nebraska Cornhuskers basketball coaches. Each of these has precisely 1 women's item, and the rest of the contents are for the men's team, so I propose we rename them to "men's basketball coaches" and move the women's items to the respective "women's basketball" categories.
In combing through all these categories, I've found precisely four individual files which relate to both the men's and women's teams at their respective schools (Duke Blue Devils basketball mark.svg, Ole Miss Rebels basketball logo.svg, Tuckerbanners.jpg, 2014 UConn National Championship teams at the White House.JPG). Just like the stadiums, these should be copied to both the "men's" and "women's" categories.
I had expected there would be some photos that I could not determine whether they were from a men's game or a women's game, and I was going to propose such files be placed in the parent category for the school. However, it turns out that there were no images for any team that I couldn't sort as men's or women's.

Full list of deletions:

–IagoQnsi (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, if you think that would simplify things without sacrificing functionality, then go for it. That said, there are a number of wikidata links that would be affected by this change, but I'm unsure that should be considered as a factor in this sort of thing. Mbrickn (talk) 22:58, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral I don't have any preference at all on this. Michael Barera (talk) 04:17, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support in cases where there is no 'common' contents and the category only is a holder for the separate mens and womens teams. Josh (talk) 21:39, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Joshbaumgartner: I've combed through all of these categories, and there are very few common contents: just the stadiums and 4 other files (see my 'deletion details' hidden section above). Every other file/subcategory we have relates only to one of the two teams. –IagoQnsi (talk) 02:24, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Close as Kept, established, in use in category tree. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 03:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]