Nominator's rationale: In the on-going project to deal with the various "groups by size" categories, we've finally reached a case where there are significant groups organized to play music written for a five member ensemble of specified instruments. With the exception of the string quintet, of which we have only one example (the Boccherini Quintet), these are all in subcats. Evrything else is, yes, a five member band, or at least a band which had five members at some point in its history. And as for the larger numbers, this isn't defining. Mangoe (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: trivial category. This categorization isn't helpful. If we are going to categorize bands based on the number of members, why not "bands with two men and three women" or "bands with an odd number of members"? Bands containing five members have important in common with one another (with the possible exception of string quintets, which is a more specific category). Yes (band) is a good example: It is tagged as a "musical quintet", which is 99% correct (Yes had five members over most of its history, with brief exceptions) -- but tells us nothing interesting about the band. If you were to list the bands most similar to Yes, they would have various numbers of members. Deep Purple (five members) is much closer to Led Zeppelin (four) than it is to Yes (five). And many bands have changed their number of members without changing their sound. — Lawrence King(talk)23:16, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The previous nomination was an omnium gatherum of something like thirty categories of musical groups by number; the primary reason given for keeping by almost everyone was that it was to much to deal with at once. The decision accepted that smaller nominations might succeed. Mangoe (talk) 11:04, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – my reading of the recent cfd is that editors thought that each should be considered separately: that at some point the number in a band becomes irrelevant. IMO quartets should be kept and octets deleted. I note that Category:Musical quintets has 3 subcats which appear to be entirely valid, whereas Category:Musical sextets (and larger) have no subcats. So I would keep 5 or fewer (possibly as container categories) and delete the rest. Oculi (talk) 09:30, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The possibility of a container cat did occur to me, but it seems to me that it would be an attractive nuisance which would eventually fill up with bands again. Perhaps you could suggest a rename. Mangoe (talk) 11:04, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - it is considered defining enough to be mentioned in reliable sources that a band is a quintet, or a quartet, or a trio, etc - and also if a band changed from one format to the other. Our own articles will often mention in the opening statement the style and size of a band (do a Wikipedia search for "five piece band" for example). And while different styles of music are played across different sizes of band, the sound that a trio makes tends to be different to the sound a quintet makes due to the increased instrumentation. SilkTork✔Tea time11:46, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Was going to nominate one of these myself. Glad it has been done as a group nomination. These are perfect examples of inappropriate user categories as both "divisive, provocative, or otherwise disruptive" and "which group users by advocacy of a position" AusLondonder (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per nom. There is also evidence that suggests that indef'd sockmaster Sonic N800 requested (and then primarily handled population of) this category. Difficult to track as they change IPs and ranges fairly frequently. -- ferret (talk) 16:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per nom. There is also evidence that suggests that indef'd sockmaster Sonic N800 requested (and then primarily handled population of) this category. Difficult to track as they change IPs and ranges fairly frequently. -- ferret (talk) 16:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
