Category talk:Eponymous categories

This category was nominated for deletion on 4 November 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

This category was nominated for deletion on 12 August 2010. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 2012 February 4. The result of the discussion was keep.

Untitled

what the hell is the point of this category? Every category is "named after" something. But then eponymous means "something after which other things are named". So this category will only contain categories that had things named after them? How many things that have been named after Wikipedia categories can you think of? Right, at best a bunch of weird meta-categories created thoughtlessly by people who didn't understand what categorization was for. Let me know if they name a street or a mountain after a Wikipedia category though. --dab (𒁳) 08:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get the purpose of all these categories. Can someone explain it somewhere? --Catalaalatac (talk) 16:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

John Lennon is an article; Category:John Lennon is the eponymous category associated with the article. Category:John Lennon albums is not eponymous as there is no article John Lennon albums. Occuli (talk) 17:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

um, yes? so you propose to install a giant categorization system based on "is there a Wikipedia article with this title"? John Lennon albums was a redlink when you posted. I just made it a (useful) redirect. What now?

Seriously, you really don't see the monumental stupidity of this proposition? The "eponymous category" thing expresses that people creating the category opted for the string "John Lennon albums", while the people creating the article opted for "John Lennon discography". All within WP:NAME, of course. So you are creating a giant category tree which will at the end express some simple basic truths about the state of our article title guidelines at the time you built it. Sigh. Did you run out of articles in need of attention, or do you just hate Wikipedia? --dab (𒁳) 13:08, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, I just note that User:Good Olfactory is to blame for this mess. Not the first time this user boggles my mind with incredibly stupid ideas implemented without any discussion whatsoever and almost impossible to fix because they invest hundreds of edits in creating faits accomplis. I'll just try and see the funny side here. --dab (𒁳) 13:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. You give me far too much credit. These categories were certainly not my idea, and I myself have had difficulty accepting the premise that these categories are necessary. I've gone back and forth on the issue of "keep" vs. "delete". I have been involved in helping to divide the category into subcategories when there was a request to do so, but that hardly constitutes endorsement of the entire scheme. In the past, I have found these categories useful to enable quick trawling through categories of a similar nature, but that's mostly from an administrative standpoint. Ultimately, if I had my way, I would prefer that they be deleted and the contents of each upmerged to the non-"categories named after" parent. My second choice would be to make them hidden categories. But I also understand the argument for their existence, which is typically most eloquently made by User:Oculi, and I've never been terribly convinced by the more fervent arguments for deletion. (Not sure what other "hundreds of edits" I have made that have upset you, but it would be nice if you would tell me about it or raise it at WP:CFD rather than just bad-mouthing me on a talk page.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

also priceless, Mmcannis (talk · contribs): Where else do you find "categories named after mountain ranges, except at: Category:Categories named after mountain ranges, ? Mmcannis (talk) 14:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sane person replies:

The contents of Category:Categories named after mountain ranges is admirably served by Category:Mountain ranges and all of its subcategories. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:53, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Mmcannis now gives us the pure genius powering this effort:

You don't get it, as well as the confusion over, eponymous. Under Category:Mountain ranges, there will Always be literally thousands, or tens of thousands of listed articles for "a mountain range". To imply that there should also be thousands of categories, so that each range is covered in its own cat is ridiculous. ... the reason i(sic) added category:Sierra Madre Occidental, is that it is a Cordilleran mountain range. How else does the world know that it is also in a category of its own? You'd prefer to force an individual go look for it?

There you have it. If an individual wants to know whether English Wikipedia decided to give Sierra Madre Occidental its own category, they are expected to start with Category:Eponymous_categories and then work their way down to Category:Categories named after mountain ranges and see if it is listed there. Of course, a sane person interested (for whatever reason) in this question (a question purely about the current state of the Wikipedia category system, with no relation to any question of encyclopedic content) would just look at the Sierra Madre Occidental and see that the page is categorized in its own Category:Sierra Madre Occidental right there. Others may opt to type "Category:Sierra Madre Occidental" into the search box, or even (gasp) google. Indeed, How else does the world know that it is also in a category of its own?

"the reason i(sic) added category:Sierra Madre Occidental, is that it is a Cordilleran mountain range" -- your argument is invalid :oP

You don't get it, as well as the confusion over, eponymous Yeah, as I pointed out at the top of this page, the geniuses who created this mess didn't even get the meaning of "eponymous". An "eponymous category" is a category after which something has been named. So, if I open a bar called "Category:Eponymous categories" then, and only then, will "Category:Eponymous categories" be an eponymous category. I doubt many things in the world have been named after Wikipedia categories so far.

So far, comedy gold. The sad thing is that the Wikipedia community apparently wasn't able to do better than "no consensus" on this. A disturbing thought, I suppose. The good news is that nobody is likely to discover this corner of Wikipedia. If they did, I am afraid it will make us a laughing stock. But then it isn't news to say that stupid things are found on the wiki. --dab (𒁳) 13:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything particularly stupid about this. We have a lot of categories that are "named after" things of a certain type - if someone (more likely a Wikipedia editor than a reader, I would have thought, but who knows) wants to find those categories, then a holding category called "Categories named after Xs" seems a perfectly sane thing to have. If you don't have any use for it, no-one's forcing you to use it; but these "eponymous" categories would otherwise be uncategorized (or forced into categories where they don't really belong), so it can hardly be claimed that they're making the category tree denser than it needs to be, or whatever else the objection might be.--Kotniski (talk) 16:04, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PS. I agree, though, that "eponymous category" maybe isn't the best term for these, but it's a piece of Wiki jargon that's kind of stuck - can anyone suggest a better name?--Kotniski (talk) 16:06, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Categorization

Currently there is much practical variation (browse the categories), some discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization (currently sections 1, 1.1, and 6), and perhaps dispute about how eponymous categories and their main articles should be categorized.

That is, which kinds of categories should contain both eponymous categories (as subcategories) and their main articles (as pages)? Which should contain only the eponymous categories? Which should contain only the main articles?

The linked discussion (section 1 Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Eponymous categories) points here. --P64 (talk) 23:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Families both from being placed directly in this category, as well as being placed directly in People. Instead I created Multiple people and put Families in it, along with three other subcategories. Eponymous should directly contain only subcategories that can't comfortably be placed in higher-order Eponymous Categories. This is so as to reduce clutter. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 20:43, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Usage

This category is really not being used effectively. the John Lennon example is perfect. his category should abso-fucking-lutely be in categories for british musicians, the beatles, and other categories. no one should be putting a category named after a subject solely in its eponymous category. epocat is just to track all the cats which are about subjects who have articles as well, ie very notable subjects. its also horribly underpopulated. I wish we could place a warning that people would see when choosing this cat, to also choose other cats as well. PS, where the hell can i find a list of categories which themselves are not categorized? i keep on encountering them, but the page: wikipedia:uncategorized categories is out of date.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:05, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is really quite straightforward. Category:The Beatles members is a 'people category' (subcat of Category:People and should contain a list of articles on people, preferably exactly those people who were members of the band The Beatles. Adding Category:John Lennon adds in a host of non-people, together with people such as Yoko (a non-Beatle) and screws up catscan. (see eg this catscan.) Oculi (talk) 09:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Presently Category:The Beatles members is two steps under the band's eponymous Category:The Beatles. In turn as two members of Category:The Beatles members (which some applaud and others decry), both John Lennon and its eponcat Category:John Lennon are three steps under Category:The Beatles! ...

Im not familiar with catscan, but this seems like a function most readers would not use, whereas readers would wonder why the category for john lennon isnt "in" anything. your argument does makes sense, but if thats policy, why then do we have so many eponymous categories which are categorized themselves, if this is not appropriate. Alsmost all the categories named for US cities are categorized themselves, by state/region etc. Seems we have differing approaches on WP for how to categorize eponymous categories.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

These exhibits may be useful or interesting to someone who is not a Beatles WProject or Potter WProject editor. Or maybe not.

Exhibit (epon)category preface.

Category:The Beatles has preface comprising "The main article ..." plus a freeform sentence about the eponymous wikiproject plus a shortcut to Portal: The Beatles, namely {{Portal|The Beatles}}. In this respect Category:The Beatles is advanced. Category:Harry Potter has simply "The main article for this category is ...", no shortcut to its portal or note of its wikiproject. In another respect Category:Harry Potter is advanced: it does include as a page member at the head of the alphabet the dedicated navigational Template:Harry Potter --which The Beatles does not; see the next exhibit.

Exhibit article and (epon)category categorization.

Category:The Beatles members is not a member of Category:The Beatles (nor a subset, of course). Rather, it is a subset of the member Category:People associated with The Beatles, which is analogous to the member categories Companies associated ... and Films associated ... . In other words Category:The Beatles members it is once removed from being in Category:The Beatles, two steps under.

Both the article John Lennon and its eponcat John Lennon are members of Category:The Beatles members (one a member page, the other a member category, of course). So they are both twice removed from being in Category:The Beatles, or three steps under. In turn as the main article of its own eponcat, John Lennon is also four steps under Category:The Beatles.

Our primary tool for navigating our coverage of The Beatles, namely Template: The Beatles main, is another page three steps under Category:The Beatles. It's a T-memberpage (T for its pagename "The ..."), under the tau-membercat Category:WikiProject The Beatles templates (tau for template), under the omega-membercat Category:WikiProject The Beatles (omega for wikiproject).

--P64 (talk) 01:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Beside the different purposes of "users" and "editors", and the individual variations among users or among editors, there may be overlooked systematic differences between the purposes of anyone who visits the page and the purposes of anyone who visits its eponymous category.

Many of our categories lack prefaces; most lack prefaces beyond "This category contains ..." or "The main article for this category is ...". Perhaps as we provide prefaces for all categories we can partly meet the special needs of the users of eponymous categories. At the moment I have a facetious example: "WARNING! If you think you know how this category tree is likely to be structured then you are likely to be surprised." --P64 (talk) 01:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox

I created User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories to express exaggerated concern for this category. of course, i do recognize the arguments presented for it as rationally based and being of some use, and I dont question the intent of those creating them. i just wish it had a larger discussion, and i am stumped on how to generate more discussion without appearing like i am canvassing. I do add articles to these categories when i notice they are missing, i just dont remove all other categories when i do so, but leave a few basic ones. I also dont remove these categories. I like to play well with others even if im passionate about a topic, and i hope i do come off that way.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

to be fair, created a pro epocat userbox: User:Mercurywoodrose/Userboxes/Eponymous Categories pro.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 18:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fewer

There should be fewer subcategories placed directly in this category. Category:Wikipedia categories named after borders and Category:Wikipedia categories named after landforms should be instead placed in Category:Wikipedia categories named after objects. And Category:Wikipedia categories named after constellations should be placed in Category:Wikipedia categories named after astronomical objects, itself a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia categories named after objects.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 05:34, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]