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Question about things going into the categories

Recently I have been noticing that there are some things in various categories that in my opinion ought not go there. For example (and this is just one of many) I noticed today that Category:Dacia articles by quality has the quality assessment documentation embedded into the top of the category. Although I understand the reasoning I think this is probably not appropriate and should have probably been limited to a link to the Project page with that assessment guidance. Should I remove this sort of thing or is this ok to leave there? --Kumioko (talk) 20:45, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Generally categories should not have a lot of text. This defeats the purpose of categories by moving the category contents off of the screen. In your example, there is no reason to include the grading criteria there since that is not the place we discuss assessments. They are discussed on the projects assessment page. That's my opinion. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Topic categories and set categories

I discovered a failed proposal for defining category types. It's a bit overcomplicated, but since miscategorisation and the arguments between topic categories and set categories has advanced since 2006, I think it may be possible to revive this proposal, albeit in a very different form. Perhaps we could start tagging some, not every, categories (for pages in the main namespace) with {{Topic category}} and {{Index category}}. For example, Category:Biology is a topic category, whereas Category:People from Yorkshire is an index category (or set category). The templates definitely need work, but I think if we minimise the tagging to clear-cut cases at first, this system should help stop people miscategorising topic categories into set categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 16:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

"Set" is a better word than "index" I think. It's more widely used and index already has a meaning on Wikipedia. McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:39, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
I think it is best to leave those templates that were created as part of the failed proposal alone. Instead I have created {{Set category}} and I am applying it to categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of PROJCATS cat and populating template

The Category:Redirects from moves and its populating template, {{R from move}} are both up for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:R from move. My !vote is to Keep. Is anybody else here interested in keeping this template and cat?
 —  Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  19:19, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Another case to consider

Someone has recently removed skipjack (boat) from Category:Sailboat types and added it to Category:Skipjacks, for which it is obviously the main article. The latter category, however, contains articles on surviving examples of the type (e.g. Minnie V (skipjack)). Meanwhile Category:Skipjacks was moved from Category:Boat types to Category:Sailboat types.

If I'm understanding the system correctly, both of the latter were incorrect, and Category:Skipjacks should be in Category:Boats by type, whereas skipjack (boat) should be returned to Category:Sailboat types and removed from Category:Skipjacks. Is this correct? Mangoe (talk) 21:14, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, Skipjack (boat) should be in Category:Sailboat types and Category:Skipjacks, and Category:Skipjacks should be in Category:Sailboat types and Category:Boats by type. Although, that's just an observation from quickly looking at the categories. The categories may need seem cleaning up. McLerristarr | Mclay1 02:59, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia category

{{Wikipedia category}} now has the ability to do everything that {{Hidden category}}, {{Container category}} and {{Tracking category}} can do. Because all hidden categories and tracking categories can be tagged with {{Wikipedia category}}, should we deprecate the use of {{Hidden category}} and {{Tracking category}}? McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:17, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

RfC on Sortkey issue

Currently, WP:SORTKEY states "By convention, the first letter of each word in a sort key is capitalized, and other letters are lower case." This has led to the addition of such defaultsorts by bots and other AWB edits. The topic of this RfC is whether this should be a hard rule, implemented on all articles, or a suggestion, only implemented on those articles where it is really an improvement. Fram (talk) 10:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

This issue has been discussed and described at the section "Sortkey" on this talkpage. Basically, it boils down to this:

  1. Some pages are incorrectly sorted when they don't have a sortkey added, since sorting is case sensitive and we want it often to be case insensitive. This is the case when you have multiple pages in the same category that start with the same word, but where some have a following word starting with an uppercase, and some with a lowercase.
  2. Some pages are incrrectly sorted when the defaultsort is added to it, and no defautlsort is added to another page in the same category with a name starting with the same word. Before any defaultsort was added, these were sorted correctly.
  3. Adding defaultsorts to all pages would solve issue 2, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of edits which would not improve anything in most cases
  4. Defaultsorts are a problem when a page is moved: without the defaultsort, the title is automatically the sortkey, meaning that a moved page gets sorted under its new name. With a defaultsort, such a page would stil be sorted under its old name. A bot has been suggested to solve this. Fram (talk) 10:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Examples for the above issues are given in the mentioned "sortkey" section, more examples can be provided if wanted.

My suggested solution is:

  1. Change the rule to a suggestion, that if a page actually gets incorrectly sorted, add a sortkey to the actual category of the page that is a problem, like this: Sort With Upper Case.
  2. Leave all other pages alone: if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
  3. Following this, leave out the addition of such defautlsorts from AWB and other automated or semi-automated edits. Fram (talk) 10:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Addition (after comments below made it clear that the proposal wasn't sufficiently explicit): defaultsorts for biographical articles should not be affected by this proposal, and should remain: these are in general very useful. Fram (talk) 14:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment on the assumptions above.

3. No one is suggesting adding DEFAULTSORT to all pages. 86% of titles in main-space would not need DEFAULTSORTS for case insensitive sorting (excluding diacritics).
4. Very few pages with a default-sort are moved, less than 100 per day, of those a significant number either

Rich Farmbrough, 13:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC).
User:Rich Farmbrough/temp111 contains a list for 6.2 days if anyone wishes to analyse it. Rich Farmbrough, 14:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC).
E.g. Kidnapping of Jalal Sharafi, clearly incorrect defaultsort after move. Black-lored Parrot had a defaultsort added through AWB: while the page move hasn't really changed this, it is one of three black-x birds sorted out of order at Category:Birds of Indonesia, where 25 others are not sorted by this rule. Not having a defaultsort would have been better in this case as well. The same goes for different other moved bird articles from the list as well. Ulnar collateral ligament of thumb was sorted before Ulnar carpal collateral ligament before the move, and still is afterwards.
Basically, looking through that move log, and ignoring articles where this RfC wouldn't make a difference (mainly articles on persons), I see multiple articles where not having a defaultsort would be better, and none where the defaultsort actually made an improvement. Fram (talk) 14:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh, and I have reverted your AWB change here, since you changed a defaultsort that editors had added specifically to be different from the article title, to one matching the article title, thereby ruining the prupose of their defaultsort. Please, if the pre-move defaultsort didn't match the article title, there is no need to make it so post-move, as one may think thta the difference was done deliberately... Fram (talk) 14:37, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I analysed over 100 and only 4 had defaultsorts that would have been put on by AWB before the move, and were wrong afterwards. Rich Farmbrough, 01:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC).
And how many had defaultsorts that would have been put on by AWB, and were not wrong afterwards? Not 96%, obviously, as these incldue many biographies... And of those that would have been put on by AWB, how many made an actual positive difference to the sorting of the article in even one category? More than those 4%?Fram (talk) 12:58, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Not all pages, but many hundreds of thousands of pages. 14% of the titles still means close to 500,000 pages.
About your page move examples: thanks for providing such a nice example. The Category:London Film Critics Circle Awards lists four specific awards. If none of them had a defautlsort (my preferred state), all four would sort correctly. Currently, due to changes you made to them with AWB[1], they have a defaultsort which hasn't improved any sorts. However, if someone would (quite understandable) change the defaultsort for London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year from the current, pre-move "DEFAULTSORT:London Film Critics Circle Award For Best Actress" to the correct "DEFAULTSORT:London Film Critics Circle Award For Actress Of The Year", it would no longer sort correctly. So this is, contrary to your claims, a series of articles where no defaultsort would have been better; they would all have sorted correctly, and no changes were necessary after the move either.
The first one you provide, "Carrier sense" etcetera, is currently, thanks to an unnecessary defaultsort, incorrectly sorted at Category:Channel access methods: the two articles that received a defaultsort through Smackbot edits are now sorted before the main article, which doesn't have a defaultsort. If Smackbot hadn't added the two defaultsorts, these articles would sort correctly, thanks to the page move, which now indeed had no effect on the sorting.
Your examples three and four are about a person, where there is no objection whatsoever to adding a defaultsort in nearly all cases.
As was discussed in the previous section on this: can you provide some insight into why this should be a hard rule for every article that matches this title description, and not a soft rule to be implemented only when it is really improving things? Fram (talk) 14:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • If T2164 were fulfilled, a great deal of of the DEFAULTSORT would become unnecessary. We should try and have the bug fixed and eliminate the need for these edits. –xenotalk 13:59, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • I see no reason why every page should not have a sortkey by default. Debresser (talk) 14:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • What would be the benefits of this? Disadvantages plenty: first a run through all 500000 pages or so that would need one with this rule: then new bots or new maintenance (backlog) cats, with "pages missing a defaultsort" and so on, since new pages will not automatically get a defaultsort, making it necessary to go through these pages every day: all this for what prupose exactly? What is the ratio of pages improved by this, vs. pages needlessly edited by this? Fram (talk) 14:37, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Going through every category to find pages that are sorted incorrectly would be harder than using a bot to go through every page and add an automatic sort key. Problem 4 isn't a problem with the sort keys, it's a problem with editors. Editors should just change the sort key when the page is moved. Simple. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes it's harder but I have code to do it on dumps already. This might help those who don't want to see a single un-necessary edit. Rich Farmbrough, 08:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC).
  • I propose that we add DEFAULTSORT to every single page. 1/3 of Wikipedia pages are biographical and a big percentage uses special characters. Adding DEFAULTOSRT to the rest won't be a big problem as soon as we have a good estimate of how many pages we are talking about. After we finish adding DEFAULTSORT to all pages we can just have a bot to check if pages moved daily have the correct sortkey. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
    • ...and a second bot to add defaultsort to every new page (and every page moved from another namespace to the main namespace) as well (not intended as criticism of your opinion, just an indication of what is needed if we indeed go this way instead of my way (which is rather lonely so far, sob sob ;-)).
There are two BRFA's in already from me and Rjwilmsi, to deal with moves that need changing. Adding new pages would be a cinch I think. Rich Farmbrough, 08:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC).
Two quick points:
  • The last point under Sort Keys says, "Default sort keys are sometimes defined even where they do not seem necessary—when they are the same as the page name, for example—in order to prevent other editors or automated tools from trying to infer a different default." I think this should be changed to "Default sort keys should be defined even where they do not seem necessary—when they are the same as the page name, for example—in order to prevent other editors or automated tools from trying to infer a different default." A bot could just as easily sort Pink Floyd as "Floyd, Pink" as a bot sorted Ptolemy I Soter as "Soter, Ptolemy I". (I kid you not. It did happen.)
  • The only pages that absolutely do not need a sort value are those with one-word titles. JimCubb (talk) 17:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Moving forward

Seeing this has stalled for 2 weeks now and two BRFAs by an editor involved are waiting approval, I will attempt to at least partially move this issue forward.

So: Should DEFAULTSORT be added to articles where it does not impact the actual sorting of the article? Hypothetical example: add DEFAULTSORT to ReD as "Red" when it is already sorted correctly between Rack and Ruth.

  • Oppose. Don't fix what's not broken. A bot/script/AWB can (be modified to) determine when adding a sortkey will actually change the sorting order. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, it should. At any given time, it is unknown what entries will be in each of a page's categories or in which categories an editor will include a page; excluding a defaultsorts in cases where it currently does not matter creates inherent errors when more entries are added to categories. While the sorting is still sorted based on ASCII (or does not account for case or accented characters), the defaultsort is useful, especially on pages in mixed case like ReD. —Ost (talk) 20:02, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It is difficult enough to figure out sorting problems being created by the stupid bots that are adding default sort incorrectly. Don't use DEFAULTSORT unless a human actually determines that it is needed. Like HELLKNOWZ said, Don't fix what's not broken. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:17, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment While I don't support a bot-run to add DEFAULTSORT to all articles, I do not oppose it either (and would be happy to do it if consensus requested it). Nonetheless this is a slightly false dichotomy. Given our current standards there are more than two actions we could take:
  1. DEFAULTSORT to all articles
  2. DEFAULTSORT to articles which could possibly be mis-sorted
  3. DEFAULTSORT to articles which are mis-sorted

And within this

  1. Do it regardless
  2. Do it only if making another edit.

(Also there are a few articles which benefit from a DEFAULTSORT equivalent to the article title, for relatively obscure reasons.)

Now I have always gone with do 3. regardless, and do 2 if you are editing the article anyway, as the behaviour we should aim for.

Further I would suggest we can have no issue with people who don't add a DEFAULTSORT - we might point it out to them if they are creating many articles, or even editing lots of them (some stub-sorters do this as they go I believe) but we should not require them to do it. Moreover I have no problem with anyone adding them more zealously. There are perfectly good arguments for doing so. Rich Farmbrough, 15:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Not knowing about this thread, I asked a few similar questions at Help talk:Category#Defaultsort. In particular, why edits like this one? — Pt (T) 16:01, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

What is the reason for the convention that the first letter of each word in a sort key is capitalized? Given that only the first word and proper names are capitalized in article titles according to WP:LOWERCASE, I find the sort-key convention counter-intuitive and surprising and I guess it has been discussed somewhere. Nurg (talk) 23:03, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Probably because multi-word proper names (each word capitalized) were found or felt to be more common as article titles than multi-word phrases with only the first word capitalized (so adopting that as the convention would put more articles automatically in the right place).--Kotniski (talk) 09:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
And it seems this is right: I have counted all the multi-word article titles (including redirects) based on the last database dump from October. And 1675023 articles use only lowercase, 3707972 articles use only uppercase and 3317117 don't fit either (e.g. they had both lower and upper case, contain numbers or have disambiguation part). I considered words to be delimited by spaces only. Svick (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Categorization of people

There is currently an interesting discussion going on on Talk:Andrew Wakefield#Correct categorization, please. The question is whether he should be included in (set) categories like the "2011 scandals". As you can see, I'm for the "you have to be one" approach, i.e. since Wakefield isn't a scandal, he doesn't fit into the category. "2011 scandals" is, to be brief, not a people category, it's an event category.

Compare with Category:Political scandals in the United States and the discussion on its talkpage.

Maybe there should be a new policy on categorization of people?

HandsomeFella (talk) 10:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

These aren't maintenance categories (and shouldn't be hidden)

Unknown is definitive, missing is temporary. Category:Year of death unknown should therefore not be hidden or considered a maintenance category, as opposed to Category:Year of death missing. This has been discussed before, but I don't know where, so I cannot refer to any previous decisions. __meco (talk) 17:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I found the opposite opinion at Category talk:Year of death unknown. I can't say I disagree with it (that it's not defining). Looking for the CFD discussion that prompted that. --Kbdank71 17:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I wrote definitive, not defining. __meco (talk) 17:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I know what you wrote. I was referring to the opinion at the YoDU talk page. However, speaking to definitive, even if that is so, I don't see how the "unknown" categories should not be considered maintenance categories. --Kbdank71 18:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
How can that possibly be a maintenance category? What possible action could an editor do to remedy this lacking information? The entire distinction between the unknown and missing category lies in whether it is believed that the year of birth can be retrieved from some existing source that has yet to be added to the article's references. __meco (talk) 19:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
What possible action could an editor do to remedy this lacking information? Most likely nothing, so why make it visible? What reader is going to visit Benjamin Agus, for example, and think "You know what, I'm really interested in other people whose date of death is unknown"? Goes back to defining. Nobody is defined by the fact that we don't can't find out when they died. --Kbdank71 20:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
As if Category:1888 births is going to be any more useful to anyone? Should we make all of those hidden also? I believe the rationale for making the missing/unknown categories hidden was their being maintenance categories, not that they wouldn't be of interest to people. And I believe there have been more resounding discussions about these categories than the CFD link below, which frankly provides very little discussion at all. I seem to remember having seen and possibly also participated in discussions on this that were far more substantive than that. __meco (talk) 21:40, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Category:1888 births has the potential to be far more useful because people perform research on a particular calendar year quite frequently. I've never heard of research being performed on people whose date of birth is unknown. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Topics of research don't come into existence based on you or me having heard of them. If we're going to base this on our capacity for conceiving of this or that we'll not be making any good decisions at all. __meco (talk) 22:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
? So you're suggesting that "people whose date of birth is unknown" either has been or could be a valid topic of research? This doesn't necessarily provide the reasons to make decisions, but it does provide a justification for it, because it looks like that's what you're searching for. You suggested there was not a distinction between the two categories, so I just wanted to point out that there almost certainly is. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
the rationale for making the missing/unknown categories hidden was their being maintenance categories Which I agree with, and think they should remain that way. If you can find a discussion that presents the case to change that in a logical way, I may change my mind. --Kbdank71 00:59, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Found it: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 April 14 CFD discussion determined that these categories should go on the article and remain hidden. --Kbdank71 17:40, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I have to write this: I knew this will happen. Both sides are right. "Year of birth unknown" is a fact. It's completely different from "Year of birth missing". And yes, it's a valid topic of research..... but research will give nothing! I checked in the past tenths of these articles. Some were mixing "unknown" with "unknown to me" but most of them were about ancient people with no discussion on their death year. I suggested that if we know the century of birth to replace "Year of birth unknown" with "xx-th century births". I don't know what happened with that. "Date of birth unknown" is even worse. Maybe we have to first move on the direction of cleanup. Any volunteers? -- Magioladitis (talk) 01:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, there's the problem, which actually manifested to prompt this entire thread, when the article states for example, "died after 1895". That makes it really hard to add Category:19th-century deaths even. __meco (talk) 11:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
True. Let's start it and we 'll see how many can't be decided. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:55, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Start what? __meco (talk) 18:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I believe he meant start trying to move articles out of Category:Year of death unknown and into categories like Category:19th-century deaths. For instance, if someone is 70 years old and they were last heard of in 1820, it's safe to put them into Category:19th-century deaths. Then once they are all gone through you can see how many can't be assigned to a century because of problems resulting from the situations such as the example you gave. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:20, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Good Ol' factory. That's what I meant.
Category:Second millennium deaths anyone? Rich Farmbrough, 15:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

First example I picked has: 

[[:Category:Year of birth unknown]]
[[:Category:Year of death unknown]]
[[:Category:English painters]]
[[:Category:Portrait artists]]
[[:Category:English engravers]]
[[:Category:18th-century births]]
[[:Category:1830s deaths]]

and of course it is still true that "year of death is unknown". Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

We have to give instructions "Give more accurate data as possible". Year is known but not completely unknown. We have some information and we have to use it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Shall I resume this task? I.e. Add the most accurate yob/yod cats possible and remove the "missing/unknown" ones? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Brad Evans

Me and Namiba (talk · contribs) have been in discussion here about the inclusion/exclusion of Category:University of California, Irvine alumni from the Brad Evans article. Namiba's rationale is that because Evans is already in Category:UC Irvine Anteaters men's soccer players, he should not be in the parent category; I disagree, and see no harm (actually, I see great benefit) to him being listed in both. Namiba suggested we take the conversation elsewhere for wider input, so any thoughts are more than welcome! Thanks, GiantSnowman 16:50, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely with Mr. Snowman. Mr. Evans graduated from Irvine and therefore should be included as an alumni. His time as an Anteater has no bearing upon that fact.--EchetusXe 17:58, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
If no-one else wishes to contribute then I'll be BOLD and restore the category...GiantSnowman 16:51, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I'd give it a few more days given the holiday festivities.--TM 16:56, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Oh yes, don't get me wrong, I wasn't intending to do it straight away! GiantSnowman 17:02, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Well I've waited two weeks, no other input or comments, so I'm going to reinstate the category. GiantSnowman 14:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Quite incorrectly. I've shown you elsewhere that previous discussions on the same topic have resulted in the consensus of not including it. WP:DUPCAT also says as much.--TM 14:54, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
You mean DUPCAT which states "there is no need to take pages out of the parent category purely because of their membership of a non-diffusing subcategory", and which therefore seems to support my view to keep him in both...? As EchetusXe said, he is an alumni of UCI regardless of his role as an athlete during his time there, and only being in the 'UC Irvine Anteaters men's soccer players' category doesn't reflect that. GiantSnowman 15:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. (But the singular is alumnus, surely?)--Kotniski (talk) 15:07, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Quite easy to skip the next part of the same sentence: "(Of course, if the pages also belong to other subcategories that do cause diffusion, then they will not appear in the parent category directly.)" Does Evans "belong" in the soccer players category? Yes. Does it cause diffusion? Yes. Is this any "exception" which it also talks about? No. Did the past discussion I showed you also indicate a similar trend? Yes.--TM 15:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Evans is a a soccer player regarding of his nationality, right? So why not include him in the parent category as well?--TM 15:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

There's a little something called 'common sense.' Having Evans in the category 'American soccer players' as opposed to 'American people' is much more accurate, as it confirms that he is both American and a soccer player. Having him in 'UC Irvine Anteaters men's soccer players' but not 'University of California, Irvine alumni' is less accurate - I mean, you can play college soccer without being an alumni of a University, but Evans is both, and so deserves to be in both categories. GiantSnowman 15:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No, you can not play college soccer without being an alumnus. College soccer players, like all athletes, attend classes like other students (assumedly). Barack Obama attended Harvard University's Law School. But do you see him placed in the Category:Harvard University alumni? He is located (correctly) in only the Category:Harvard Law School alumni. THAT is just called common sense. If it is good enough for the US President (and essentially every other article), it is good enough for Brad Evans.--TM 15:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Another example of a GA from the sports world: Tim Duncan is listed in the Category:Wake Forest Demon Deacons men's basketball players, not Category:Wake Forest University alumni. This is the common way of categorizing biographies.--TM 15:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm afraid that you're wrong - "alumnus" means somebody who has graduated from a college or University. You can attend college, play soccer there, but not graduate - and therefore you would not be an alumnus. Evans did graduate, so deserves to be mentioned as an alumnus. That therefore makes your Obama example void, as he is an alumnus of a particular college, and he is in that appropiate category - his degree was given to him by Harvard Law School, NOT Harvard University. As for Tim Duncan, not only does that example violate WP:OTHERSTUFF, but dependent upon the outcome of this discussion, I would propose to include Duncan in the appropiate alumnus category as well. GiantSnowman 16:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I am afraid you are incorrect. Alumnus says "An alumnus (pl. alumni), according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "a graduate of a school, college, or university".[1] An alumnus can also be a former member, employee, contributor or inmate as well as a former student." The Merriam-Webster dictionary also includes the definition. It is common practice in all of Wikipedia to include someone who attended a university without graduating in the category. I cite the Tim Duncan example because it is a featured article. Essentially all other featured articles do the same thing. I think they are a good example to follow given the level of vetting they receive.--TM 17:12, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The question should be whether the subcategory is part of a system by which a parent category is broken down (probably because it would otherwise be too large). There doesn't seem to be a general system for breaking down this parent category, so it seems that the athlete subcategories would be best treated as being of the non-diffusing sort. Someone scanning a list of alumni of the university aren't going to be especially less interested in those who were athletes, and there aren't such vast numbers of articles on these athletes that the category would become unwieldy by including them, so I would say there isn't any gain to be had by excluding them.--Kotniski (talk) 16:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Hidden categories question

Maybe I've missed something in the talk archives, but I don't understand why hidden categories are visible (not hidden) on pages in the category: namespace. The pages in the category namespace are not necessarily maintenance pages, they are often pages that are intended to convey encyclopedic information to the reader. The reader might explore the encyclopedic information on Wikipedia by browsing the category tree. If he does so, then he won't want to see maintenance categories. So it seems to me that they should be hidden in the category namespace just as they are hidden in the article namespace. Perhaps the reasons for not doing this already are purely technical? Clarification appreciated. 98.118.117.123 (talk) 00:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Hidden categories are hidden in all namespaces. Not all maintenance categories are hidden categories. If you could provide a link to an example of what you mean, I would be happy to explain further. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:31, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
No, hidden categories are actually shown in the category namespace (at least in Vector). They have CSS class mw-hidden-cats-ns-shown instead of mw-hidden-cats-hidden that is used in articles. (Setting the user preference to show hidden categories changes the class in articles to mw-hidden-cats-user-shown.) Svick (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, they show, and yes it's a bad idea. The "bright line" between content and project is muddied in far to many places. Rich Farmbrough, 03:15, 17th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).
You're right. I didn't realise they always appeared because I have "show hidden categories" turn on in my user preferences. It is indeed a bad idea. However, they do appear underneath the non-hidden categories and are labelled as hidden, which isn't too bad. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Eponymous categories ... again

I would like to see the following text removed for the guideline:

"an article should not be excluded from any set category on the grounds that its eponymous category is made a "subcategory" of that category"

It is an endless source of confusion and debate. Removing it lets editors make a decision on a case by case basis. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:46, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, which is why it should be there. If editors make decisions case by case, we end up with a dreadful mess, with randomly incomplete lists of articles on category pages, and randomly incomplete lists of categories on article pages. There really is no reason to sanction this misguided piece of illogic. --Kotniski (talk) 12:46, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
As I have opined to you in the discussion which spawned this request for comments, I believe your perception is largely proprietary and that there is no reason to make any other action with regards to this guideline than to enforce it. I also must admonish you to cease making mass edits according to your preferred outcome of this issue while it is being discussed! __meco (talk) 17:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Eponymous categories shouldn't be in set categories anyway. Set categories provide us with lists of every article in that set. Categories containing topics related to those members of the set shouldn't be subcategories of the set. It's a common problem and, in my opinion, we need better guidelines to deal with it. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
    • You are correct, but set categories can be sub categories of topic categories and vice versa. Which is why we probably need a distinction between categories being members, and being nested containers. Rich Farmbrough, 13:03, 17th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).
It is not confusing, but it seems completely un-necessary. If we suppose "Paris" is a member of "Cat:France" and "Cat:Paris" is a sub-category (which is not necessarily a good idea), then certainly "Paris" is in the set "things vaguely to do with France" - the fact that "Cat:Paris" is a sub-category is irrelevant. If on the other hand , Paris is in "Cat:Paris" (on the somewhat debatable grounds that it is "vaguely to do with itself") then it is not needed in the parent category, although it does no harm there. So the text in the guideline is correct (but obvious) presence of an eponymous category does not preclude (or indeed demand) presence of the article. Rich Farmbrough, 12:57, 17th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

Categorization of river categories

See discussion at WP talk:WikiProject Rivers.

This seems to me an unhelpful precedent. Are we going to remove all categories of Category:France except Category:Categories named after countries? It's the converse of the debate on eponymous articles. The argument seems to be that if the eponymous article is in a category, then the category itself does not need to be.--Mhockey (talk) 09:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


In general, how should one handle a redlink parent category when one sees one? Wikipedia:Categorization states that "An article should never be left with a non-existent (redlinked) category on it." While I realize that subcats are not articles, it makes sense to me to remove the redlinks there as well. After all, if there was a need for a category, it should have been created, not just redlinked, right? (When I first stumbled across Category:Masonic buildings in the United States, I created the missing categories rather than just redlinking them.) It does seem like some categories are redlinked as part of a larger hierarchy, though - should these redlinks be removed until the categories themselves are created, if they ever are? Or would it be better to simply try and figure out the hierarchy and create them as you find them? Avicennasis @ 14:00, 29 Shevat 5771 / 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that redlink parent category doesn't make much sense, so you should either create it (if you think such category should exist) or remove it. Svick (talk) 15:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)]
Thanks for the feedback. :) Avicennasis @ 01:18, 10 Adar I 5771 / 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Your removal of redlink categories here was inappropriate. In that case the redlinks were relevant, but misnamed. Rather than deleting them you should have fixed them. Do not remove any redlinked categories unless you have determined that the categorization is improper. In all other cases the category should be fixed if possible, or created. Dolovis (talk) 00:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
I am addressing this particular example with you on my talk page. Avicennasis @ 01:18, 10 Adar I 5771 / 14 February 2011 (UTC)
No you are not addressing it as you have ended that conversation on your talk page. We can it conclude the discussion here: There is no consensus for you to continue to blindly delete redlinked categories from articles, and so it is expected that you will make no further such removals in the future. Dolovis (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Ok. I will not blindly remove cats. I wasn't anyway. Thanks again for your feedback. Avicennasis @ 22:07, 10 Adar I 5771 / 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Categorizing navbox templates

The guidelines here don't explain how to deal with navbox templates. They do have a complex category system of their own, which is not a place where readers are likely to explore. But whether they appear in the normal categories too seems to be a very mixed bag, is there a general rule on this? I've been looking at some of the British navboxes and while, for instance, Template:Schools in Buckinghamshire is in Category:English education navboxes by county (which most readers won't venture near) but also Category:Schools in Buckinghamshire, which is a "for readers" category. Is this a good idea, or should it be kept in the navbox-only categories? TheGrappler (talk) 18:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The main namespace is for aiding readers in their navigation. Since navboxes are useful tools for navigation in articles that is where they are actually used. As to your question, you are going to get mixed reactions. Some will argue that as a navigation tool they belong in the category. Other will argue that since they are not about the subject they don't belong in the category. I subscribe to the later group. Anyone who got to the category likely read one of the articles which already included the navbox. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
I am strongly inclined to agree with you, I just wonder whether it's possible to form some consensus on this point so the guidelines can be clarified. Before an adequate template categorization scheme was in place, I can understand that for maintenance purposes it wasn't such a bad idea to at least put the templates somewhere sensible, but I don't think the current situation is helpful for readers. And the inconsistency between templates is pretty annoying too! TheGrappler (talk) 20:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
If a navbox seems like it could fit in a main namespace category, could it not be transcluded there? Navboxes in category could be quite useful. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
The purpose of category is to get readers quickly to the contents. Adding stuff to the headers can move the real material past the first screens on most displays. If it really is appropriate them one can consider adding it in a collapsed state. The 'monkey see, monkey do' principal applies here, so if you do it for a justified reason in one place, then editors will think it is OK everywhere. Then if one is OK, two or three or more are also OK. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Categories are quite specific though and it's unlikely that more than one navbox would ever be appropriate. I don't really think that the speed at which readers can navigate through categories is particularly important. If one has enough time to spare to read Wikipedia, there is clearly no rush. Adding them collapsed is perhaps a good idea though. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
On some occasions I can see virtues in transcluding a navbox onto a category page. Indeed there are some navboxes specifically for category navigation (see e.g. Category:Bridges completed in the 1890s). But I'm having a harder time seeing why a navbox template should be sorted inside a reader's-use category. It doesn't seem very helpful to readers and mostly serves as category-clutter. The navbox will presumably appear on some of the pages within the category, anyway. TheGrappler (talk) 13:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't believe there are any objections here to navboxes specifically designed for categories. The focus of the discussion is article navboxes in categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Who says that this guideline does not explain what to do with navboxes? It does. See the section "Non-article and maintenance categories". It is quite clear: articles on one side, non-article pages on the other. Templates are, regardless of their topic, non-article pages, and must stay at their specialized categories. However, it seems that there is an accepted use (and I don't see any reason to complain about it) for making the project-category "Category:X topic templates" a subcategory of content category "Category:X topic". If someone wants to provide easy access to the templates, he should prepare a good category tree for the templates and use this nexus at the project category. MBelgrano (talk) 22:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I found the template instructions a little ambiguous because navboxes, in particular, are "reader-facing content", different to the "backroom" WikiProject pages.
In some places "Category:Topic X templates" has been made a subcategory of both "Category:Topic X" and "Category:WikiProject X" - does that seem reasonable? TheGrappler (talk) 21:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
This a good place to tread warily. Maintaining a bright line between the encyclopaedia and the back-room is very useful, navboxes already muddy this by putting links to template talk pages on articles, and by keeping content in template space. There are also (or were, I can't recall them and check) categories that are written like articles. Generally I would suggest "Category:Topic X templates" should not be subcatted to a content category. As a side note, if there is a project, there will also be very likely "Category:WikiProject X template class pages" (or a similar name). Rich Farmbrough, 17:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC).
My opinion lies similar to yours, but the way this page gives suggesions on using e.g. non-Latin characters for template categories suggests someone somewhere thinks likewise. The "template class" categories apply to the talk pages and don't allow as much systematic organization as the full category scheme can (since it applies only to templates of a particular WikiProject, but can't distinguish between different "levels" of them). So for cases like Category:Cambridge United F.C. templates (where there isn't a project for that particular team), a team-specific category seems a good idea. But should it really be, as now, a subcat of "Cambridge United F.C."? I think the answer should be no, but this guideline doesn't seem to make that clear. TheGrappler (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Waterparks.

Nearly every state or country has a subcategory of waterparks, which creates confusion, redundant entries and tiny categories. For example, Hawaii has only 1 amusement park, and a sub-category with only one waterpark. People have over-categorized to the extent that the average category has only 1 or 2 entries (75 waterpark Wikis for 50 states). Disney World in Florida has sub-parks, which need to be listed together instead of spread out in sub-categories. Another problems is the constantly changing attractions, where an amusement park adds wet rides and splash parks, and a water park adds dry attractions like mini-golf and go-karts. And just to complicate matters, safari-parks and castles are adding amusements and water attractions. And even more confusion comes when somebody splits up a combo park like Dollywood into 2 parks, leading people to believe that Dollywood is just an amusement park. So, I am merging all waterparks into the state or country level amusement park category. Please note that I am not deleting or renaming the category. I am just pointing the waterpark article to a better category of amusement parks.

And now it gets worse, because the word waterpark is only used in the United States to mean a water-themed amusement park. Elsewhere in the world it means a nature park with lots of water. You will find this confusion on photo sharing services like Flickr, Smugmug and Picasa. Some examples are Chorlton_Water_Park in the UK Flickr, Parque das Águas de Caxambu in Brazil Flickr and Tianjin_Water_Park in China Flickr. If anyone is interested, I can begin assigning these water-themed nature parks to the waterpark category, since the categories are now empty. However, I think the smart thing to do is eliminate the waterpark categories and stop the confusion.

BTW, combo-amusement park articles like Dollywood need to be merged with the article for the waterpark, like Splash Country Waterpark.

Summer Vacation (talk) 23:14, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with you - there is nothing wrong with listing water parks separately, since the category design is such where one can categorize things both ways. The separation is useful, and I have looked specifically for waterparks in the past, and will likely do so again.
I will also be reverting your recategorization. You will need to obtain consensus with all the relevant wikiprojects before this sort of move happens again. SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
And the reversion is done. Note that I just spent 40 minutes cleaning up after you. Basically, here's the thing: You removed a whole bunch of categories from articles and mashed them into other categories because you don't like small categories. While extreme overcategorization is bad, undercategorization is equally bad, if not worse. One category does not exist to the detriment of another, because they catalog different things. Small categories are okay. A category with only two items in it is still a valid category. Likewise, categories are not in competition with each other, and articles can reside in multiple hierarchies. If you believe a category or categories should be deleted from Wikipedia, you will need to bring that concern up at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. Please do not just unilaterally wipe out a category structure like that again. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:24, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for doing the reversions SchuminWeb. I didn't support the changes myself. I much prefer the separated categories. Themeparkgc  Talk  08:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
To SchuminWeb and Themeparkgc. What I have found here at Wikipedia is a total lack of respect for others. You have taken action to undo the work of another person without waiting for feedback from that person, or even a consensus from more 'experts'. This is not civilized behavior, and it is the very reason why people get really pissed off at Wikipedia. If we were to have a round-table discussion about splitting amusement parks into two categories, with an average of less than 2 waterparks in each state category, you would look like fools. But that is not what this is about. You act like little kids with a gun. You have the power and you are going to do whatever the hell you want. Themeparkgc was given a chance to respond to my proposal at the very beginning, and Themeparkgc said absolutely nothing. I gave this person the respect that anyone deserves. I also worked on this project slowly so that any interested party could see what I was doing and respond with ideas, support or disapproval. Both of you, especially Themeparkgc, waited until I was finished with my project to undo all of my work, without even asking me a single question. That is just plain evil, uncivilized and childish. This experience convinces me that Wikipedia is far too rigid and tyrannical for the Summer Vacation industry. So I am going to extract what I need from Wikipedia and create something much better. (updated) Summer Vacation (talk) 14:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Suit yourself, but the arguments from multiple people that I've seen for retention of the category schema are far more convincing than your arguments for removing, and a consensus seems to have formed to retain the categories. From what I've seen, you do good work when you're doing writing and such, but categorization may not necessarily be your strong point (and that's fine - not everyone is good at everything). SchuminWeb (Talk) 14:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
It is invalid to state that you are right because somebody supports you, or you do not like what somebody has done Ad_hominem. Justify the creation of a category for 1 or 2 items. Justify splitting Dollywood into 2 categories. You can not, and you are no longer worth my time. I have a life, and I do not have the time to fight over this petty issue. You have not responded to my entire set of reasons for merging categories, and so I suspect that you never will. Summer Vacation (talk) 14:19, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Let me see if I have this right. SchuminWeb trashes my work, without any advance notice whatsoever, then says that this needs serious discussion after all before anything is done. What the hell for? So that I can redo all my work that SchuminWeb trashed. NOT A CHANCE IN HELL!!! When people see that splitting Dollywood into 2 categories is stupid, or that having 1 or 2 items in a category really is ANAL (as he has stated, thank you sir) will SchuminWeb apologize and put my changes back? NOT LIKELY!!! SchuminWeb, stop posting your stupidity on my pages, put my changes back, and leave me the hell alone. Go somewhere else, or annoy my ex-wife if you have nothing better to do with your life. Summer Vacation (talk) 14:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Categories serve several purposes on the wiki. What one editor sees as helpful another may find as useless. WP:SMALLCAT makes it clear when small categories are OK. WP:DIFFUSE explains a bit about why more specific categories are useful. However if someone comes in and dismantles existing categorization without discussion, they should expect their action will be meet with at least skepticism and reversions. In reading your comments, it appears that you don't agree with the established guidelines that were developed by consensus and want to arrange things for your specific purposes. I'll also remind you that categories are not the only navigation tool. The level of navigation you are looking for may be better delivered by using templates or lists. So as you point out, the existing categories in this area don't work for you, but would navigation templates work? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the laugh, as I needed a bit of humor today. So you are suggesting that I spend a lot of time updating the templates (which I did think about doing when an administrator showed me how), and then that bloody fool will come along and trash my work? Are you nuts? No thanks. Unlike some people who have to be taught a lesson 3 times, I learn the first time. If you guys want a crappy Wiki system that is useless, no problem. If you guys want 1 or 2 items in a category, fine, no problem. If you want a list of summer camps that has only 150 items out of 1,000 on my list at Google Sites; NO PROBLEM. I always like to watch people do wacky stuff. That is why I watch Fox News and the Comedy Channel. Life is too short to get into a pissing contest like this. Like the song says "Do whatcha want, It's all right..." Summer Vacation (talk) 21:46, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Summer Camp, please take this as a warning to you that personal attacks against other Wikipedia editors are not permitted, and that editors are expected to behave civilly when editing. Referring to another editor as "that bloody fool" is uncivil. I for one have no reason to believe that you are not acting in good faith. However, I believe you are definitely still learning the ropes around this place, and we're doing our best to try to guide you about how it all works. And one of the things is to be bold, but not reckless, and one thing you will acquire through experience is discovering where that line is between the two. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
If YOU trash the work of another person, then YOU have to take responsibility for what YOU did. Now YOU are attempting to hide behind the skirts of Wiki-rules to hide the fact that YOU vandalized the hard work of another person. YOU did not show respect and ask first, as I did. YOU can not justify your abusive behavior. So it is personal, and I have every right to tell others that I am pissed off at YOU, and that YOU have motivated me to stop helping Wikipedia. It is tyrants like YOU, who show no respect for others, that discourage others from contributing to Wiki. For example, I was going to clean up the lists of Summer Camps, Water Parks and Amusement Parks (which is a huge task), but not after dealing with people like YOU who destroy anything you do not like, without even having the decency to ask first. Take your righteous attitude elsewhere, because I am not impressed by tyrants. Again, YOU vandalized my work in a manner that violates the cooperative nature of Wikipedia. YOU violated the rules. You are trying to justify HOW you did this by trying to justify WHAT you did. Do YOU understand this very simple concept, and the fact that Wikipedia is supposed to be about the RESPECT of another persons contribution? GET IT? BTW, it is Summer Vacation, not Summer Camp.Summer Vacation (talk) 13:45, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Suit yourself. SchuminWeb (Talk) 14:20, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

BTW, when I re-wrote a summer camp article to prevent it from being deleted, I immediately sent the author an email so that they could undo my work if they wanted to try re-writing the article themselves. That is respect of others. I did not want the article to be deleted by a tyrant who did not understand Jewish culture, or the difference between Jewish facts and Jewish opinions. In addition, on my User page I posted my purpose and scope for the category re-organization well in advance and invited other editors to comment. That is respect of others. I did not want to be disruptive or trash anyones work, and I did what any sane person with 35 years experience in the consulting industry would do. Make it user friendly, simplify it and make it functional. If you do not understand these concepts, then I can suggest some college courses or technical manuals. Perhaps a few classes in psychology would help as well... Summer Vacation (talk) 13:56, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Categories sorted by given names?

All of a sudden the various categories (like Category:Shot-down aviators) appear to me to have sorted the biographies by given names, not surnames. The letters of the alphabet in the categories appear jumbled too. Anyone know what seems to be going on? Manxruler (talk) 20:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank God it wasn't something I did. I've been befuddled by this recent phenomenon too. I assume it's some software glitch that will soon be fixed. It looks like the Defaultsort function is temporarily disabled, but that only explains half the problem. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:18, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem seems to have been fixed now. Scary glitch, that. Manxruler (talk) 21:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
No, it's not fixed. Look at Category:Spanish composers, for example. It gives names up to mid-way thru the S's, then nothing. But there are plenty of T, U, V, X, Y and Z names in that cat, too. Joaquín Valverde Sanjuán, for example, which is defsorted under Valverde. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
It is working for me now. If I click on next 200 I get the rest of the Ss through the Zs. Libcub (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Me too. But the names within each letter are all over the place, alphabetically. Like a pack of cards that's been shuffled. It's a big, bad mess that has only the surface appearance of being OK. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I think it is something to do with some "tweaks" currently being made to the software in how categories work. (This is not being implemented by me, I have just heard about it.) I think they are trying to have media files appear in a separate section of the category rather than mixed in with the article pages (when __NOGALLERY__ is used), and possibly some other stuff. There may be some unintended side effects happening. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
On this one, I don't get next 200. But I can get to at least some of the later entries via the contents box at the top. The numbers don't add up, though; there are still a couple hundred not displaying. This is weird: if I click on S in the contents box, I get some Ss, a a U,some W's then 2 more Ss! Libcub (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the next only shows up now if there are articles in the category. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#categorically_random_categories and http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/site-fixes/ Nanonic (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm just stumbling on this now. For quite a lot of time I've been doing a lot, I mean a LOT, I mean really, really, REALLY A LOT of work tweaking alphabetization in Category pages. It's been mostly on pages for species of various genera, and it's based on the point that terms alphabetized with a lower case initial follow those with upper case--truly a marvelous feature for imposing some sense and readability in complicated Category pages. But my work seems to have gone all flooey. Do I understand this is just a temporary glitch, brought about by some upgrades?? 72.83.149.28 (talk) 22:31, 13 March 2011 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Alphabetizing--a temporary glitch, or a permanent change?

It seems that all of a sudden, there's been a huge change in the way things are alphabetized on a Category page.

Formerly, and for as long as I've been paying attention, entries with Sortkeys beginning with lower case letters were alphabetized in a separate alphabet following that for Sortkeys with upper case initials. Thus, category pages organized with that feature in mind showed the alphabet: A, B, ... Z, a, b, ... z.

This was a VERY useful feature for organizing complicated categories; one could improve their readability tremendously.

But it seems to have disappeared. Now, some categories that had been organized this way show just a single alphabet, with the upper case and lower case Sortkeys interfiled. Does somebody know if this is a temporary glitch, or is it a permanent change? 140.147.236.194 (talk) 13:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Sandboxed articles

We used to have an section titled "Keep cats out of the sandbox". What happened to it? Where now is the policy / guidance on this problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tehwhirled/Proposed_Libyan_no-fly_zone&oldid=418477994 ? Greenshed (talk) 17:15, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

See WP:USERNOCAT. Svick (talk) 19:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

It is time to get the guideline to match the unwritten consensus

The categorisation guideline does not match what actually exists and it is causing confusion for those unfamiliar with categorisation. I spend a lot of my time doing re-categorisation and on occasion editors undo my edits quoting the guidelines as a justification. I carry out my edits based on what is out there already and what I see as best practice for the reader. It seems that the categorisation system is not distinguishing between readers and editors whereas the rest of WP does maintain this separation.

The main issues as I see it are:

  • The vast majority of categories contain a mixture articles and/or sub-cats, and do not include images pages. Images are usually given their own category or the reader is pointed at Wikimedia Commons
  • Template pages are generally not placed in content categories. Templates have their own category system that are part of WP maintenance categories. This is sensible since they are not generally of interest to the readers as a standalone page.
  • Images or templates are generally not placed in a category page
  • The perennial problem of eponymous categories should be resolved. The eponymous article of the sub-categories are rarely added to the category yet the guideline states - in bolded text - that they should not be excluded.

These points must be spelled out in the guideline to prevent a waste of editing time and to make the content categories of use to readers. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:17, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that images and templates should be kept out of content categories, but I'm not sure what point you're making about eponymous categories - are you saying the guidance should be changed, or practice should be changed, or both? I also don't know why you commented out the statement in the guideline that says that eponymous categories are often in practice made into "subcategories" of their eponymous article's categories - we might think they shouldn't be, but in actual fact they often are.--Kotniski (talk) 09:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Category:Buildings and structures

Can someone direct me to a discussion about how this category is to be used? It seems to me it (and I assume its hundreds of subcategories) is for buildings and architectural structures (towers, dams, etc.) but folks seem to use it for any artificial (i.e. man-made) construction, including canals and reservoirs, as well as complexes that contain more than a single building. Is the category stretching the definition of what a "structure" is, or does the category (and its hundreds of subcategories) simply need a better introduction section that explains that it includes any sort of construction? Personally I'd prefer the more limited definition but will defer to the categorization experts. Valfontis (talk) 21:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Video games set in X country

Looking at Category:Video games by country of setting, I notice there are many country categories with only one page, and which I would expect to never have more than a handful of members. At first I felt strongly that this was Wikipedia:Overcategorization, but now I'm not sure - there are categories for films set in various countries, though they generally have many more members. I asked at the Wikiproject video games but didn't get any feedback, and I don't want to start a CFD yet because that seems like a lot of work, so I figured I'd ask here. Some guy (talk) 03:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The sub-categories with very few members exist for consistency. As WP grows so would the membership of the categories with few members. I don't really see the low page numbers as too much of an issue. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Metamaterials

I am having a difference of opinion with an editor about Category:Metamaterials. I attempted to remove the image file pages from the category and the image in the category page itself. My edits were reverted citing the categorisation guideline - which I feel needs updating as per my earlier comments. I carried out my edits on the unwritten convention that a category page does not have any images in it and it is not populated with image files (unless it is a category dedicated to images). -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Please explain

I don't understand it. The category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Parts_of_a_day has a subcategory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Night which itself has a subcategory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy According to Wikipedia each subcategory inherits all features and definitions from its parent categories. So what ... "astronomy" is a "part of a day" ? --boarders paradise (talk) 14:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed – I removed Category:Astronomy from Category:Night. Since Category:Astronomy is not the study of night and can be studied during the day, the connection is a little too obscure to warrant it being a subcategory. McLerristarr | Mclay1 02:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Category "bled" over!??

I just inserted a Category X, in article A. I was surprised to discover that Category X was itself incorrectly defined as Category Y (among others). This is okay (when I finally discovered it). But what really surprised me is that,Category Y also showed up, unannounced in article A! (along with Category X) I had a heck of time discovering this! I don't understand why it happened. Any thoughts?

For the record, Category Y disappeared from Article A when I removed Category Y from Category X definition. Student7 (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Nope, it sounds very strange.--Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I assume you're talking about this edit, right? (BTW, with questions like this, it's best to tell us which edit/article/category do you mean and not let us guess.) Well, you didn't include the category (notice that the category Florida elections isn't there), you transcluded the content of the category page, like it was a template. The correct code is [[Category:Category X]], using square brackets, not curly ones. User<Svick>.Talk(); 19:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
That's interesting, I didn't even know you could transclude a category page. I can't think of a use for it right now, but it's interesting.  ; ) It's too bad it doesn't also list all the pages in the transcluded category, because if it did we could use it to create masterlists of an entire category structure by transcluding all the subcategories on one page. postdlf (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
You can transclude any page, not just templates. This is used on pages like WP:VPA, WP:TFD or userboxes that are in the User namespace. I can't think of any use for transcluding category pages, though. User<Svick>.Talk(); 21:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Oops! Thanks Svick! Student7 (talk) 01:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Question on Categorization

"Election" categories quickly roll up into "Politics". Two things:

1) Why can't they roll up into "Elections" forever? Why must they be filed under something else?

2) This is horribly confusing to American editors who already insert material on campaigning and elections into articles on "Politics" because they cannot tell the difference.

I need a policy venue (discussion page) for this. "Project" venues don't work because there are so few people there. Student7 (talk) 19:03, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI, this is regarding the categorization of Category:Florida elections under Category:Politics of Florida. I undid Student7's removal because this is standard across all states, and there has to be some way to link the state elections category into the state category structure.[2] I'm open to a new way, but I don't see a clear idea presented as to how else this would be done. Just dumping it into the base state level (e.g., Category:Florida) seems wrong. postdlf (talk) 21:38, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand the problem. Elections are part of politics. Also, what does "Why can't they roll up into "Elections" forever?" even mean? McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:05, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm also unsure of the problem. Categories can and often should have more than one parent category for easy navigation, for example Category:Florida elections which is both about Florida and about elections. It should be possible to reach it by starting from Category:Florida and clicking on subcategories. The placement in Category:Politics of Florida enables this. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I endeavored to describe the problem above. Apparently I failed.
1) The major problem is that Americans try to place campaigning, polling, and other unrelated material into articles that are supposed to be about "Politics." They cannot understand the difference because the media has told them that this sort of thing, the substance of barroom brawls, is "politics." This is incorrect. I agree that it could be technically correct further up the chain but why bother? Could be under "Government" just as easily and correctly.
2) The category "Florida Elections" could roll up into "Florida" IMO. But to solve Postdlf's concern, it would seem to me that it could also be categorized under "State Elections United States" which could be categorized under "Elections by country". (Notice that it is a state election and not a national/federal elections. Not all countries have strong state systems and this may be misunderstood if not categorized clearly. Perhaps that concerned Postdlf). Student7 (talk) 15:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
It seems that you're hung up on the negative connotation of the word "politics" (i.e., cynical posturing and strategizing to further the interests of certain factions rather than engaging in an honest debate about public interests), when the term broadly means collective decisionmaking by a populace through the institutions of government. Elections are not a first-order topic in their own right, but rather are a formal political procedure used as the selection method for government officials (and in some cases, the direct adoption of laws/policies). So why not categorize Category:Florida elections under both Category:Politics of Florida and Category:Government of Florida? postdlf (talk) 17:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Actually, we have a representative government. Politicians may say and do anything during the campaign, and often do. This may, or may not, have anything to do with what happens when they take office. So, no, it is not about "collective decision making." There is no such thing except maybe in Ancient Athens, or the French revolution. Our American forefathers studied Athens extensively, were (later) horrified at what was going on in France, which reinforced their original decisions (against Athenian democracy).
We definitely do not have anything resembling "joint decision making" by the public. If we did, we might have had Obamacare in 1949. Our representatives decided otherwise, for us. This is true in most so-called "democratic" countries. With the media telling us how we are making the decisions, or "should" be, and ranting on endlessly when the politicians vote against public opinion. Posturing during elections is just that, posturing and "Elections in X." Nothing whatever to do with "Politics in X" which comes after the elections, when the Senators, Congress/legislature, Executive, all sit down and try to work with each other. The statutes they produce are part of "Politics of X." Student7 (talk) 01:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Blacklist double "Category" prefix?

Feel free to participate in the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist#Blacklist double "Category" prefix?. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Help request moved from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 April 23

I don't know whether I am in the right place or asking the right thing. Please help. I have been working on Howler (error) and am looking for suitable categories. The best I could come up with so far are Error and Human communication. I am not terribly happy with either because they sound inadequate, nor satisfied with anything else I could come up with. I have considered the likes of Solecism, Intensifier, Malapropism, blunder etc which don't exist (yet?) and I see that mondegreen has "Error | Humor | Phonology | Semantics | Mondegreens", though Malapropism only has linguistics, but I am not confident enough to settle for them or request new categories yet. I suffer under twin handicaps of being too close to the problem and too ignorant of the categories and the associated procedures. Apologies for both!

Could anyone please help, if only by redirecting me?JonRichfield (talk) 07:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Space colonization

I feel that biographical articles don't belong in Category:Space colonization and removed that category from the biographical articles. Another editor disagreed and reverted my edits. It is discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Alan_Liefting_gratuitous_removal_of_notable_people_from_category.2C_edit_warring_etc. and Talk:Gerard_K._O'Neill#Categories. Surely Category:Space colonization is for articles about space colonization and not for articles about people who have some sort of connection with space colonisation. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:46, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Considering space colonisation doesn't exist yet, I don't see how anyone can be connected to space colonisation. However, if a person does have some sort of connection, for whatever reason, I don't see why they can't be in the category. Biologists could be in Category:Biology, except they're in Category:Biologists, a subcategory of the former. McLerristarr | Mclay1 11:05, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
The trend on WP seem to be to create a category for people involved in a particular field which is then a subcategory of the category of that field. This is a good idea since it separates out the topic and those who are involved in the topic. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Why not make something like Category:Space colonization theorists so there's nothing to argue about? postdlf (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
No point making a category to solve an argument. A category should stand on its own merits. A Category:Space colonization advocates may be suitable but there would be too much overlap with Category:Space advocates. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Categories for births/deaths by day of the year

Some interlang versions of Wikipedia have categories for Births on each of the 366 possible days of the year, and similarly for Deaths. For example, Italian has Categoria:Nati il 28 aprile and Categoria:Morti il 28 aprile for today’s births and deaths. Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and some other Slavic WPs do it too.

English WP doesn’t do it. Instead we have a page for each day – eg. April 28, which has to be manually edited. These pages produce handy lists of births and deaths (and other important events), but there’s no way they’d ever be complete. Then we also have Portal:Music/DateOfBirth/April 28 etc for every day of the year. Not sure why these exist, really; they’re just a subset of April 28 etc.

I see a case for introducing categories for birth days and death days here. This would be a standard category for all humans we have biographies of, whose dates are specified. Then, when dates get changed, as they often do when new sources come along, all that has to happen is the category gets changed in the same edit, with no requirement to locate the corresponding separate day pages and edit them all.

But I’m sure I’m not the first editor to have this idea, so if it’s been discussed previously, we should first get acquainted with that outcome. Grateful for any comments. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:43, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This idea has been tried out before and the categories for births by month or by specific day of the year have consistently been deleted by consensus:
— Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Get it off your chest, man, just what is it you're trying to tell me?  :) Thanks for your research. I accept the strong consensus on this, obviously.
But I'm curious: If it's trivial to group people born in 1017, 1253, 1581, 1802, 1956 etc purely because they were all born on, say, December 19, then why do we have 366 articles like December 19, where exactly such supposedly trivial groupings are lovingly maintained. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 12:16, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Not so much for births, etc. but categories are probably better for a lot of reasons, generally, than manually maintained lists. The generic question still stands, I think. The problem is that English Lang Wikipedians will start lists anyway despite a proscription against them (WP:NOTDIRECTORY). Like every other policy, we can't fight sheer volume. There are unecessary lists all over the place. JackofOz' question still stands in principle IMO, despite the implementation of a specific case being rejected. Student7 (talk) 13:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Sort keys

The issue of adding a DEFAULTSORT to every page because of capitalisation problems has been fixed. As far as I can tell, upper- and lower-case letters now categorise equally so "ATV" will not appear in a category before "Apple" as it used to. I am going to update the sort key guidelines. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Possible solution for the attribution problem with category renames?

Feel free to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Possible solution for the attribution problem with category renames?, where I brought up a possible solution to the problem. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Minor league baseball players

I have an issue. On some baseball player articles, some users are removing Category:Minor league baseball players, claiming that having specific team categories (such as Category:Jupiter HammerHeads players) constitutes as subcategorization and therefore makes it okay to remove Category:Minor league baseball players from the article.

However, I believe they are making an error in doing this. Category:Minor league baseball players exists to signify players who have spent or spent their entire careers in minor league baseball, or players who spent the vast majority of their career at that level. By removing the category and leaving just the team categories, it creates category-ambiguity, as the team categories mix players who are career minor leaguers and players who played most of their career in the major leagues (that is, it mixes players who both would have and would have not had Category:Minor league baseball players on their page).

In short, I think it is necessary to keep Category:Minor league baseball players on those pages, as it differentiates the players who were career minor leaguers from the ones who were not. What do you all think? Alex (talk) 03:11, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

If a player has spent his entire career in the minor leagues, he probably is not notable. If a player has spent a portion of their career in the minors, what percentage of their career has to be in the minors to be placed in the "minor league player" cat? That's OR. – X96lee15 (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
But there are many players who have spent their entire careers in the minor leagues that have been deemed notable, whether it be through AfDs or what have you. The latter question is subjective, however previously I have read that if a player attained most of his fame/notability in the minors (yet still played a little in the big leagues) or if the player had just a cup of coffee at the big league level, then the category is added. Alex (talk) 05:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
You can't really categorize this way. Minor league players should be a parent category to categories for different minor leagues players and then further subcategorized into teams should there be a need. But to try and determine when a player played enough in the minors to qualify is completely OR. -DJSasso (talk) 11:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Only players that played their entire career in the minors should have that category. Spanneraol (talk) 13:02, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
If that's the case, then a new category should be created that specifically says "Baseball players that played exclusively in the minor leagues", or something like that. It should not be a parent category of all the specific team cats. – X96lee15 (talk) 13:07, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I personally wouldn't mind removing it from the pages of those who reached the big leagues. In fact, I think that is a good idea. However, I would prefer to keep it (or a similar category) on the pages of those who spent or have spent their entire careers in the minors. I like the "Baseball players that played exclusively in the minor leagues" idea, however it would have to be worded so it is current minor league player inclusive. Alex (talk) 16:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't think putting players directly in this category is a good idea in general. Most specifically, it's not a defining characteristic. Almost every baseball player who ever played professionally would qualify, including the vast majority (probably something on the order of 80-90%, but perhaps even higher) of those who played in the majors, past and present. Also, I agree that picking a threshold at which to determine that a player does or does not qualify for the category would constitute original research. The only type of player I might put in this category would be someone who is known primarily for his work in another field, like Zane Grey or Randy Savage, where breaking it down by team might be overcategorization. -Dewelar (talk) 15:22, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I like this idea: "Baseball players that played exclusively in the minor leagues". Alex (talk) 16:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with using that category for players who were exclusively minor league players. Making the extra long category just feels like busy work. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 21:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
While it is useful to have an example (baseball), this addresses a entire technique of categorizing sub-levels, then up the line. X96.. started to address that issue by suggesting a separate category that would be categorized in another manner.
The "problem" is pushing articles down, out of an overloaded category into one that contains a manageable (and reviewable) number of entries, one that can be actually used. What Alex is suggesting is there are often articles that cannot be precisely categorized at this lower (and sometime more obscure, BTW) category.
I can see both sides. As an editor, I want my article to have "prominent", easy to think of, categories. As a category manager, I don't want to clutter it up to the point where it can't be used!
Notability is not an issue in this thread. That is elsewhere. The question is a good one. I really don't have the vocabulary to spell this out easily, which is why it is handy to have an example that is easy to understand. Student7 (talk) 12:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I believe there should be a category for people who played only in the minors and never made it to the majors besides the team categories to distinguish those who stopped at that level. Besides all the people who have been deemed notable through afd discussions, you should also consider those who were minor league baseball players, but became notable for other pursuits such as Jay Schroeder, Michael Jordan, Jim Tatum, and Frank A. Armstrong. Some notable baseball personalities also never made it beyond the minors as players. Earl Weaver comes to mind but there are many managers, coaches, and executives that this applies to. Kinston eagle (talk) 12:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
I would be OK with this. I do agree, however, that it should be a subcategory of this one rather than using this category itself for such players. -Dewelar (talk) 22:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
We generally don't use categories that are based on something that did not happen. So if the criteria is that these are players who did not progress to to the next level, there might be some objections to the category. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:32, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for placing it in perspective. There are also players who aren't seven feet tall; weren't born in Hoboken, etc. Student7 (talk) 12:27, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
The category recognizes people who became professional baseball players but didn't become major league players in the same way that Category:Vice Presidents of the United States recognizes people who became Vice President but didn't become president. It's not about what didn't happen, but what did happen. Kinston eagle (talk) 01:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
But Category:Vice Presidents of the United States also includes Vice Presidents who did become president. That would be equivalent to a minor league category that includes anyone who played in the minor leagues, not just exclusively minor league players. While the latter seems more useful - after all, most Major League players spent some time in the minors - I am not sure we can get there. Rlendog (talk) 19:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Category header

Please take part in a new proposal to standardise category headers at Wikipedia:Category header. Thank you. McLerristarr | Mclay1 11:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Buildings and structures

How is this category supposed to be used? I think it is for buildings and architectural structures (towers, dams, etc.) but it is also being placed on artificial (i.e. man-made) construction, including canals and reservoirs, as well as complexes that contain more than a single building. Are people who are using the category stretching the definition of what I understand a "structure" to be, or does the category simply need a better introduction section that explains that it includes any sort of construction, not just buildings and structures? Personally I'd prefer the more limited definition but will defer to the categorization experts. Can I get some comments please? Thanks! Valfontis (talk) 20:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I guess in the end, it comes down to what a structure is. I see a dam as a structure, but a reservoir is a body of water created by a dam. The dam is built, the reservoir formed. A canal is constructed so it likely is an architectural structure. Might be interesting to ask WikiProject Architecture about the lead article architectural structure. If there is a problem, it can be fixed by rewriting that article. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:42, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice! Valfontis (talk) 16:55, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Subcategorization

This entry is mandatory or only recommended.Handyhuy (talk) 16:20, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization is a guideline. It is recommended that everyone follows the guidelines and any edits made that do not conform with the guidelines can be reverted for that reason. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Is this a valid category?

I am thinking of creating a category for participants at Wimbledon. All tennis players who have participated in the The Championships, Wimbledon would be included. Would this be a valid category? Category:Wimbledon champions would become a subcategory. Ryan Vesey (talk) 01:28, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Comment. I'm not sure that would be desirable. In general, categories are supposed to capture "defining" characteristics of the articles in question, but I don't think having competed at Wimbledon would qualify. Just imagine if we categorized tennis players for having competed at any tournament—every article would have dozens and dozens of such categories. It makes sense to me to categorize tennis players for having won a particular tournament, but not for just having participated. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
The problem is, I am creating an article and that is probably the most specific category for the subject. I know the subject is notable per WP:NTENNIS. If you still believe this would not be a good category, could you give me some assistance in categorizing the page? Ryan Vesey (talk) 01:50, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Category:American male tennis players? Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Should I then remove the category of Category:Tennis players? Ryan Vesey (talk) 02:04, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Sure. Usually if the article is in a nationality-specific category or a gender-specific one (or a combination of both) it can be removed from the more general category. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:06, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Dumb question, all I had to do was go to the category and read the words that said "No individuals should be placed in the category" Stupid Hotcat. Ryan Vesey (talk) 02:07, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Category:American comedians by state/Category:Category:Canadian comedians by province or territory

We have a lot of American people by occupation and state. As with Canadian people by occupation by province or territory, such as actors, and musicians. But we still don't have any such categories for American and Canadian comedians, amongst other people.

U.S. examples:

Canadian examples:

Would these possibly work? Xzalt (talk) 03:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorting

I just noticed that category sorting is subtly different than it used to be, in a good way. Specifically, a-z and A-Z now sort the same, case insensitively. Furthermore, spaces are compressed out of the sort key. This means that (finally, praise be) "DuBarry", "du Barry", and "Dubarry" will all sort the same. I've updated a little of the docs so far, specifically Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people#Ordering_names_in_a_category. WP:Categorization still needs updating, as does Help:Category#Sort_order Studerby (talk) 00:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Container category template is too prominent

{{Container category}} serves to remind editors about the contents of a category. It is a box across most of the top of a category page. THis is a distraction to readers who are our "clients" and are of a far greater number than editors (yeah, yeah - I know, editors are readers as well!!) There is no need for such an prominent banner to alert editors. I would like it made smaller and shifted off to the right. There are a few other templates that could do with the same treatment. To do these changes the master template page needs editing. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Container categories

Is the concept of a container category documented anywhere? There are various templates concerning it, and a large number of them, see Category:Container categories, but I can find no mention of them in guidelines. Am I looking in the wrong places, or is there a gap here?

And in particular, should Category:Hasidic Judaism be one, or not? Andrewa (talk) 14:34, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Category:Hasidic Judaism is not a container category and I gave removed the template for the page. There is a line of explanation at Template:Parentcat. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:37, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing that... as it turns out the question of fixing it was off-topic for this page.
And thanks for the link to the documentation. I'll have a look at whether it could be a bit more accessible. Andrewa (talk) 02:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
The link you gave redirects to Template:Container category, is that correct? There's no explanation I can see there, nothing at all at Template talk:Parentcat and no explanation that I can see at Template talk:Container category.
So I'm still a bit mystified as to how to decide whether something is a container category. Obviously you used some sort of criteria... What are they? Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes I did mean to link to the Template:Container category page. It reads:
"Tag categories with {{Container category}} to inform editors that they should not contain anything other than subcategories".
A category page can contain normal wikitext as well as sub-categories and files pages. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:26, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
OK, so somebody decided that Category:Hasidic Judaism was a container category, others ignored this, and you then decided that it wasn't. But what criteria did you use to decide that the later editors who added articles and an image to the category, rather than to its subcategories and/or creating new subcategories as necessary, were correct to do so? Andrewa (talk) 03:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I see what you are getting at now. Category:Hasidic Judaism (as an example) is not a container category since there are article pages in it that do not belong in the sub-categories. On the other hand, Category:Categories by country is a container category since there is no article that would ever belong in the category. Category:Athletics by country, for example, has no article pages in it at present but it could potentially contain one. If someone wrote an article on Athletics in Zimbabwe and there was no call for creating a Category:Athletics in Zimbabwe then the new article would be placed directly in Category:Athletics by country, hence it would not be a container category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:32, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
You're getting the idea... but in your last example, the absence of Category:Athletics in Zimbabwe doesn't necessarily mean that Athletics in Zimbabwe would go into Category:Athletics by country. Other non-container categories are available, some of which are directly relevant, so personally I'd put it into both Category:Athletics in Africa and Category:Sport in Zimbabwe. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
If Athletics in Zimbabwe was written without a category of the same name it should be in Category:Athletics by country as well as Category:Athletics in Africa and Category:Sport in Zimbabwe. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Head go round and round. Still think need simple talk somewhere. Andrewa (talk) 04:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

County categories

When editing pages on state highways, should I add the categories of the counties that the road passes through, such as in Farm to Market Road 59? Theking17825 02:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for your help. Theking17825 02:36, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

why must diffuse large category

I found an article should be both in large and small categories. The reason: the search will have a general list as needed. eg genre musicians, we can see a list of all the musicians to look up.Handyhuy (talk) 16:18, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I think what you're trying to say is that some categories should contain complete lists rather than being broken up into subcategories. That can be useful sometimes but in some cases it would create huge categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
You've brought up one of the longest unsettled issues related to categorization. I spent literally YEARS trying to sort this out. I also believe that articles should be in both large and small categories. However, there are many reasons why things are the way they are: the way categories developed historically; the difficulty of changing the status quo; technological limitations; etc... The problem in a nutshell, is that there are several different ways that people find categorization useful, and there is no single way to optimize them for all those purposes. For some more info about this see Wikipedia:Category intersection. I would like to see an additional method of categorization (which I'll call indexing) that would create large categories that include all relevant articles. Such a system could co-exist with the current way we do things. Thus Index:Musicians would list ALL musicians. This new namespace would work just like categories. There would be a separate listing after articles that list the categories and the indices. Indicies could be sub-indices of other indicies, but we'd probably want to limit the depth of sub-indicies. If anyone has the energy to try and get this going, let me know, and I'll join the discussion. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 01:29, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
That is actually a very good idea and could solve more problems that just this one. I think you should propose it... somewhere? Alternatively, it could be name Category:Index of musicians, Category:Index:Musicians, Category:Index/Musicians or Category:All musicians; that way we wouldn't need a new namespace. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:32, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Easier said than done. At one point a few years ago, as an experiment, I tried to create an index category, and told lots of people what I was doing. My efforts were reverted faster than I could demonstrate what I was trying to do... --☑ SamuelWantman 08:19, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I know the feeling. It generally works out better though if it's proposed first but, the problem is, no one replies. However, you have proposed it here and I'm supporting it. McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to create a proposal below. Please comment. McLerristarr | Mclay1 13:38, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Indexing proposal

As a result of the discussion above, I have formulated this proposal for a new system of category indexing. If there is something about the proposal you disagree with, please suggest improvements. To solve some confusion with set categories and provide a place to browse a complete set of articles without it being divided into subcategories, we could create an alternative system of set categories under Category:Category indexes, along the lines of Category:Index of FOOs. So as well as Paul McCartney being in Category:English male singers, he'd be in Category:Index of English male singers, Category:Index of male singers, Category:Index of singers, Category:Index of English people, Category:Index of people, etc. The indexes will be hidden categories to prevent category clutter at the bottom of a page and added by a template to make it easier. They will only contain other indexes as subcategories. This will probably remove the need for Template:All included and Template:Distinguished subcategory. This proposal is in response to two problems:

  1. It is difficult to get a full list of articles in a certain set, e.g. musicians, because the category tree is divided up so much. This proposal will not change that category tree but add another one in the same way as lists of pages can be generated in the "Special:" namespace. In fact, the indexes could be part of the that namespace instead of the category namespace. Alternatively, they could be a new namespace.
  2. Set categories often contain articles related to the set rather than members of the set. The indexes would only contain members of the set.

The indexes should probably only be limited to people at first, then other things like groups, places, organisms, etc. but not indexes of topics relating to a topic. It's not really that big of a change, other than the large amount of time it would take to implement; however, that should not be a reason to oppose the proposal because we literally have all the time in the world. Thoughts? McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Indexes should be listed under the corresponding category pages, as in Category:Foos/Index. Large indexes could be alphabetized, as in Category:Foos/A, Category:Foos/B, etc.. Creating index categories doesn't make sense, because indexes aren't separate categories. They're just a way of viewing categories that already exist. —Coder Dan (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Please provide some actual proposed category names to mull over. Thinking about 'foos' only goes so far. Also, what kind of comments/template would be placed in the category to discourage people from making subcategories in it. Even more, what can be done in the articles to discourage people from deleting what might appear to be 'duplicate' categories from the article. Hmains (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Articles shouldn't have any extra category entries for indexes. There should be some kind of template in the category page that tells the WP software to create an index automatically. —Coder Dan (talk) 22:46, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm very supportive of trying to make this work. I'd suggest that people read over some of the previous discussions and get some background. Specifically, I'd suggest the discussions in Archive 9, Archive 10, Category_talk:Actors and Wikipedia:Category intersection. There are probably some others as well.
If this is going to happen, the discussion can be divided up as follows:
  1. How should categorization look assuming indexing gets widely accepted - what policies change, what category names change, how categories are labeled, etc...
  2. How do we get there from here? Are there demonstration indices? How do we overcome the inertia of the existing categorization scheme? How do you keep the categories from getting depopulated and deleted (that was the big problem I had when I previously tried doing something like this).
-- ☑ SamuelWantman 21:31, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Questions and answers:

  1. Wouldn't indexes just be duplicating existing categories?
    • Yes, but the point is that they provide a complete list because they're not broken up into subcategories and they don't contain articles of related topics. They'd probably look better if they looked like Special:AllPages but I don't know if that's possible without changes to the software.
  2. What kind of comments/template would be placed in the category to discourage people from making subcategories in it?
    • A message box like {{Wikipedia category}} would do. Eventually, people will get used to them and understand their point and they'll become as natural as normal categories.
  3. What can be done in the articles to discourage people from deleting what might appear to be "duplicate" categories from the article?
    • Rather than adding them as categories, they could be added with a template. I've been going over a few template ideas in my head. The simplest system would be something like {{Category index|people|English people|musicians|English musicians}} where each parameter completed [[Category:Index of {{{1}}}]]. A better system would be to only have to add something like {{Category index|English musicians}} and the article would automatically be added to all the parent indexes but I don't know how we could do that without a software change. The first way could be used at first, until it becomes widespread, then a software change would be more likely to happen.
  4. How should categorisation look assuming indexing gets widely accepted – what policies change, what category names change, how categories are labeled, etc.?
  5. How do we get there from here? Are there demonstration indexes? How do we overcome the inertia of the existing categorisation scheme? How do you keep the categories from getting depopulated and deleted?
    • As far as I'm aware, there are no indexes that exist already (except the Category:All FOOs categories – all of which can found on this page) and we probably shouldn't create any till it gets support here. Once it does get support here, other editors should not depopulate and delete the categories without continuing the discussion first. If another editor tries to delete one, all we have to do is show them this discussion. Hopefully, since I don't see any drawbacks here, there shouldn't be any strong opposition.

I provided some example indexes for Paul McCartney above. Other random examples are Category:Index of comedians, Category:Index of Australian people and Category:Index of mammal species. Alternatively, it could be Index:Comedians, Index:Australian people, etc. McLerristarr | Mclay1 09:06, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought I understood categorization. After the above, I have clearly missed "Categorization for Dummies!" How is a "hidden" index going to help anybody? It is clearly not supposed to help (or confuse) non-editing readers. Will editors be able to see this? Or will editors not care? And why, if regular editors would not care, would anybody care?
Aren't some of these hidden categories going to be rather "full." "Index of people?" !! How is a monster "Index of people" of benefit? How would anybody use it? Or will nobody use it? I am lost someplace. Student7 (talk) 22:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
The indexes would be there for people who know they exist, the same as special pages, such as the list of all pages. Yes, it's not completely convenient but if they weren't hidden, the categories at the bottom of the page would be a mess, unless we could get them on a separate line to the other categories. By hidden, I mean Category:Hidden categories, not completely invisible. Yes, an index of all people would be huge but it would be smaller than the list of all pages that currently exists and similar pages. Most will not find it useful but having that complete list would be useful for bots, AWB, etc. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is really workable without making articles (and the category system) a complete mess. It would be much easier to generate bot-created-and-maintained lists of all articles within a given category structure (e.g., Category:Writers and all subcategories), than it would be to add and maintain all the levels of every category tag to every article. Even though you propose the index categories be hidden, they'd still be in the article code, and it would be very difficult to even notice if, say, someone removed Barack Obama from Category:Index of writers when Category:Writers from Chicago, Illinois is still displayed on the article and there are many dozens of hidden index categories. Unless, I guess, bots could maintain that too, but then why not just do it as a separate list somewhere, whether in WP space or CAT space, rather than cluttering individual article code? And the longer the code, the longer it takes the page to load, even if the code isn't rendered in a visible format, correct?

I think the only way this could be implemented is to convert the category system into a database maintained by data fields for each article. I originally proposed this here. Basically the idea is that every article would have set categories of data fields. Biographies, for example, would have fields for sex, birth year and death year, birthplace, and multiple fields for ethnic background, residences, education, occupations, awards, etc. Then readers could check off boxes next to the fields to generate applicable article lists of however few or many overlapping field values they want to browse: as general as "American males" or as specific as "American male architects of Irish heritage born in Maine who lived in New York." The fields could be initially populated by bots based on existing categories, then by editors, and eventually the category system disabled. Field types ("place of event", "occupation", etc.) would be established first based on the existing category structure, and then added to or removed only by a consensus-driven, centralized process because that's the only way the system could work. But field values for each article would be edited like any article content, and certain values for each field could be made equivalent so there's no accidental duplication or arguments based on spelling variations or synonyms. If I have some time, I'll try to do a Photoshop mockup of how I think the data field page might look.

It would take some developer time to establish, but once it was set up it would save a lot of editor time currently spent at CFD making small changes in the prepositions used by category names or arguing over whether an ethnicity-occupation intersection is meaningful, and it would be a much more powerful tool than the category system is. It's possible that if developed enough (i.e., if data fields for a particular article could be annotated in wikicode in addition to having basic text values), the data output could replace a lot of article lists as well. postdlf (talk) 00:51, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Towers

I think we may need to clarify what belongs in the tower categories. The tower article is a rather ambiguous guideline. So the question is does a building that includes a tower belong in the tower tree? Lets use Suwannee County Courthouse as an example. The article is included in Category:Clock towers in the United States and Category:Towers in Florida. Nowhere in the article is the tower discussed. The tower article hints that the tower is much higher then the supporting structure. Clearly in a case like this it does not appear to be. So what is the best direction? Simply start removing these categories when not supported (and what does that mean across all of the included articles)? Add an introduction to all of the tower categories that explains what should be included? Or both? Opinions? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

correction

Luis F Soto is under the letter L and should be under the letter S. Please correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Belami444 (talk • contribs) 20:42, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done see here. Further information at WP:NAMESORT. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorting of churches

I have noticed that how we sort churches today is best described as random. Some, especially from the UK are sorted by the city they are in. Then you have St, St., Saint which group differently. How do we handle Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs, St Leonards-on-Sea or Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception (Peoria, Illinois)?

I think the first question is easy. Use the DEFAULTSORT magic template and sort all of these variations under Saint fully spelled out. The Cathedral probably should be left as is or sorted as 'Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Peoria, Illinois' or 'Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Cathedral, Peoria, Illinois' or similar. I suspect that the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs, St Leonards-on-Sea should be left as is without forcing a different sort. Then something like Primitive Methodist Chapel, Nantwich should be sorted as 'Primitive Methodist Chapel, Nantwich' and not as it currently is as 'Nantwich, Primitive Methodist Chapel'. If there is no objection, I'll try and put this into words to add to the guideline. Of course if some entity really needs to have churches or buildings sorted in some different way, the piped sort should be used on selected categories and not the default sort. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

To my mind, regardless of how the article is named, the abbreviations "St" (which is correct English) and "St." (which is not) should be replaced by the entire word "Saint" in all sortkeys, whether on the DEFAULTSORT or individual cats. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:45, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree that however they are sorted, the "saint" variations need to be consistent. As for whether to sort under location name, "St" or, for example, "Mary", I'm not sure that one size fits all unfortunately. There will probably be some shortcomings whatever is decided. I personally don't find it particularly easy to navigate a category of only churches, where the vast majority of items are sorted under "St", with perhaps a few more under "All Saints" or "Christ". On the other hand, sorting under location seems counter-intuitive when not all items in the category have a location in the name. I don't really have any good suggestions, but agree that whatever is decided, it should be consistent across the board.--BelovedFreak 18:21, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, if you look at Category:19th-century church buildings for the 600+ entries that have not been moved to subcategories, you can see how the 'S' heading is overloaded due to the prevalence of churches using a form of saint to begin their name. I'm not sure that this is really a problem. There is no category TOC options to deal with an overload in one part of the sorted list. But does that overload make this unusable? That answer is probably no and it can be reduced by diffusing the contents. That will move the 'problem' to the subcategories, but it will also be smaller and limited to a few subcategories. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:01, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree that sorting by location is counter-intuitive. Arguably the location is not usually even part of the name, and is there as a disambiguator. I do not have a problem with so many churches sorted under Saint, because that is how they are named. I would extend that to articles entitled "Church of St x", where that title is preferred to "St x's Church" for stylistic reasons. If you're looking for a church in a particular location, you'd probably do better looking in a category for that location.--Mhockey (talk) 19:21, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Logically, the sorting is already geographical: Country, County, Diocese or similar. The illogicality comes when this drill-down switches from geography to the church dedication / attribution as primary sort key, which is effectively pointless. St Andrew's Church, Foocester; St Andrew's Church, Foohampton, etc. Why should these St Andrews be placed together in collating sequence? The dedication / attribution is the only aspect they have in common. Think of the many WP browsers trying to locate a particular parish church in these listings. The one piece of information they are likely to have is the geographical town; the one piece of information they are unlikely to have is the attribution, e.g. Parish Church, Stoke Poges. Indeed, the town should form part of the majority of church names - to aid identification. Only those churches which are uniquely identifiable should be allowed to omit the town. St Fred's Church - yes, but where?? which country? Any collation by dedication will place a severe load on the Wiki search mechanism Ian Cairns (talk) 23:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
"Why should these St Andrews be placed together in collating sequence? The dedication / attribution is the only aspect they have in common." Actually, the aspect they have in common is their name. We do not normally sort ambiguous titles by the disambiguator. Is there a particular reason for churches to be different? If you think users would search for churches by location, you could set up redirects such as "Foocester Parish Church" etc, but that is a separate issue from categorisation.-Mhockey (talk) 12:25, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
A further point is that sorting by location begs the question of which location you use: ecclesiastical parish? civil parish? village (when not a parish)? town/city? These variations make it more difficult to find articles which are not sorted by name. --Mhockey (talk) 12:35, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Subcategorisation reassurance request

A request for reassurance about making subcategories has been posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography#Aaron ben Meïr. I'd be grateful if people familiar with categorisation on wikipedia would comment there. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Is there any facility for searching articles that share 2 or more categories? Helloher (Death is not my phone number) 18:45, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm 95% sure there is a way to do that. I have a dim memory of doing it myself. But I've had a look around and a Google and a visit to toolserver and can't find the darn thing. I appear not to have bookmarked it. I'm pretty sure it was on the toolserver, but I find that place extremely unhelpful to browse. If you get no reply here perhaps you can ask the folk at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Categories? --bodnotbod (talk) 20:17, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Aha! Found something for you!. ;O) --bodnotbod (talk) 20:33, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. Helloher (Death is not my phone number) 22:10, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Bot for automatic category appending

I've just finished adding Category:Buildings and structures completed in the x-th century to Category:X-th-century establishments. But I am not willing to spend an hour or two doing the same for years and decades (Category:Buildings and structures completed in 2011 should be under Category:2011 establishments). Now, this seems simple enough to be coded, or perhaps executed by an existing bots. Any ideas where to look? I am linking this discussion from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. PS. Buildings may have to year cats, as Category:X-th year/century architecture (ex. Category:2011 architecture) is for the year they were designed in. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually if you go through those categories like Category:2011 architecture, it is clearly not for designed in. Most of this stuff is for when they were built or construction started or the building was renovated. In any case, why do we really need to roll up all of the by year stuff and the parent categories? One would thing that one or the other should be enough. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
A better question may be, is that categorization correct? Is when a building is completed really the same as established? Construction of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine began in 1892 and it still is not completed. A case could be made that it was established in 1899, that is if buildings are established. What exactly does it mean when you say a house was established? Then you have buildings that were completed in stages? How can a building be established multiple times? I think that we really need to reconsider this. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:18, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I think there may be some wisdom to be found in discussion about ship establishment dates. I'd say we need different categories - for when building was designed, when the construction finished and for the ongoing construction (like a living people category). The x-yer architecture category may need renaming to designed in, or a further explanation. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 01:15, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Category for individually developed Pywikipedia codes

Hi,

we have hu:Category:Egyedi fejlesztésű Pywikipedia-kódok in Hungarian Wikipedia that means something like "Individually developed Pywikipedia codes". We put the published Pywiki bot scripts of local bot owners here that are not distributed with official Pywiki edition. I want to create such categories in other wikis and join them with interwikis to help bot owners who want to see other bot owners' solutions and look for useful scripts to be localized. This would help the international wikicommunity. Please help to find the correct name and parent category in your wiki. Thanks, Bináris (talk) 09:36, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Nobody to help? Shall I guess it myself? Bináris (talk) 05:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

effect of fewer visits to cat on what pages to include

I've read that if a category has fewer visitors then it should include fewer articles. Is that part of the intention behind this guideline? I thought it shouldn't matter, but I suppose a contrary argument is that categories with fewer visitors should include more articles in order to attract repeat visits. I think it shouldn't matter. What do editors here think? Nick Levinson (talk) 17:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Er, where did you read that? I fail to see how the number of visitors affects the size of a category. For example, there is Category:Republican Party Presidents of the United States. That is bound to get plenty hits, yet I fail to see how it can be expanded beyond 18 members until 20 January 2013 at the very earliest. Then there is Category:1990 births, which probably doesn't get as many visitors as Category:Republican Party Presidents of the United States, yet I'll bet that the present total of 5318 members will have increased by this time tomorrow. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Adding a "small" parameter to cmbox

Join the discussion at Template_talk:Cmbox#Add_small_parameter. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Sort keys using Greek letters

The sort keys that use Greek letters were changed, primarily by this edit back in 3 May 2011. Half these aren't even greek letters anymore, or at least now the versions that are usually used for sorting purposes. Am I missing something here or was this a bad edit? Jason Quinn (talk) 15:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a consequence of changes to the categorisation which occurred in early March 2011. In short, all sort keys are now uppercased; and Greek letters are uppercased too. Unfortunately some uppercase Greek letters look like uppercase Latin letters, for example, uppercase Greek μ is Μ, which looks like Latin M. They are not the same as far as the software is concerned, which is why Greek letters sort after Latin letter Z. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Ugh. I was unaware of this happening. Do you have a best reference to this discussion. This seems like a bad change. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
(ec)Ah, that explains it. I'll vote to return to the lower case letters in this case for clarity and to end user confusion, especially mine. And hasn't the underlying code problem that necessitate this kluge been fixed so we can use lowercase letters everywhere? Vegaswikian (talk) 18:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
There were various threads at WP:VPT (such as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 87#categorically random categories) raised after the rewrite of category sorting had gone live. Most, if not all, of the discussion leading up to the change had taken place at Bugzilla. Without knowing the ticket number, I have great difficulty locating anything on Bugzilla that I didn't actually log myself. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Also see Template talk:Stub category#Sorting and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Categorization of stub categories. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
The Bugzilla ticket you're looking for is bug 164 (warning, very long discussion, 211 comments over 4-5 years). We currently use a simple collation called 'uppercase', where all sortkeys are simply converted to uppercase for sorting purposes. This is why category sorting is now case-insensitive, and why certain Greek letters now sort with Latin letters (because e.g. the Greek capital alpha is the same as the Latin capital A).
Things will start making a little more sense once we introduce the UCA collation (which is based on sort orders and equivalences defined for Unicode). The code has already been written, but it depends on a software package that only ships with Ubuntu 10.04. When we deployed the category collation change, we were forced to disable UCA because all application servers were running Ubuntu 8.04 at the time. We initially didn't think it would take that long, but we have now finally upgraded a handful of servers, and we're planning to have all of them upgraded by early or mid-October. Once that's done, we can enable UCA. I know UCA is somewhat saner than what we currently have, but I'm not sure offhand how it treats Greek letters. I'll play around with this a bit when I have time. --Catrope (talk) 20:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

relevance of a modern perspective

I posted a question about the Sexism category. It's been said that a modern perspective cannot justify categorizing a historical practice into Sexism, and I disagree. I wanted to know what other editors think. No one has replied but perhaps it isn't being monitored. Could I ask editors here to contribute on consensus? Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:22, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Upper and lower case Sort Keys

The page says:

Because the software uses an imperfect computer sorting rather than true alphabetical ordering (see details), it is important that some sort keys be adjusted consistently. Until recently, the biggest needed adjustment was to consistently capitalize the first letter of each word and make lower case all other letters. However, the software has been improved ...

I ran into this change some months ago, and am only just gathering--to my disappointment--that it's regarded as an improvement. I had supposed that listing lower case sort keys in an alphabet following the one for upper case sort keys was a built-in feature; I didn't know it was regarded as a glitch. I had found it eminently useful for making many, many, MANY Category pages far more readable. Mainly, this was in Category pages for species of plants in one genus. Typically, most if not all of the items on the Category list will begin with the same word--the name of the genus. So ideally, one wants them all to have a sort key to alphabetize under the species name. Having that in lower case (which apparently is that accepted way in biology anyway) means that all the species were listed neatly in on alphabet, and that was separate from any other articles listed on the Category page. The advantage was most obvious on pages for genera in which Wikpedia has some articles under the binomial (scientific, i.e. "Genus" "species") name and some under the common name. I'm sorry to see what I took to be a useful feature "corrected" away. 140.147.236.195 (talk) 18:48, 27 September 2011 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 91#Category sort order (lower case no longer?); this is also related to #Sort keys using Greek letters above. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Oh, wow! I'd run into this "Village Pump" before, but I hadn't really figured it out. Now, I see I've been cited by name! 173.79.191.234 (talk) 01:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

New Articles not added to categories

I just added two new articles, and added categories to them. However the articles don't seem to be added to the categories page. There is a help page somewhere telling what to do in this case, but I cannot find it now. I have looked at the help pages for categories and for new articles but cannot find this information. What do I do if the pages have not been added to the categories?JanetteDoe (talk) 17:40, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Pages? Was one of these Mike Spalding? If so it was there under M. I added a default sort which is normal for person articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Similarly for Kasma Babcock (see here); it's explained at Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:00, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, I see Babcock listed in the 1950 birth category. So was it just the delay seeing that one in the large categories like Category:Living people which has 540,000 members? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Er, see the diff which I provided in my last post - I added Category:1950 births in the same edit that I added the {{DEFAULTSORT:}}, so if it had been spotted under "K" within 1950 births, this would be a MediaWiki bug. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:19, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Thank you both for explaining & fixing.JanetteDoe (talk) 20:42, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Place names with "St" as abbreviation for "Saint"

These seem to be sorted inconsistently. Is it correct to add a {{DEFAULTSORT}} with "Saint"? Peter E. James (talk) 18:41, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:SORTKEY states "Spell out abbreviations and characters used in place of words so that they can be found easily in categories." Therefore places such as St Albans should be sorted as {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Albans}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:33, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Yea, I have been slowly cleaning these up in the church building categories where we have a lot of these. Interesting that many of these are sorted by the town they are in and not the name of the building. I also started renaming US post office articles to United States which fixes the sort issue and looks more professional with them having the same name. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:10, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Category:Something by country / Category:Countries by something

I am not too sure whether there's any WikiProject specifically for categories of/by countries. The problems I've encountered are that:

  1. Should the Republic of the Congo be sorted under #C, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo be sorted under #D in Category:Something by country?
  2. Should the two Koreas be sorted under #K in Category:Something by country?
  3. Should Greenland be categorised immediately in Category:Something by country separately from Denmark, and should it appear immediately in Category:Countries by something?

119.237.156.46 (talk) 18:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

proposing adding to categorize by defining characteristics

I propose editing the section Categorizing Pages in the list Particular considerations for categorizing articles by adding as the second list item "* Categorize an article only by its subject's defining characteristics, in accordance with Wikipedia:Overcategorization"

Both Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Overcategorization state guidelines, so they're equal. It's easy to miss the issue of being a defining characteristic by reading Wikipedia:Categorization alone. While Wikipedia:Categorization has a link to Wikipedia:Overcategorization, it's farther away and easy to miss and Wikipedia:Overcategorization is mostly about what categories not to create, which is not what Wikipedia:Categorization#Categorizing pages covers.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC) (Corrected a misspelling: 16:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC))

To be honest, I think it's even more important than that: I think that the very first sentence in the body of WP:CAT should be something like "The central goal of Wikipedia's category system is to categorize articles by their defining characteristics, such that, with knowledge of one or more of a topic's defining characteristics, a reader can easily navigate to and view a set of articles on topics defined by those characteristics." And then go to explain how we intend to achieve that goal, explaining "defining" and the trees. Uniplex (talk) 19:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Apparently, this has now been taken care of. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:54, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
I assume you are referring to a change in Wikipedia:Categorization#Defining_characteristics since no diff included? So does that mean that category Sexism/Racism/Antisemitism/Anti-Islam/ etc. can't be just willy nilly applied to articles - especially BLPs - as it has been in the past? Actually it seems to me that something to that affect was decided in Categories for discussion maybe last spring, though I don't see any diminuation in the application in some cases. CarolMooreDC 19:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
The standard for a characteristic being defining (and therefore sufficient for categorization) has gotten more restrictive, perhaps too much so in view of how large numbers of articles are multiply categorized. The standard of "commonly and consistently" applied to sources means that most topics would not fit those categories, because the characterization comes only from a minority of sources, often, for historical subjects, only one or two. E.g., my guess is that the Miss Universe pageant would be not seen as sexist in most sources, since writers opposing sexism and wishing to identify cases of it would look in areas more susceptible to change or more debated. The old standard was that content had to qualify for the lede to be a basis for categorization, and I think that was a less restrictive standard. The standard about not people, organizations, and media is a separate matter already decided and not a problem in the context where I wanted to categorize. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:22, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Looking at (the old) WP:OCAT, I think the standard was more vague than you suggest: more that if it didn't qualify for the lede, then it shouldn't be used for categorization; not that everything in the lede does qualify. The "commonly and consistently" wording was mine; I originally offered it at WT:OCAT where it seemed to get the nod of approval. The intention was not to further restrict, only to clarify: if a term is not used commonly and consistently (but of course allowing for a modicum of exception) then there are likely to be NPOV issues, which has always been given in the guide as reason not to categorize. Uniplex (talk) 08:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Nationality in biographies

I posted a query at BLP regarding nationalities, which has some relevance to categories. If you have any comments please post there. Eldumpo (talk) 09:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Breadth of focus

I tagged British Airtours Flight 28M with Category:Recipients of the Queen's Gallantry Medal, but was reverted as "an accident cant really get a medal". Other members of that category include Murder of Stephen Oake and Death of Michael Swindells. Murders and deaths can't get medals, either.

We have no articles about the four recipients of the QGM mentioned in British Airtours Flight 28M; nor are we likely to.

How should we deal with such cases? Where should we draw the line? How can (and should) we take steps to ensure that such categories are complete? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:43, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Create a redirect for the individuals, and put the the appropriate categories for the individual in the redirect. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Naming help

I'd like to diffuse Category:Socialist Party USA politicians by state, as has been done for other parties. Any ideas on how to name it? For example, we have Category:California Greens, but Category:California Socialists would seem to include members of every socialist political party. What do you think of Category:Socialist Party USA politicians from California?--TM 21:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Buildings, events and establishments

How should a building like Golden Gate Theater be categorized? One obvious answer is Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1927‎ since that is when the building was completed and began it's use. Category:Theatres in California is also rather obvious and OK. The question is with Category:Event venues established in 1927. Are theaters really event venues? Would it be better to have Category:Event venues established in 1927 as a subcategory of Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1927‎ even though the establishment of a building does not always coincide with the building of the structure. Something seems odd here and I don't know which way to view this. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Images

The Images subsection says:

"A category can mix articles and images, or a separate image category can be created."

but in this discussion and this one editor User:Alan Liefting claims that this goes against current practice, which is not to mix articles and images in categories. Is this indeed the case? If so, then the wording of the section should be changed to reflect current practice. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:42, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I spend a lot of my time doing re-categorisation and I have seen what the current practice is. Anyone else can go off an do it by looking at the 100s of thousands of categories. Or you could take me on my word! I agree that the wording above needs to be qualified. Better still, I would like to see the development of a categorisation policy. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Alan: I am not doubting your word, I'm well aware from my own editing that policy and guideline pages lag woefully behind current practice, sometimes to the extreme. In those cases, it would be helpful if when reverting an edit which is in line with written policy, you were to make it explicit that you are doing so in line with your understanding and experience of current practice - that's something that I and other editors can understand and respect, and would (I hope) prevent the little back-and-forth we just had.

Sometimes the difference between written guidelines and policy and actual practice is so significant (and controversial) that it can be quite difficult and time-consuming to get a consensus to made the change to the pertinent page, but in this instance it seems like a relatively straight-forward change, if, as you say, current practice is so settled -- that why I suggested here that the change be made. Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:21, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Would add something like this help?
Images should be uploaded and categorized on WP:COMMONS. Images should be uploaded to Wikipedia only when they are not appropriate on commons. Commons is the best place to categorize images.
Vegaswikian (talk) 22:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
Yep, that would help. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:07, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I do think that would be a useful addition, and I would be in favor of a more concerted community effort to move suitable images over to Commons, but even in the best of circumstances, with every conceivable image shifted over there, there are going to be images left on en.wiki -- specifically those used under our NFC fair use policies. That's the case with the specific image that began this discussion, since the underlying material of the image in question is copyrighted, aqnd therefore cannot be uploaded to Commons. (In fact, it was originally uploaded there and subsequently deleted, after which I uploaded it here.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Am I the only one who doesn't understand what I'm supposed to do re categorisation of an image if I upload a photo I have taken? I have uploaded to Wikipedia two images this evening of photos I took (so that they could sit in the articles on Dunster and Coddenham), but reading this item I'm unclear as to what I can do myself to categorise the images.Chrisemms (talk) 22:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Since you uploaded File:St George's church, Dunster, Somerset.JPG to Wikipedia, it must be categorised on Wikipedia (if it were uploaded to Commons it would need to be categorised on Commons). Find some suitable categories - for example, Category:Church of England churches in Somerset - and add them to the bottom of the file page just as you would if categorising an article. If somebody then objects to having images in this category, they will doubtless find a better category somewhere. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:54, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
The better answer is to just upload them to Commons. With global accounts everyone should have access to commons. Uploading images under just about every shared license llows them to be moved to commons. So, putting them on the Wiki just means that someone has to find it, tag it, move it to commons and then clean up. Even with bots to assist, this is a waste of time. Just put the images on commons. Then the issue of how to categorize goes away along with discussions with other editors who may not like unnecessary images being added to categories on Wikipedia. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:09, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Advice which I would also have given were it not for the fact that Chrisemms uploaded here, not at Commons. Don't confuse the newbies... --Redrose64 (talk) 20:18, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
  • There is no reason at all (unless some further reason exists, such as volume) that images should be placed in separate categories from other namespaces. MediaWiki just doesn't require or usefully support this: there is no "Image Category" namespace required, nor is one configured at Wikipedia.
We should abandon this assumed policy of separate image categories as being of no useful value.
In particular, edits like these [3] [4] [5] are unconstructive. They take an image from a relevant category and leave it uncategorized. I would appreciate it if Alan, or J Milburn, could explain why these edits make the encyclopedia work better. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:53, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

"Complete" categories

Is there a way to designate a category as "complete"? This would be a category that contains all possible entries. An arbitrary example would be an award category that contains all recipients for an award that has been disestablished. There will be no additional articles to add to that category, hence the category is "complete". Another example might be an albums category for a deceased musician (assuming articles exist for ALL of the musician's albums). If this designation does not exist, would this be useful? It might help to differentiate categories that will never be complete (Category:Albums, for instance) from those with a defined scope. --Another Believer (Talk) 16:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anything like this exists, but one problem that would arise is that the designation to indicate that a category is complete would be made via an edit on the category page, whereas the text to ensure that each applicable article is in the category has to be made on another page. One of the articles could be removed by accident, by purposive vandalism, or because of a disputed edit—but the category would still declare itself to be "complete". Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Also, in the examples used, an awards category would not be complete because, unless defunct, the award will be given out the next and the year after that, so the category would continue to grow. A musician who is deceased could have "lost" or never-released material put out, future compilations, and so forth. While these all can be complete to a point, I see no need to declare it. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 10:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Yes. I believe that Sony will be knocking out one "new" Michael Jackson album each year for the next seven years or so. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request

Include redirect WP:CG in "Shortcuts" box. 71.146.20.62 (talk) 04:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for pointing that out. - Eureka Lott 16:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Cat for /documentation-templates only

Some templates, like {{Unicode templates}}, have an overview for editors, and are only used in the /documantation page of regular templates (see for example {{Unichar}} and its /doc). There they are a "See also" by template. Do we have technical (WP:space) category for these? -DePiep (talk) 09:47, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Cat structure is not a Tree, it's more like a Family

Section #Category organisation now says (my bolding): Categories are organized as overlapping trees, formed by creating links between inter-related categories. This is mistifying, and probably wrong. Our DAG Cat structure is a family-like structure. E.g., a Cat has multiple parents (in a Tree, a Cat=branch could only have a single parent). I propose improve this explanation. It should be without references to a tree-structure. Current talk is here-DePiep (talk) 21:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree DePiep. I believe there are two conflicting categorisation cultures at Wikipedia: [a] a culture following the DAG Cat model (linking together categories by their inter-relatedness) and [b] a culture following a strictly tree-branch model (one which logically restricts links between branches). The latter has given us absurd situations where Category:Guggenheim Museum is just one branch away from Category:Vyborg Castle, but over a dozen away from Category:Manhattan. Can you propose a new wording to reflect the fact that Wikipedia uses a DAG Cat structure? SFB 23:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
Since my posting here, I've learned two factual details.
First: From a Category, looking downwards, it is a tree. Branches and leaves. Second: there is a Special Page to get the Articles in a Category, including the downward ones, for example Category:Black Sea: [6].
I maintain that the Cat structure should be maintqined according to DAG. -DePiep (talk) 01:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

A question has arisen regarding newly created category: Category:Cases related to the ACLU. There was a similar category which was deleted 3 year ago: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_April_12#Category:Court_cases_litigated_by_the_American_Civil_Liberties_Union. There is also a list: List of court cases involving the American Civil Liberties Union. The question is whether this is a sufficiently defined category. The Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates guideline points out that Categories and Lists are independent indexing systems, and the presence of one does not obviate the need for the other. I think that a user should be able to start at the ACLU top-level category and find all cases related to the ACLU - without having to proceed to the List. More important is the reverse function: when looking at legal case X (in which the ACLU was involved) the user should be able to notice that the ACLU was involved somehow, and navigate to other similar legal cases: the Category at the bottom does that, the List does not (unless the List were included in the See Also section). Thoughts? --Noleander (talk) 15:35, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

  • It's my opinion that this doesn't work as a category (regardless of whether it works as a list) because the ACLU is involved in far too many cases (often just as an amicus brief author or signatory) and these cases are similar only in that they involve "civil liberties"...which is incredibly broad (click the "all issues" link at the top of this page for a sampling). And once we go down that road, then we also categorize by every trade industry and non profit org that is a party or signs on to a brief. Even for a case in which the ACLU is a named litigant, such as Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, they might just be one of many (from one of the court filings in that case, the parties against the government were American Civil Liberties Union; Androgyny Books, Inc. d/b/a A Different Light Bookstores; American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression; Artnet Worldwide Corporation; BlackStripe; Addazi Inc. d/b/a Condomania; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Electronic Privacy Information Center; Free Speech Media; OBGYN.net; Philadelphia Gay News; PlanetOut Corporation; Powell’s Bookstore; Riotgrrl; Salon Media Group, Inc.; and West Stock, Inc., now known as ImageState North America, Inc.). So the category is non-defining for most of its members, not subject to meaningful control of its scope, and sets a bad precedent. postdlf (talk) 15:56, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, you are correct, and the category does not have a precise inclusion definition. On the other hand, I'm wondering if this is one of those situations where the rules could be interpreted liberally to help readers? The ACLU is, far and away, the most important litigator for Supreme Court cases, so it is natural to have a category that indexes those cases. The odds that an editor will try to create a category on cases related to the American Booksellers Foundation is very remote. That said, I have no big heartburn with living with the List alone, but I think we would be doing readers a disservice if the Category were eliminated. --Noleander (talk) 16:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
I was eyeing this one myself. So you're thinking of a court case by law firm category (even if their work is pro bono usually)? That might be workable, or might not. What is definitely not workable is a category for every case they filed a brief in as that would be duplicated with the chamber of commerce, etc. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:40, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

How to handle changing of trees

In looking at this discussion it raises some questions about how we deal with changing status. I did a quick hack at Category:1776 establishments in the United States and Category:1775 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies with hat notes. The problem is that we don't have a clean way to handle splits or changes. Are hat notes the best solution along with some comments as needed? In the case above, it would be valid to have both Category:1776 establishments in the United States and Category:1776 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies since the US was created in the middle of the year. A similar issue exists with the Christianity categories since the start as one with several splits along the way. It is too easy to miscategorize around those transition years. In the case of the Christianity categories, current RC churches still exist from before the use of the RC name or the recognition of this as a separate branch. Maybe this is a simple essay and the hat notes like I suggested above. I don't think it should be a rule, but guidance should be provided somewhere. Vegaswikian (talk) 08:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

List categories by name - but end of

Is there a way to list all categories with a name that ends with a specific text such as articles needing photos ? I am trying to find a way to list all categories requesting an image. I can use this for those with standard naming convention but some project template use other format such as Microbiology articles needing photos‎ or Chemistry pages needing pictures. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

They should all be included in Category:Wikipedia requested images or the more specific Category:Wikipedia requested photographs‎. It is possible that a tool like AWB could generate a list, but I don't use it so I can't really say. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Unused categories

Why the page Special:UnusedCategories doesn't show more than 5,000 categories? I mean 5,000 in total, not 5,000 per page. On Romanian Wikipedia there are at least 12,000 categories that are empty because they are redirects and they have to stay empty (example: ro:Categorie:Absolvenţi Harvard) so I can't see all the empty categories who might have to be deleted or filled. —  Ark25  (talk) 14:53, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Thats a question for the developers. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:16, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
Can you please point me where to ask that question? I am not sure where to do it. —  Ark25  (talk) 17:54, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

People from issue

There is a large number of categories in the form of "people from", such as "Category:People from Kraków." They have no single parent category, being the low level of categories like Category:People by place and its children. Those categories suffer from a major issue - it is unclear whether they are for people born in a given place, or for people with strong ties. I have always thought it was the former, but the usage is not consistent. Worse, the problem is compunded through clearly different interwikis; for example, for the Kraków category mentioned above, French wiki has fr:Catégorie:Naissance à Cracovie ("born in Kraków") and Polish, pl:Kategoria:Ludzie związani z Krakowem ("people associated with Kraków"). It doesn't help we have some associated categories too, for example Category:People associated with Kraków or Category:People associated with Edinburgh (both parents to respective "people from"). This suggests to me that we need to rename all "from categories" that do not have the "associated with" parent into an associated with version, but keep the from categories, which should be populated with the people born in those locations. We should also have some parent categories for all associated with and from categories, although I am not sure about the desired names. Perhaps Category:People associated with a location and Category:People by birthplace? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:17, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Since nobody seems to be monitoring this page, I am putting this up for a wider RFC discussion. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 21:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
The "people from" categories have always (i.e., since the implementation of categories) been interpreted as "people associated with", to cover a variety of associations. Annotated lists can help with the sorting problem of describing their particular relationship with the locale, which I think might be too fine a distinction for categories to handle effectively and would cause big problems with multiple and/or overlapping relationships; you'd have many biographies categorized by the same place for having been born there, lived there, went to school there, etc. I don't know if I'd have an objection to renaming them to "associated with," though I think some people might consider that even more vague than "from," and may open the floodgates to associations that are less integral to their biography such as "made an important speech there" or "had a building named after them there." Otherwise, any "associated with" should be merged into the "from" structure. postdlf (talk) 21:19, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
If you dig thru the old CfDs, I believe you will find some where the issue of born in was discussed and this trait was considered to not be defining hence it is not something that should be categorized. If there is a problem with the tree it is that the inclusion criteria is very subjective and not in any way objective. However I believe that fixing that may be impossible. If born in is a valid feature, then lists would be the way to go so that you can explain how it was defining. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with the two previous statements. Many people have multiple links with places (through birth, residence, or cultural impact) and the "from" distinction provides us with a simple way of allocating locations that are a defining characteristic of the person. To take a random example, Hugh Scanlon was born in Australia but is much more associated with parts of Manchester. I appreciate you concerns over current usage Piotrus, but if we split these into "birthplace" and "associated" categories then you would soon find that people would be categorised by their birthplace regardless of its relevance to their life and might possibly be placed into both categories anyway. SFB 23:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with having individuals categorized both by birth and by places they've been heavily associated with. Place of birth is an important characteristic, found in official documents, biographies, leads of our articles, infoboxes, persondata meta templates and such. At the same time, being associated with locations is important for many others. As I've demonstrated above, we already have some locations which have this dual split, and it is more common practice on some other wikis. Is there any reason we should not endorse a clear split of categories into associated with and born with? Should we in fact delete and merge some of the dual categories we have? Certainly it is confusing to have a small number of dual categories which are clearly split, whereas most aren't. I'd hope that in our constant refining of information (and categories), we will take a step forward and endorse both categories, rather than a step back and continue with an unclear division. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
But is the place of birth defining? For some selected individuals yes, but for most no. Categories are for defining characteristics and since the individual does not control where they are born, it is hard to make a case that it is in fact defining. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
The precedent is to tolerate the ambiguity and let anyone who is associated with a place, either by birth or in some other defining way, be a "person from X". I do agree that there needs to be some kind of further categorization because those categories get huge, like Category:People_from_New_York_City which has about 4000 entries. I would be interested in hearing proposals. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree that birth category is not very important, but the fact is that it is used, and as Bluerasberry notes, the result is unwieldy categories. For proposal, see my suggestion above - have a clear category for birth, and a more general, less ambiguously named one for association. So, rename all "people from" to "people associated with", and have the "people born in" in it as subcategory. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Piotrus' recommendation. Categories that are too broad tend to become huge(like the previously mentioned Category:People_from_New_York_City), and so I think specificity is almost always a good thing for categories, both for preventing confusion and making the category more readable.--Yutsi Talk/ Contributions 16:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
I clicked ten people in that category and all but one of them could be easily moved in to one of the sub-categories at Category:People from New York City by occupation. The occupation aspect is much more important than a prospective difference between association by birth or residence, mostly because when you sort people by job+location you get people who are closely connected for a real reason (being part of the same cultural scene/sporting teams/gangs/corporations etc). The real life difference between a person who was born in a city and another who moved there at the age of four (or was born in a nearby settlement) is small both in Wikipedia terms and real life terms. Perhaps it is merely a case of the need for effective diffusion and creation of further occupation categories. SFB 20:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
I do agree that occupation cats for locales are useful. But for many locales there are no occupation categories (NYC is rather an exception here, usually by occupation division is done at national level, not city), which results in large lumps in the main people from city category. Please note we are talking not about creating more detailed categories, but cleaning the mess at the top. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 22:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps wider use of occupation cats for populous cities would resolve this issue of large numbers in the person from city cats, but I suppose that's my perspective because I don't believe the "from" categories constitute a mess. SFB 18:15, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I support the wider use of those cats, but we will always have numerous cases where there's not enough subjects to populate such categories. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 03:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Occupational splitting good; birth vs. "association" not helpful: Often we have no reliable birthplace information, and the difference doesn't seem encyclopedically useful. There's no compelling reason at all to have "Category:People born in Albuquerque" vs. "Category:People associated with Albuquerque" (especially since the latter implies an actual association in people's minds, which is often not the case at all). A lot of people are born in places they have no other association with, and thus for whom birthplace is pure trivia. (For example, I was born several hundred miles away from my parent's home because I "came knocking early" while they were visiting someone; a day or two later we were all back home, and I've never been back to that town again. I do agree that when such "Category:People from Albuquerque" kind of cats. get unwieldy they should be split, either by narrower geography if not already at the town/city level (a lot of these are county-level or otherwise regional categories) and by occupation if they are. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 22:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. I agree with SMcCandlish on these issues. Birthplace is pretty non-defining if the person is not "from" that place. I think the category set-up is fine how it is. The overcategorization guidelines already state that we should avoid the vague "People associated with FOO" category names. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Categorisation of Hong Kong and Macau

From what I observed, many Hong Kong and Macau categories are subcats of the corresponding by-country parent categories (by their status of dependencies), and are subcats of the corresponding China or PRC categories with a <spacebar>Hong Kong or <spacebar>Macau catsort (in some cases an asterisk is used instead in place of the <spacebar> tho). When I apply it to other categories, SchmuckyTheCat (talk · contribs) undid them en masse.[7] Can anyone help look into the problem? 218.250.159.25 (talk) 08:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock

Until about eleven months ago, category pages showed subcategories in a different manner than the present method. Say a category had about 750 articles, and 26 subcategories, and each of these was roughly evenly distributed through the alphabet. The first category page would show sub-cats A-G and articles A-G; the second category page would show sub-cats H-M and articles H-M, and so on. For some categories, it was felt that all the subcategories should show on the first page, so they were given sortkeys which sorted before A, and this was usually done by making them began with either a space or an asterisk. This was by no means a universal rule.
In early March 2011, the category page display code was changed significantly. All subcategories now show on all the pages of the category, so the first cat page will show subcategories A-Z and articles A-G; the second will show subcats A-Z and articles H-M, etc.: the space or asterisk is no longer necessary to force the sub-cats onto the first page.
There are still times when it is felt necessary to use a special sortkey to adjust the position of certain subcategories. Consider Category:States of the United States - there are 56 subcategories, of which 50 are for the 50 states, and these 50 are in their natural alphabetic order, as you would expect. The other six subcategories don't correspond to one single state, so are segregated out of the alphabetic list by means of a space or (in one case) a colon. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I think a similar case exists for Hong Kong and Macau. The two territories are the only "special administrative regions" of the People's Republic of China. The spacebar is meant to set their categories aside from those for other ordinary provinces. Is there any similar case for Category:Foo of Guam/Puerto Rico/USVI under Category:Foo of the United States? Further, I think it's a standard arrangement to place Category:Foo of Dependency under Category:Foo by country, and I don't understand it would met with separatist allegations. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
I have briefly gone through Category:Protected areas of Guam. It's a subcat of both Category:Protected areas by country and Category:Protected areas of the United States. It's set aside from US states by not being subcategorised under Category:Protected areas of the United States by state. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 19:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
Really, you think Hong Kong is so important it should appear with special ranking at the top of every category? Higher than the capitol city? Because as a political exception, you don't want HK to be with the "other ordinary provinces" and thus you would elevate it to be the most important province that a reader navigating by categories will notice. Silly. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
That's getting too far. We can put them at the back too. I don't think ranking in categories is in any way connected with importance. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 23:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
Front of the bus or back of the bus. Why not just alphabetically sort them? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
  • Suggestion: diffuse the categories? If the positioning of Hong Kong and Macau along with the provinces of PRC is a problem, create two meta-subcategories for "xxx by province", and "xxx by Special Administrative Region". Deryck C. 14:32, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
There isn't a problem. This originated because the IP was sorting HK/MO with a space in the alpha sort so they would float at the top. It isn't necessary and removing it isn't a problem. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I suppose you can read English. I stated clearly that it's a patten that I observed. I found it useful and therefore I apply the same thing to categories which this arrangement hasn't yet been applied. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 22:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
If it's going to make everyone happy, that's fine. But I don't think it's necessary or useful. The PRC isn't having 50 states and half a dozen of territories. And by doing so we will be on a slippery slope. E.g., will we have separate categories named "Category:Something by sovereign state" and "Category:Something by territory" under "Category:Something by country" some day? I myself prefer to follow the British or the Dutch approach. There will be no need for any spacebar or asterisk. But SchmuckyTheCat will certainly go around and label me as a separatist and an edit warrior with a political agenda (while he turns a blind eye to other dependencies[8]). 218.250.159.25 (talk) 22:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
The most ideal is a "xxx by province" and "xxx by other regions". This other region category can include HK, Macau, Guangxi, Tibet regions or any special status type regions. Benjwong (talk) 02:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Provinces and autonomous regions share a lot more similarities than special administrative regions and autonomous regions do. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 10:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
Categorise Hong Kong and Macau under PRC is problematic as it do not conform to the custom usage on international issues. Hong Kong and Macau are usually count as separate entities in country list. Hong Kong and Macau have it own international call prefix, namely 852 and 853, and top level domain, namely .hk and .mo. Hong Kong is the full member of some international organisations like International Olympic Committee and World Organization of the Scout Movement. When you send mail to Hong Kong or Macau, you never need to write "China". Mails in Hong Kong and Macau are handled by different postal organisations from China. If you know the relations between China, PRC, ROC, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau issues well, it is pretty intangible and you can't please everyone. I propose to keep Hong Kong and Macau under country list, but not sovereignty state list. This is what the international custom and respect to the people in these areas. — HenryLi (Talk) 05:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Agree. But for categories this will make people like SchmuckyTheCat unhappy. He and other editors with similar views call it separatist. The same happens frequently around lists too (such as List of tallest buildings). They go on repeat and repeat that Hong Kong and Macau are integral parts of the PRC. They resist to understand that the saying "inalienable part" as appeared in both basic laws merely means that the two territories cannot be transferred to another sovereign state, and they cannot go independence. There's nothing we can do to stop these editors. 218.250.159.25 (talk) 10:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Blocked as sock
I see. If you narrow it down by international significance, then Template:Identity cards should never have PRC (Macau . Hong Kong). Afterall the PRC identity card has never been an equal in terms of international value to the SAR cards. I have never heard of a SAR citizen wanting to get rid of their high valued SAR card in exchange for a PRC card that has nearly zero international rights. It is no different than paper handcuff. Benjwong (talk) 12:52, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

University research project on categories seeks interviewees

Hey. I am a Wikipedian in Seattle who is a campus ambassador. I writing to ask for volunteers to be interviewed by researchers who are studying Wikipedia's categorization system.

A class at the University of Washington is conducting one-hour text chat interviews with Wikipedians who want to talk about Wikipedia's categorization system. The goal of the project is to get enough information to draft a proposal that information scientists spend time participating in developing Wikipedia's taxonomy system. The research results will be returned to interviewees and everyone else, and they are expecting to publish a paper based on the results of this project.

If you have ever used Wikipedia's category system in any way and are willing to schedule an interview with this group, then please put your name on this list. The followup will be that they will email you to schedule a time when you could meet them for a text chat.

Thanks for your attention. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

WT:SOCIOLOGY#A cleanup of subcats of sociology?

Hi, this may be of interest to users of WT:CAT.

A discussion at WT:SOCIOLOGY has sparked an assessment of the subcategories of sociology which can be found here User:Meclee/proj4-sandbox. Anybody interested in discussing the possibilities of building a stronger encyclopedia with effective categorization; specifically starting from category:sociology in this case, is welcome to comment. This is also linked to WT:SOCIOLOGY. Brad7777 (talk) 16:54, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Re-wording WP:EPONYMOUS

On numerous occasions, I've seen editors strip away an articles categories when those same categories are parents to the article's eponymous category (here's an example edit to show what I mean). Several times I've discussed this with editors and they are in the belief that the statements in WP:EPONYMOUS justify this practice. My only conclusion must be that the guidelines are not explicit or clear enough. Furthermore, Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization makes reference to a "no categorizing into a subcategory and category at once" rule, but this rule doesn't seem to be openly stated on this page. The "Non-diffusing subcategories" section state that it can be "an exception to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory". Why is this general rule not mentioned previously? It is highly unusual to find the first reference to a rule is a statement of exception.

This guideline page spend much of its focus on how categories should be categorised, often to the detriment of explaining how articles should be categorised. We should add this general rule in the overview section and clarify how the parent/child category relationship affects both articles and categories. SFB 18:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

While I disagree with WP:EPONYMOUS as it regards the categorization of eponymous categories, the editor whose edit you gave as an example got it completely backwards by removing categories from the article, when WP:EPONYMOUS talks about the removal from the category of parent categories that belong on its eponymous article. In other words, the article should always have all the categories of which it is rightly a member. postdlf (talk) 19:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with your answer. Those categories belong on the article and not the category since they would not apply to everything in the category. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:15, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
To clarify this distinction, here is my revision of the first two paragraphs of the eponymous section:

A category which covers the exact same topic as an article (e.g. George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush, Mekong and Category:Mekong River) is known as an eponymous category. The article itself should be a member of the category and should be sorted with a space to appear at the start of the listing (as described below under Sort keys). Articles with an eponymous category should still be categorized in the broader categories that would be present if there were no eponymous category (e.g. the article France appears in both Category:France and Category:Western Europe, even though the latter is the parent category of the former).

An eponymous category should share the categories of its corresponding article, as long as they have direct relevance to the contents of the eponymous category. For example, the contents of Category:Museum of Modern Art have high relevance to Category:Museums in Manhattan, thus both the eponymous category and article (Museum of Modern Art) fall within that broader category. Conversely, the contents of the eponymous category have little relevance to Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1929, thus that category does not become a parent to the eponymous category.

I believe this revision does not change the essence of the statements currently presented, but rather makes them more explicit. SFB 23:26, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Please also note that I have put up for discussion Category:Eponymous categories, specifically questioning why we have content categories whose defining characteristic is that they are Wikipedia categories. SFB 13:08, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Just a heads up before I proceed: I'm going it revise the eponymous category section with the first paragraph, which I regard as uncontroversial and simply a more straight forward description of the current first paragraph. I will do this over the next few days if there is no opposition. What do people make of the second paragraph? Is it an accurate description of convention or not? SFB 21:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I've updated the text now. I think this now reflects more clearly current convention and does not delve further into the more disputed categorizing styles which exist, as the page should only define what is already convention. SFB 17:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The overview of WP:CAT

The first sentence of the overview states: The central goal of the category system is to provide links to all Wikipedia articles in a hierarchy of categories which readers can browse, knowing essential, defining characteristics of a topic, and quickly find sets of articles on topics that are defined by those characteristics.

The category system is more of a heterarchy of categories, so should this be changed? Brad7777 (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Overcategorization

In the past few years, categorization has gotten a bit out of hand, due to overeager Projects. For example, Category:Martin Luther lists everyone notable that ever met, wished they'd met, loved, hated, wrote about, or thought about, Martin Luther. Mercifully, the category George W. Bush contains (I think) mostly germane material. While I may hope that this is as clean for all modern figures, I haven't really checked.

Once the Project has decided to do this, it is virtually unrevertable, no matter how bizarre the outcome. These are apparently people who are used to generating "search terms" for papers, perhaps. But we have the same affect when performing a google (or other) search. We don't need to imbed categories that are already linked by virtue of the fact that the Pope was annoyed with Luther, or various political or religious figures were involved with Luther.

This is clutter. These redundant categories/overcategorization need to be rm from articles. Projects that are doing this need to be asked to stop. Student7 (talk) 02:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. It is quite common for bio articles to be scattered throughout categories where they don't really belong. I have encountered similar problems with Category:Censorship, Category:Criticism of religion, Category:Anti-Christianity. In the case of Category:Criticism of religion there was a perfectly adequate Category:Critics of religions or philosophies. I will remove the bio articles from Category:Martin Luther. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
It is not only bio articles. I removed Category:Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Category:Exxon Valdez oil spill, Category:Oil platform disasters, Category:Oil spills in the United States from Oil Pollution Act of 1990 . I seem to be removing spurious categories on a regular basis. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Query

Hi, there seems to be Hebrew script (not displaying, but in the edit-mode) and Thai script (both) at the top of the category page here. Is the syntax wrong? Tony (talk)

Probably better to ask someplace that regularly discusses interwiki links. Not sure where that is. I don't think that this is a category specific issue. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
The Hebrew one looks like a perfectly valid interlanguage link; it's displaying in the Languages list in the left margin. The Thai one is not being recognised as such, although it should be: I've checked, and หมวดหมู่:อาการและอาการแสดงที่เกี่ยวกับการรับรู้ ความรู้สึกสัมผัส ภาวะทางอารมณ์ และพฤติกรรม is a valid category on Thai Wikipedia, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Category reference navbox

Code Result
{{User Catbox}}
CAT

I have found this useful for my userpage. Thought I would share : ) - jc37 01:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Manual of Style for category pages?

Category page layout is usually fairly simple but they can be a real mess on occasion. I might have a bash at creating a draft Manual of Style for category pages. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:31, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know. Sounds like a good idea at first glance, but...
We have WP:NCCAT for category names.
But categories are not supposed to be about supplying content. The fact that you can't add a reference to an entry in a category supports that. Categories are merely a technical way for us to help with navigation of the encyclopedia.
And an MoS would give the suggestion that catgories hold content.
What do you see as being part of this MoS? - jc37 03:55, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
WP:NCCAT is for category names. I want a Manual of Style. I am in the process of rustling one up and I will let you know when it is done. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:11, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Do you mean something akin to a version of WP:LAYOUT for categories? -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Yep, but dedicated to categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:02, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I ran out of steam on my draft Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Categories page. Feel free to critique and expand. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:42, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 March 2012

Please add Robert E. Ward to the list of "Army Commendation Medal" recipients. This award was included on General Orders Number 425, issued by Headquarters, 3d Armored Division (Spearhead), APO 09039, dated 30 November 1967. Date of action: 7 Jun 66 to 1 Dec 67, Reason: Meritorious Service, Authority: By direction of the Secretary of the Army under the provisions of AR 672-5-1. FOR THE CAMMANDER: WILLIAM J. MADDOX JR., Colonel, GS, Chief of Staff. OFFICIAL: P. R. HORNE, LTC, AGC, Adjutant General


66.32.214.144 (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I presume that you are talking about Category:Recipients of the Army Commendation Medal.
The only way to add a name to a category is if there is an article on the person to which the syntax which adds the page to the category is applied.
I cannot find an article for Robert E. Ward. I have looked at the list of articles of people of that name listed at Robert Ward. I also see that William E. Ward was also a recipient of the award.
Sorry I was not able to further help. - jc37 01:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
✗ Not done Likely wrong page. mabdul 15:09, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Category:Philippines

An editor insists on adding ships to Category:Philippines which are completely appropriate article for that category. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:09, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

{{prune cat}}?

Okay, I know we already have one template discussion going, and I realize the term {{prune cat}} is a bit absurd, but it has occurred to me that often, when we take deletion discussions to CfD, a proposed solution is keeping the category but "pruning" it to remove articles and subcats that don't belong there. We have {{popcat}}. Would there be a value in creating a template to help suggest to editors to do the opposite? Or does something along that line already exist, that I've forgotten? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know that I would support that template. If you find articles that are miscategorized, remove them. Now if you are suggesting a template to mention that the category is likely to be inappropriately used, then I might support that. I guess the question would be, is that template of any value? Would the individuals who tagged the category in an article even notice? Now if we had a bot that left a warning message on their talk page, then maybe this could work. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
We already have {{category diffuse}} to do the job. Based on what I have seen most of the categories need pruning and I spend a lot of my time doing it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Birth control movement in the United States

Got another case of sloppy categorisation at Birth control movement in the United States. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:44, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

USERNOCAT

Today BattyBot has edited two draft articles in my user space to undo their categorization (simply by inserting a colon between "[[" and "Category"). That makes sense. I will try to remember to do it myself.

I suppose the robot begins work by searching user space for "[[Category" or the equivalent. Is there any automatic patrol of articles space for "[[:Category", or for its appearances in the footer, etc, which will uncover articles imported from user space without re-activating the categories? If not, I will use some obtrusive reminder to myself. --P64 (talk) 20:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


Hiding stub categories

I have begun a discussion regarding the visibility of stub sorting categories here. SFB 00:48, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Categorisation of content and project pages

Wikipedia:Categorization does not have any explicit statement on the categorisation of stub categories, WikiProjects, Wikipedia namespace pages, files, or templates. By convention stub categories are placed in content categories, files are placed in a dedicated file category, and Wikipedia (project/maint/admin), WikiProject and templates have their own parallel category system that only intersects at Category:Contents - the very top of the category hierarchy.

There is a clear demarcation between what is content and what is project related. WP can therefore be built in such a way that readers will not have to be subjected to clutter that is not of interest to them. In general content and project is kept separate but sometime the process of re-categorisation to maintain this separation is contentious.

It should be noted that readers form the last bulk of page visits by far. Editors, and readers who wish to become editors, have ample opportunities offered to go from content to project related categories, mainly via the talk page link.

In order to avoid the clutter on category pages, to give reader/editor demarcation, and to give certainty on how to edit I would like to propose the following guidelines: Note: a page can be a category or an article

  1. Stub categories should only be in the related project category. (a complete change from current convention)
  2. Template pages should only be in the Category:Wikipedia templates categorisation hierarchy and the associated WikiProject pages. (templatess are only useful to a reader when they are in an article)
  3. Wikipedia namespace pages should generally only be in project categories. (there is a bit of sloppy categorisation for these)
  4. WikiProject pages should only be in project categories. (They are easily accessed from via the talk page)
  5. File pages that are of use to readers should be in a dedicated file category.
  6. User pages should only be in user categories.
  7. The Help namespace pages are a real mish-mash of topics for editors and readers so it should be ignored for the purposes of this RfC.

-- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

  • As noted there, Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys is one such place where we note that pages besides articles may reside in cats holding article content. They merely should be sorted clearly to prevent confusion, to aid both our readers and editors. I understand that User:Alan Liefting disagrees with this interpretation. He seems to feel that all non-article space pages should be entirely removed from such categories, and further seems to feel that even hatnotes which direct to non article space be also removed from such category pages. I, of course, disagree. - jc37 01:13, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Just because some people use that kind of sort key to put templates in content categories (it's mostly used to sort them in project categories) doesn't mean it's a good idea. I could use a pistol as an effective tool to open soda bottles, but that doesn't make it sensible. :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 05:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
You have completely misinterpreted what I have said. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:17, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, then please clarify, and help me out on what you feel I am misunderstanding. - jc37 01:20, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I largely agree with this proposal, with caveats:
  1. Stub: Agreed, as long as the stubs also have the proper categorization as if they weren't stubs (they usually do; we would just need to ensure they always do). I've long thought it really weird that we put stubcats in contentcats. It's completely pointless: confusing to readers, makes automated tools more difficult to use (they end up double-processing stubs), and doesn't make anything easier or better in any way.
  2. Template: Strongly agreed, with a caveat. Yeah, this was one of the most sensible edits I've ever seen. Why on earth anyone would put Template:Nudity into Category:Nudity is beyond me, unless they simply do not understand what categories are for and how they work. An exception would be templates that largely consist of fixed article content, e.g. a list of Mormon temples that is transcluded in all the Mormon temple articles. This is important for automated tool reasons as well as human user ones. (In cases where we have a profusion of templates about a topic, they can be subcategorized (Category:Nudity templates anyone?), but those subcats should remain in the template hierarchy, i.e., do not put Category:Nudity_templates in Category:Nudity. Someday the devs could create a more fancy system whereby certain kinds of cats would be invisible by default to users who are not logged in, or whatever, but we don't have that now.) People also need to get over the idea that "being topical makes it special". No one cares that it's an infobox about composers; it's just an infobox, and is not magically special, so it does not need to go in Category:Composers, where it would just be reader-confusing clutter. [Bonus points to anyone who knows why that particular made up example was tongue-in-cheek.]
  3. Wikipedia: Agreed, other than category hatnotes that let people know there is a WP policy or project or whatever related to the topic are okay, and good way to recruit readers into becoming editors. But Wikipedia:-namespace pages should never, ever be categorized in content categories. WP:SELFREF exists for a reason. WP-internal "noise" is not what content categories are for. But I look around and see a total mess, with all sorts of Wikipedia:-space stuff in content categories, including a lot of project-internal stuff. I fix this when I encounter it, but it's too much for one person to clean up.
  4. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Foo: Agreed, with no reservations. When I created WP:CUE, I got Template:Minnowed for putting a [[Category:Cue sports]] at the bottom of Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports. And I now understand why. It's not just a matter of project stuff showing up in content categories, but in other places, like guideline categories. If your proposal for a naming convention or style guide is project specific, leave it there. no one else cares and no one is going to honor your geek rules outside your project, so stop trying to parade your specialist style bugbears around as if they were WP guidelines.
  5. File:/Image: Already handled this way.
  6. User: Already handled this way (other than people not commenting out cats. in userspace drafts), with rare consensus exceptions like user essays, the category for which "crosses over" into the essays cat. outside the user pages parent hierarchy.
  7. Help: Agreed. It's too meta to worry about. The entire notion of a help system is automatically self-referential, so it's really not an issue. There's very, very little Help:-space stuff that isn't editor help. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 05:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Category descriptions

Over the past few weeks of category work, I've been struck by the need for more and clearer category descriptions. Most categories lack one altogether; of those that carry one, many are effectively just restatements of the title. I believe that the rarity of clear category descriptions contributes to miscategorization and poor category organization (especially with regard to subcategorization). In my opinion, all categories should have at least a statement to the effect of: "This category contains FOO about BAR", where FOO describes the type of contents and BAR describes the scope of the category.

I have been thinking about a template that could be used to generate category descriptions. A previous attempt at such a template was deleted, but I have in mind something that is far simpler than the 40-parameter Template:Catdesc. I imagine something that, as a default, would produce the text:

This category contains Wikipedia content about {scope}.

Additional parameters could be used to impose various changes, such as:

Any thoughts? Is this worthwhile and, if so, should it be implemented through a template? -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:31, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

A template would help with generating a uniform style. My question is can the most common descriptions be placed in one template? Is so that would be a good move. And yes, descriptions are frequently a mess. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:53, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we need a new template. We are well served by templates as it is, eg. cat main, cat rel, see also etc. I also see a lot of rubbish in category pages. With the templates mentioned and occasionally a description of the contents I am able to fix things up. The function of categories is too variable for a generic description page and cat main does the job. Finally, a new template won't fix the mess in the category system since it seems the current crop of templates are blissfully ignored. I think editors are adding categories that they have not even visited and are therefore not aware its use. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
It would be simple enough to incorporate templates such as Cat main with an additional – and, of course, optional – parameter. I concur that a new template will not fix the issues with the category system but I think it may alleviate them. I'm sure that some editors do consult category descriptions, though you're probably right that most don't; even so, category descriptions would be helpful for those editors who tend to check and specialize in categories. -- Black Falcon (talk) 06:21, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree. A clear template would be nice. Though we should work out the kinks ahead of time. Fixing after-the-fact may not be a simple thing. (And should be something we consider in the final format.) And as to whether it's possible to frame, please see: Wikipedia:Userboxes#Content_examples for how this was illustrated for userboxes. (Though this was, by necessity, much more generic.) - jc37 01:15, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
You guys are aware of {{Category explanation}}, right? - Eureka Lott 20:06, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't, actually, but it's a start toward what I have in mind. I'd like, in particular, to try to stimulate discussion about what parameters could and should be utilized within such a template. I think jc37 is absolutely right that post-hoc fixes will be time-consuming and problematic to implement. Thanks for pointing us to the template. :) -- Black Falcon (talk) 22:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Well clearly the type parameter mentioned above would be one. However I suspect most editors would be confused by which one to use. But then that is clearly a reason to specify it! Vegaswikian (talk) 22:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
It would be nice if the template supported the commons and portal usage. Right now there is wasted white space that keeps article content off of the first screen where bots add the templates in the wrong places. It might also be nice if it supported the ToC template inclusion. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:23, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Re: original post – There is no Template:Catdesc.  :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 05:48, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
True, and the OP acknowledges that by linking to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 June 25. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:31, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Why is an existing category name not recognized when I click the "+" sign meaning "add a new category", to add a category to a page?

Thx for reading. I just wanted to add the article on the "Saber"-currency in the category "Complementary_currency" by clicking on the "+" sign meaning "add a new category", to add a category to the page on the "Saber"-currency. But the software of wikipedia doesn't recognize the category, nor when I write it as Complementary_currency nor Complementary currency. How come and shouldn't we add it in a FAQ in a page explaining "Categories"? Thy and happy wikkiying.--SvenAERTS (talk) 10:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I assume that instead of Saber, you mean Saber (sectoral currency). I think that you may need to ask at WT:HOTCAT since that appears to be the tool that you are using. Please note that capitalisation is important: with this edit you added Category:Alternative Currencies but that should have been Category:Alternative currencies. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

consistency

In this CfD discussion, a commenter notes that WP:CAT says nothing about consistency of category names. Folks at CfD have been proceeding for years as if this was an inherent guideline: that categories should reflect the names of similar categories. The speedy renaming standard C2C, for example, is based on consistently matching related category names. It seems obvious and noncontroversial, and so I think it should be put into WP:CAT. Thoughts?--Mike Selinker (talk) 16:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, though it should probably be noted directly at WP:Category names (part of which is transcluded here). And yes it's hinted at on both pages, plus the CSD as you note, so this should be uncontroversial, if worded fairly well. - jc37 00:16, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Guidelines should be derived from practice, and consistency has been the consensus practice at CfD for years. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
The problem arises when consistency conflicts with other categorisation rules. The gasoline engine CFD outlines this quite well. There could exist articles for 'British petrol engines' and 'American gasoline engines', where the guidance here says to name the category after its topical article. This would result in inconsistent category names that do, however, reflect correct regional usage. If a clause is added to require consistency within category trees, you'd have the whole tree as either 'petrol engines' or 'gasoline engines' and end up with awkward category names like 'American petrol engines' or 'British gasoline engines'.
I think the matter can be distilled to which is more important: categories that are consistent with their articles, or categories that are consistent with themselves? Given categories are fundamentally nothing more than a navigational aid, I think the 'named after their related article' advice in the current guideline should take precedence. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 23:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

There is an inpractice consensus, ignored with singers but somewhat followed with writers, that at least in some cases we do not categorize people by language by occupation if this becomes a virtual overlap with their nationality. Thus if someone is in Category:English singers we would not but them in Category:English-language singers. Is there any place where this is spelled out in an authoritative context?John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit semi-prot request

Section: See also
Change [[:Category:Categories]] to [[:Category:Wikipedia categories]]
Reason: cleanup after CFD
Thanks. --92.6.211.228 (talk) 14:00, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 18:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Eponymous people categories discouraged?

Apparently there is precedent for discouraging eponymous categories for articles about people. I am unable to locate documentation for the reasoning or a summary of consensus. WP:EPONCAT applies to non-people categories as well as people categories and does not appear discouraging except if the eponymous category is intended to reduce the number of categories for an article. As a newcomer to this area, I would very much appreciate some concrete guidance around this subject. Jojalozzo 23:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

  • Comment. Well, you won't find one central "meta" discussion where this was decided. The trend goes back—quite literally—years. You can trawl through the archives of WP:CFD at your leisure and find hundreds of examples of these types of categories being discussed. I think it's fair to say that there is not a blanket "rule" against so-called eponymous categories for individuals, but the view has generally been that there has to be more content than two or three articles and/or two or so subcategories. What it says in WP:EPONCAT is a fairly good representation of where the consensus lies, I believe, in that it discourages these types of categories that are named after individual people. Of course there are cases where such a category will make sense, but a good rule of thumb is not to create such categories unless there are more than 3 subcategories and/or more than a handful of articles that could legitimately be placed in the category. Different users use slightly different standards to assess these, and there are borderline cases. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
    By my reading, EPONCAT is too loosely phrased if we want to discourage the practice except for the most notable people. IMO, guidance should be concise and clear and not depend on the reader's ability to infer intent. I suggest changing the first paragraph along the following lines:

    "In certain very notable cases, people are being categorized by the name of the person itself, for example Category:Abraham Lincoln. However, Only the most notable persons should be categorized by their name but this should not be done simply to reduce the number of categories displayed in an article. The best solution to this that problem is to reduce the number of categories to those most applicable to the person remove the article from all but the most applicable categories."

    But from what you say, there is no intent to reserve eponymous categories only for the most notable people, since it's sufficient for a person-eponymous category to have a significant number of subcategories each with several articles (albeit, that's unlikely to be the case except for the most notable people). If so, then EPONCAT provides no guidance and is a poor representation of practice over the years. I'd suggest something like:

    "In certain very notable cases, people are being categorized by the name of the person itself, for example Category:Abraham Lincoln. A category with the same name as an article about a person should be created only if there will be a significant number of subcategories each with several articles. However,this should not be done simply to reduce the number of categories displayed in an the article. The best solution to this that problem is to reduce the number of categories to those most applicable to the person remove the article from all but the most applicable categories."

    The second paragraph is outside our scope here but could also use some work (mainly clarify what is meant by "larger categories" - larger than what?). Jojalozzo 02:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Unnecessary disclaimer

The sentence "This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more)." is on every category. It is unnecessary and should be removed. It is an option in Mediawiki I suspect. Commons does not have it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:17, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe it is unnecessary. I understand that categories which have been applied through templates may indeed take some time to show up. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:25, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Isn't there a general recommendation against applying categories by template? Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:04, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
There may well be, but don't such templates still exist? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:17, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, they probably do, though there are probably far fewer than there used to be. I think that technically the "disclaimer" is still relevant, but in practice I'm not sure that it is that important to have anymore. There are all sorts of things that are problematic about categories that we could have disclaimers about; I'm not sure why we would single out this issue for universal note. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Templates with categories do exist but they are virtually all used in project related pages. The disclaimer is not needed that that purpose. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
But in practice the time is so short that a warning on the thousands of cat pages is unjustified. There is about a zero level of benefit at a cost to the Reader Experience. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with that point as well. Very occassionally we have had situations where there will be a delay of more than a day, but the delay is so rarely signficant and so limited now with template-applied categories that honestly I don't see the universal warning as necessary or terribly helpful anymore. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
So what is the next step here? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:47, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

The notice should stay. For one thing, regardless of whether the page says it's frowned upon, LOTS of templates categorise pages. infoboxes in particular. And you would be hardpressed to say that infoboxes are rarely used. Most of the fixit/unsourced/etc templates do too. So removing this notice really isn't a great idea. - jc37 06:09, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Well actually every template is categorised but it is into project side of WP. The disclaimer is not needed for that. As already stated it goes against policy/guidelines to use templates to categorise into the content side of WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 11:14, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry Alan, but you're wrong in this case. Infoboxes are regularly used to categorise articles. Remember, policy is to represent common practice, not the other way round.
(And that aside, WP:CAT covers more than the categorisation of articles.)
But besides that, why do you care if we are helpful to readers to note this? - jc37 11:41, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Can you give me examples of categories infoboxes? So why do you think the message helps readers? It is confusing rather than helpful. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:53, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
From what I have seen, the delay is so rarely relevant that a universal disclaimer seems to be overkill. There are a half dozen other issues with categories that are far more widespread and common that we could design disclaimers for, but we don't bother. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:57, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with that. My current concern is that there is not a universal statement on the contents of a category not being a reflection of the topic as a whole. For example Category:Delta Sigma Theta presidents will always be a partial list but the reader is not told that. What are your pet issues Good Ol’factory? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:53, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Most of them. Primarily statistical information such as occupation, ethnicity, and so on. Though lots of other stuff as well. (The wiki markup gets rather complex in some cases.) It's one of the things that I've had to deal with when trying to implement certain CfD closes in the past (We're rather spoiled by cydebot these days : )
That said, If there are other things we should be warning readers about, I'm all for discussing that. - jc37 05:02, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
(de-dent) Well I did some checking to find how that text would be edited. And after looking through some edit histories found that it's not only template categorisation that's a problem.
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_36#Category_list_message - This was the initial adding of the message.
Semi-related on the same archive page: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_36#Complicated_category_transclusion_not_purging
And later: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_59#Categories_reporting_wrong_number_of_members.
So this isn't as clear cut as any of us thought. - jc37 05:26, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
But on balance the disclaimer is not needed. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I think the discussions noted by jc37 indicate that the issue can be a problem, but I still believe what I wrote above that it so rarely arises that it seems like overkill to have a perpetually present disclaimer about it on every category that exists. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:18, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Noticeboard

Currently, category-related discussions tend to be spread out over the talkpages of WP:CFD; WP:CAT, WP:NCCAT; WP:CLS; and elsewhere. Awhile back, it seemed to me that having a category-related noticeboard might be nice, so I cobbled one together. Recently, some helpful person added a notice on WP:CAT about it. So at this point, I welcome others' thoughts on this. What do you think about it, and if positive, how and where do you think we should notify others of its existence? - jc37 23:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Good idea but not sure if it is the best page name. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Use of Category:Categories requiring diffusion

Hi. I'm afraid that me and User:Alan Liefting have a bit of a disagreement on the application of the tag for Category:Categories requiring diffusion on the parent category Category:Documentary films. Alan objects to use of the tag because for, well, aesthetic reasons. He says it's "ugly." And yet I have been spending hundreds of hours diffusing films to the appropriate subcategories to aid navigation. Retaining the tag helps other editors to place documentary films in topic, country and other subcats where they can be more easily found. Alan does not seem at all interested in my rationale. Fot him it seems to be enough that he personally finds such tags "glaring." And yet the description on Category:Categories requiring diffusion leads me to believe that I am using it correctly. This category does require diffusion, even if it is not overly large, right now. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 05:17, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

{ec}}:No I am not opposing the use of it on aesthetic reason. You have misread what I actually mean. Also, the use of the template is in no way related to the amount of work an editor has done on a particular category. Some background on my talk page here. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:29, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
    • A second editor has raised concerns with Alan about his blanking of diffusion tags on certain categories. In spite of this, he continues to insist that they are "ugly" and is proceeding with a pattern of edit warring, despite multiple concerns. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 05:25, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Please check you facts befotre making accusations. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:29, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
        • I did misread Justin's comment. That aside, your removal of useful category tags that are useful tools in helping editors, solely on the basis of a personal view that they are "ugly," leaves me kind of flabbergasted. Let's discuss the core dispute, now. Let's do so here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 05:32, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
          • It's one thirty a.m. my time and I have to get some sleep. Again, the category description for this tag leads to me to believe that it is entirely needed, based on the chronic addition of documentary films to the top level category, requiring diffusion. What is your counterargument, exactly, if not your repeated objection to their "ugly" or "glaring" appearance? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 05:37, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Is the intent of the category in question that it should contain only subcats and only the topic article (and maybe an associated list page and/or navbox) then yes it should indeed have that helpful template. That's the current accepted common practice.
This aside, I'm starting to become concerned that User:Alan Liefting is getting in a lot of contentious discussions due to a personal assertion of what he feels is appropriate. I strongly support that consensus can change, but self-asserting it has changed in the face of numerous objections might suggest that consensus has indeed not changed. I hope Alan takes this more in mind, else I am concerned that an RfC (or possibly some sanction) may be around the corner. - jc37 06:37, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that is the indeed the intent: and before I and other other editors got involved in creating and maintaining a system of topic subcats, and working to populate and maintain same, it was a bit of a mess and much less helpful to any reader. There are many hundreds of articles on documentary films and diffusion is essential, especially in that documentary film is a particularly topic-driven genre. What's more, each week there are more new articles placed in the top-level category, despite the appearance of this template. I'm happy to help maintain the category for as long as I'm on the wiki, but removing the template makes the problem and workload worse, not better. I have yet to see from him any rationale, based on the template's usage guideline or anything other than a personal dislike of "ugly" templates, and disregard for the hard work of others or need for consensus, as to why this template should not be applied. thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
  • The situation with this editor is getting worse. He's grown silent on this discussion and I wondered why, until I noticed that he had gone ahead, without discussion and in full knowledge of concerns raised here, and modified the catdiffuse template so it no longer appears as a helpful guide to readers and editors. Again, apparently because he doesn't care for its appearance. This editor is clearly working unilaterally and disruptively and I have reversed his edit and issued him a second-level vandalism warning accordingly. I would endorse any move to have him blocked or topic banned, based on some of the incredible stuff I've seen from him in the last 24 hours. Bizarre. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:26, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
    • This is pretty poor form. Can we have a discussion on this topic with some substance? Without prejudice, what is your opinion Alan and what do you think should be changed and why? When there are individual disputes, it is better to gauge a wider perspective than charge ahead. And it would be a trivial matter to risk a block for nonetheless. SFB 19:39, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, he's not. He's ignoring this discussion and is now continuing to "clean up" category pages as he sees fit. Here, he's blanked what seems to me to be a perfectly valid and helpful description, per Wikipedia:Categorization which clearly states "it is helpful – to both readers and editors – to include a description of the category, indicating what pages it contains, how they should be subcategorized, and so on." Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Note. I have blocked User:Alan Liefting for some of his recent editing behaviour, which was starting to get a bit out of control and disruptive. When the block expires, I encourage everyone to make further good faith efforts to work with the user and discuss things, as has been attempted above. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:45, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
    • Thank you, GoF. You always seem to be there in the clutch! I'll continue to review Alan's edits and restore templates and descriptions where necessary. I can list the edits here, as they may be the subject of further discussion. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Defunct resorts

I'm editing The Norconian Resort Supreme, a hotel/resort built in the 1920s, later sold to the Navy who operated it as a hospital, who later sold some of it to the state, who now operate a prison there. The Navy continues to operate the NSWC-Corona (i.e. not a hospital) on the land they did not sell. I question these categories:

Shouldn't all categories at least have a paragraph defining them if not a main article, to hopefully make clear at least these life-cycle questions?

—[AlanM1 (talk)]— 05:49, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Alan Liefting and the category diffusion template

Moved from Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Alan_Liefting_and_the_category_diffusion_template
 – Nobody Ent 12:08, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to know if some action should be taken to stop this editor from unilaterally removing the category diffusion templates, which he objects to, based on their "ugly" appearance in cluttering up category pages, in his unique view. He knows perfectly well that consensus is, so far anyway, uniformly against his practice, at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Use_of_Category:Categories_requiring_diffusion. He was blocked from editing for 31 hours, in part because of personal attacks against me for attempting to put a halt to these unilateral actions, which included his modifying the catdiffuse template against consensus so it no longer appeared on categories. He's nominated the template for deletion, which is his right, but he also continues to remove it against consensus, as recently as yesterday. I have, on the Catergorization talk page and the Tfd, made my case for why I think the template lessens our workload and is a useful tool. More importantly, other editors have weighed in to say much the same thing and Liefting is perfectly aware that he is acting unilaterally and against consensus. He just doesn't seem to care. What do we do? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:04, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

  • Didn't we have a related thread on Alan's category edits a week or two ago? Drmies (talk) 19:18, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
    • Oh, yes, I see you're right. I'm not a regular at ANI but I see that Liefting has been the subject of multiple recent ANIs regarding unilateral actions in category space, none of which have resulted in any action whatsoever. However, this is a new issue, and I believe his blatant and ongoing disregard for clearly expressed consensus does make a case for banning him from category edits. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
      • Please stick to that facts. I only recall one case where I have been hauled before WP:ANI, and it was recently, and there was no outcome. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
        • Comment: I count two if you go back a year [9], [10]. But I don't think that's the point. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
          • I count four going back a year. Alan, allow me to refresh your memory then. Some more serious than others, to be sure, but this is hardly your first appearance at ANI, fwiw. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 21:04, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
            • I agree that not all those four are problems, and none on their own was actionable. However Alan's is a name that is beginning to come up worryingly often, and his responses - such as this one to challenges are not reassuring. He has been described as displaying an 'Olympian indifference' and while I wouldn't use such colourful language myself, that diff indicates a level of self-confidence that borders on the dismissive. I understand it to imply that Alan will consider discussing things only if they are uncontroversial, and relating to topics where he is inexperienced. For all other topics it's full steam ahead! I don't think a block is in order here, but is the only alternative a topic ban from category-related edits? Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 21:26, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
            • (edit conflict)I stand corrected on the number of ANIs. Now that I look at them I recall three of the four. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:57, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
  • "Proof please"? This is getting ridiculous. Can you point to a single editor who has not objected to your unilateral actions to date at any of the above linked discussions regarding the cat diffuse template? I'm beginning to wonder if WP:COMPETENCE is not an issue, here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:34, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
And I think this ANI is ridiculous so we are even. I am comfortable with my competence. I want to say more but obviously from your language and tone you are letting your emotions rule your editing. I think I shall leave this discussion before my emotions get the betted of me. And I see that you did not accept my humble apology from the way it was promptly deleted from you talk page. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:56, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Please restore the diffuse-indicating templates to all categories from which you removed them. If you do not, I would request that you be restricted from editing categories. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:59, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Why? And why did you revert Category:Logic to this completely useless version? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
It wouldn't be useless if you hadn't damaged the templates. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
This is off topic for this ANI but what do you mean by damage? I did not thing to the templates themselves apart from putting them up for deletion. Gee, Category:Logic looked to a it suffered serious damage before I came along and tried to sort it out. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:18, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I checked out this issue with Alan because I was the instigating complaint about a proposal to get rid of a header template for category:Logic. We have a bit of a "hell freezes over" situation here because Arthur, fairmindedly agreed with ME that the template shouldn't be deleted. Upon looking at the evidence it seems that others have a problem with him removing the "diffuse category" template, and I also agree that he shouldn't do that either. However, none of these issues is a very big deal at all. We are certainly able to deal with any aftermath that .0000001% of Alan's actions cause. I think we should just have some credible, admin issue Alan some form of warning like "hey, those diffuse category templates actually are useful, please don't remove them for non-compelling reasons" etcetera and leave it at that. He is not a "problem editor." The guy should have some form of Wikipedia tenure at this point. I certainly don't think he should be stopped from editing in any way.Greg Bard (talk) 08:42, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm really getting tired of the whole "take someone to AN/ANI and make them prove a negative" discussions. Has anyone here been able to show how adding the cat diffuse template is helpful? I agree with Alan entirely. Viriditas (talk) 09:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
I can't speak for others, but I have found them useful. So that is one data point that supports the conclusion that they are helpful. Do we really need to do formal studies and such before we can employ tools here? Greg Bard (talk) 09:29, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, they are useful on the backend as a hidden category, just as Alan proposes. If anyone wants to help diffuse categories, tag it as hidden and advertise a maintenance project. No need whatsoever to put it on the category page. Viriditas (talk) 09:39, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
This is getting dangerously close to being a civilised and sensible discussion about practicalities to do with categories and their structure. The further it moves in that direction the better I feel and the less appropriate this board is to continue it. Is there a forum frequented by folks interested in categorisation where this could fruitfully continue? Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 11:48, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
They are useful where any editor who looks at the category can see them. A hidden category plus an edit notice might be adequate, but I think it should be useful to any editor who is attempting to put articles in the correct categories, and they might not think to edit the category page. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Worldwide album certification categories discussion

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Worldwide album certification categories, regarding whether album articles should be categorized by every country's certification of sales as Gold, Platinum, etc. postdlf (talk) 20:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Category prefaces

This hour I provided short prefaces for two portal categories that had none. For cat Speculative fiction portals, where neither Portals nor Speculative fiction is a member of the category, I provided,

and similarly for its parent cat Literature portals. Why not?

Above (#Discussion) i explain a problem with the former (spec fic), and indirectly with its parent (lit), for reader navigation. As an afterthought I see that it's a problem also in providing editors with an overview of wikipedia coverage (of course).

Our discussion of eponymous categories suggests to me that many categories, even meta- ones, need longer prefaces in order to solve or forestall. (That's all for now. I don't yet know even how category hatnotes, ordinary text, and message boxes are intended to help readers or editors.) --P64 (talk) 18:03, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

When to remove all categories from an article?

What's our policy and best practice on when to remove all categories from an article?

This is in relation to Wonderbag. The categorisation as Inventions is challenged. So should such a category be removed, if questioned, even when this leaves the article entirely uncategorised? In particular, not even tagging it as {{uncat}}, so that it enters the workflow streams for fixing it. Should the article have been AfDed or PRODed instead? An "invention" that isn't even an invention is making a poor show of demonstrating notability. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:00, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

An invention doesn't have to be an original invention to be an invention, I presume?
Other than that, I think, based upon the discussions anyway, that categorising it in Category:South African inventions, a new subcat of Category:Inventions by country, would seem to make sense. There's also Category:Products by company, I suppose, though it sounds like this is the company's main product.
And finaly, there are several cooking-related categories, though I'm not sure where in the tree it would be best put: Category:Kitchenware; Category:Cooking appliances; Category:Cookware and bakeware; etc. - jc37 15:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Those sound like content issues. I was thinking more of what to do when it becomes possible to remove these categories altogether, to leave an article unencumbered by them. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Why would we do that? If a category's applicability is unverifiable, then it should be removed. But we don't wipe out an article's categories as a prelude to deletion any more than we blank the entire page (short of BLP or COPYVIO issues). Regardless of whether the Wonderbag is an "invention", it's a cooking accessory, so why shouldn't it be categorized as such even if the article's future is in question? postdlf (talk) 17:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
NO category is far better that the wrong category. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, yes, I don't disagree with that necessarily, but there's never going to be a situation in which every category is wrong, and even if there were, we'd still have {{uncat}} until we figured out that it should be deleted or a new category created for it. postdlf (talk) 22:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I agree with postdlf. I don't think we would ever remove all categories from an article. If an article has an incorrect category, remove it and add a correct one. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:31, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Categorizing images on Wikipedia

I just noticed that someone removed that it's okay to upload and categorize images on Wikipedia, as well as on the Commons. I've never seen any agreement that we can't do this, so I've restored the version before the change was made (diff). SlimVirgin (talk) 02:11, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

There should be a relatively strong qualfication to the statement that images can be categorized on Wikipedia. Since most images that appear in Wikipedia are actually housed at commons, we should not be encouraging the categorization of WP mirror pages of the commons file description pages. Adding a category to such a page actually creates a new Wikipedia page, and that page becomes subject to speedy deletion via criterion F2. Thus, we should only be encouraging categorization of files that are loaded on Wikipedia itself. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure how to word it. If you can think of how to do that, would you mind adding something? SlimVirgin (talk) 02:49, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I've made some edits. It is a bit difficult to explain, but I have done my best. It could possibly be tweaked some more. I also added a point about avoiding thumbnail images from appearing in a category when it is a non-free file (as perhaps the majority of non-Commons files are). Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:02, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
It's good, you explained it well. I moved your last paragraphs to the start (i.e. so we start by explaining that editors are allowed to categorize images, then explaining that they should not do so with mirror images (diff). SlimVirgin (talk) 05:34, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
That's a better order, I agree. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:42, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Portal rho, Template tau

This fortnight I re-sorted Portal:Shakespeare from P (pee) or S to the top of the pages in Category:William Shakespeare --at the very top because other top items sort under W. Category: Shakespeare templates remains under T (tee) among the subcategories.

From the documentation here, it isn't clear to me whether we have a policy to use rho sortkey for portal and tau for template, and thus to sort all portals and templates at the end of alphabetical listings. Nor whether the policy or guideline pertains only to pages in the Template namespace or whether template is spelled with tau at en:wikipedia, so that the templates category should be at the end of subcategory listings: T, translators; W, works about, works by; Tau, templates.

P.S. When I visited Category: William Shakespeare, Category: Harry Potter, and some others, I hoped to see at a glance, or nearly a glance, how editors have organized a collection of many related articles; eg, what categories and templates have they found worthwhile. Maybe there is a better way. [A single main template often does a good job of this for the articles themselves.] --P64 (talk) 18:28, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

By convention and for usability templates are not added to content categories. As for portals the page should have a sort key that is something other than a space. the eponymous article should be the only page with a space sortkey so it is displayed on its own. I have recently decided that having the Portal:Shakespeare (as in this case) as a page in a category is redundant to having the {{Portal}} box at the top of the category page. It is also potentially confusing to readers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:29, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm, but a reader has to go from the portal to the category... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I have given the portal an asterix sort key so it is not before the William Shakespeare in Category:William Shakespeare. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Of course William Shakespeare should precede his Portal in his category. My mistake.
Routine sorting of "template" by Tau and "portal" by Rho is "for usability". That isolates them from the main alphabetical list, which is good for both those who will be confused and those who know where to look (tau).
So cat Literature portals should be at the end of subcats Literature under Rho; it shouldn't be missing [as it is]. (By the way, I don't know whether I am arguing against a policy, guideline, tradition, or isolated opinion.) The eponymous Portal: Literature should be at the head of cat Literature pages --although not first ahead of Literature, as it is now[fixed --both were sorted to " " alone].
Same for templates. Cat Harry Potter templates should be at the end of subcats Harry Potter under Tau; it shouldn't be missing [it is in c:WP:Harry Potter under Omega, which works well]. The eponymous navbox Template: Harry Potter, whose purpose is to navigate Wikipedia coverage of Harry Potter, should be at the head of cat Harry Potter pages[done] and in the main alphabetical list of cat Book series templates[done].
--P64 (talk) 17:15, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
"By the way, I don't know whether I am arguing against a policy, guideline, tradition, or isolated opinion." - You're not. It's long standing practice. Policy comes either from longstanding common practice or widespread consensus. (Alan's assertion that this is not, is obviously neither.) - jc37 11:19, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
My remark was misplaced in the middle of that paragraph, because it was true point by point thruout the last two paragraphs. Which of the four points now underlined express common practice?
Beside underlining I have improved linkage in the third assertion, eponymous navbox Template: Harry Potter, whose purpose is to navigate Wikipedia coverage of Harry Potter, should be at the head of cat Harry Potter pages[done]. If I am arguing for common practice here, it's also against frequent error. (I restored this one last hour, for another editor had reverted it.)
This would be simpler, more intuitive for editors, if navigation boxes were consistently given a distinctive name such as Literature directory, Harry Potter directory. I suppose the prefix "Template:" is fixed in stone, although (most of?) these are particular completed templates to be used again and again without so much as specification of one parameter value, unlike the more basic templates to be completed on each use, most importantly template {tl|navbox}}.
Should a category preface highlight its portal and navbox, if any, perhaps explain and recommend them? Now i have suggested that, Category talk: Harry Potter. --P64 (talk) 18:46, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Set category

It must be useful to name and distinguish topic category and set category early (now in section 6) and to use those terms consistently rather than sometimes use list category. Where list category is useful, some of user category, portal category, template category, redirect category must be in the neighborhood, eh?

Some presentation in terms of subsets and elements or members will be useful to many readers, maybe enough to be worthwhile? --P64 (talk) 19:56, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

If we did openly speak of sets, the framework of a category might look like this.
Subsets
6 categories are subsets of this category:
...
Members
5 Categories are members of this category:
...
217 Pages are members of this category. The first 200 are listed here:
...
To implement this would require basic programming and demand more from editors who categorize. Yet it is commendable as a thought-experiment here. It avoids ambiguous ordinary words like in, contain, include. It doesn't use but may fit the discussion of category types, eg set and topical. --P64 (talk) 19:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Help needed re: massacre categorization

Help from Category black-belts is needed at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Granai_airstrike_discussion. The question is whether to include article Granai airstrike in a massacre category. Please provide any comments there, not here. --Noleander (talk) 19:16, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Best practice for deleting categories?

When seeking to delete a category, is it best to remove all the members from a category beforehand, or should it just be sent to CfD?

If a category still has members before requesting its deletion, wouldn't that incline other editors to keep it? That seems an inefficient way to delete things. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It would so incline, and should, because it is evidence that the category is useful. If you delete all the members before reporting the category as a problem, you "cook the books".
This "way to delete things" is a way to decide whether to delete things. --P64 (talk) 19:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I am a little confused about your question. I deleted the Category:Charles F. Kettering content category from the image. Can you explain what you mean by your question? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
If you're still laboring under the misapprehension that images are somehow not "content" and thus should not be categorized, or even that they merely should not be categorized with articles, please read the following: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Image description pages ("To help editors find images, please remember to add categories to the image description page. Well-categorized and well-described images are more likely to be used."); Wikipedia:Categorization#Files/images ("A category can mix articles and images, or a separate file/image category can be created."). Add to that the chorus of commenters on your talk page disagreeing with you (and none agreeing with you), and at the question you posted at the dispute resolution board. It should be clear that your opinion on this is not consensus, and even (as far as I can see) is merely held only by you. postdlf (talk) 22:52, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

RfC on Years by Country categories

You are invited to participate in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#RfC on "Years by country" categories. Fram (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Template {fooian fooers} for example

Are there other templates akin {{fooian fooers}}, which now sits atop category Category:Scottish children's writers?

This one seems useful to me. It is not consistently used, maybe not frequently, I see and guess at British children's writers and English and Welsh, where I stop looking. --P64 (talk) 19:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Opinion on style of a category page

Category:Animal rights movement (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I have had a bit of an edit war on this one. The layout goes completely against convention. It is a mish-mash of project and content stuff. I wanted to just have the {Cat main} template. Nice, easy, uncluttered and reader-friendly. It also contravenes my guideline at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Categories that everyone is going to endorse. Please?? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 10:49, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

{clarification needed}
I doubt that everyone did endorse, if the time is passed. Is there any proposal on the agenda or on the table now? --P64 (talk) 17:39, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Water bodies by country

I am in the process of completing the Category:Water by country series that I started a while back. When I started it I was completely unaware of Category:Water bodies by country. That series was stared way back in 2009 but has never had much added to since then. While there could be an argument for both "Water bodies by country" and "Water by country" I would prefer that the "Water bodies by country" series was deleted. "Water by country" is more inclusive whereas "Water bodies by country" will be limited to a smaller subset (sometimes only three or four for some counties). I think, on balance, that a set of "Water by country"categories with a larger population of pages is better than having the relevant pages split between the two category series. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:54, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I have put them up for deletion. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_June_12#Category:Water_bodies_by_country. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:10, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

RFC on image categorisation

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Categories#Image_categorisation. Of interest in the RFC is the changes to this guideline that were not discussed. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 13:25, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Text on category pages

I'm experiencing some problems with Alan Liefting repeatedly removing information from three animal rights categories (Category:Animal rights, Category:Animal rights advocates and Category:Animal rights movement). I don't want to keep simply reverting him, so I'd like to ask for some input here.

I've added to the category pages some indicators as to what the categories are for (per Category:Philosophy), plus the category tree template. See here for an example. Alan keeps removing the text and/or adding a clean-up template, calling it "clutter" or "bumpf". Diffs of him doing this: [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]

Is there any reason not to add the category tree template, or information about what the categories include? SlimVirgin (talk) 03:30, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

  • First diff, agree with SV, disagree with Alan. Helpful links in category text are helpful. It is by default too hard to work out who is looking after the categories. As a compromise, the help could go on the category_talk page, but I don't think compromise is required here, as category text does not appear in mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • I think some of the text is excessive.
    • For example Please do not change categories without discussion just seems over the top, I would kill it. Since when are these categories more special than others?
    • I can't see why a category tree is needed; it's not that complex of a tree, and it's all there below; I find it more confusing than anything.
    • I can see a link to a portal, this is standard, but the project link should go on the talk page, as well as any exhortations to ask permission of the project before changing cats. As for the descriptions of relevant categories, as long as it's relevant, brief, and useful, it's fine; but saying something like Category:Animal rights advocates: for academics, writers, and activists seems pretty obvious, and doesn't need to be repeated on the top of every page. So I'm frankly more sympathetic to Alan's views on this - tone down the language and clean up the top, keep it clear and crisp, and put extraneous stuff into the project portal or talk page. As for the image comments, thats a non-starter here; images are for now fine in categories. There is an RfC about this, so further such comments about images in cats should await completion of that RfC.--KarlB (talk) 06:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Categorising articles is one of the more difficult aspects for new Wikipedia editors. Helpful text or hints on category pages should be encouraged. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:06, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Content category pages are not used to help editors. That is what the project pages are for. In the fashionable parts of WP there is a clear separation of project and content. SlimVirgin is blurring this useful separation. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:34, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
"Content category pages are not used to help editors. That is what the project pages are for. In the fashionable parts of WP there is a clear separation of project and content. " - This statement is entirely false. The only evidence of it is you asserting it to others, and boldly removing things yourself to follow this mistaken belief. Disagree? Then prove it. We have tons of text, even just over the last month (not to mention examples going back YEARS), where many other editors have repeatedly shown you that this is not consensus, and is not common practice. - jc37 01:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Is it not obvious to you that there is separation of content and project pages (including categories)? They do intersect in various place of course (the Talk page tab is an obvious one) but project links are only placed in content page if they really have to. I am flabbergasted that anyone could accept the poorly constructed page that SlimVirgin is pushing. As for proof about my stance surely you can see it all over WP. Maybe something like Category:Science? Nice clean page, link to the main topic etc. Oh, I forgot, I have edited that one. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:39, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Text that helps to clarify the intended contents of a category and distinguish it from related categories is a good thing, and is pro-reader. It's kind of dickish to just direct readers browsing a category structure to an article, and screw them if they don't have the time to read it or otherwise can't figure it out. postdlf (talk) 19:38, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:34, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  • SlimVirgin, you are sacrificing usability for the reader with your version of the category page. You appear to be be pushing the animal rights agenda (and as a supporter of green politics I believe in animal rights) and the category pages would be more useful to interested readers if they could find the stuff they came to page for. You are cluttering up the pages with unneeded templates. A reader will simple go "Oh no - what a mess" and then leave. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:34, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animal rights with any questions or proposals regarding animal rights categories.

Also see Portal:Animal rights.

Please do not change the categories without discussion.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to People associated with animal rights.
There are nice templates that can be used to replace some of the bumpf such as {{cat main}}, {{catrel}} {{portal}} etc. So why not use them? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:10, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
A notable omission is no article links. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Belgian inventions

Moved from WP:AN.

Another of those always-problematic nationalistic "inventions by country" categories. Newly created in the last couple of days, nearly every entry is problematic.

Involved:

Historically ancient. Little real chance of proving anything

Plants and animals. Are these "inventions"? If the Brussels sprout is to be defined by its deliberate husbandry, then that's West Lancashire in England (and my great grandfather), not just Belgium because it has the word "Brussels" in the name.

Slightly related, are books "inventions"?

Lots of firearms. 'Products' certainly, but inventions?

Dubious claims

Inventions with clear histories, for being invented by Belgian expatriates in other countries. If we have a category for Inventions by expatriate Belgians then these might warrant inclusion, but they're not Belgian inventions.

Repeatedly reverted and re-added. Original claim (a well-attested German invention of Siemens) removed.


Clearly sourced, region matches, but it pre-dates the country of Belgium by a few centuries.

Any assistance welcome. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I really wouldn't mind some assistance either , as indicated on the electric railroad page.83.101.79.45 (talk) 23:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't appreciate this as an edit summary either. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:37, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, all I can say is that French Fries are indeed proven to have been invented in Belgium. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 23:42, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
"Always problematic" .. Please mind your attitude sir. Belgian inventions category was empty before today , hence the current activity while being populated.

Dairy:

As stated in the talk page , if you'd have bothered looking , then invention that was being indicated was the automatic milking machine. (http://www.google.com/patents?id=07pSAAAAEBAJ)

Sprouts:

Brussels sprouts have been selectively bred , particularly in the area which is now brabant , same for the chicon.
Quote nl entry "Spruitkool of spruitjes (Brassica oleracea convar. oleracea var. gemmifera) werd in 1821 voor het eerst in de omgeving van Brussel geteeld en wordt in Europa al snel een belangrijke wintergroente. De oorspronkelijke naam is "Choux de Bruxelles". In het Engels gebruikt men nog steeds de term Brussels Sprouts. Spruitkool wordt binnen Europa voornamelijk in Nederland, Frankrijk en Engeland geteeld"

Chicory:

Quote from the chicon page : " The technique for growing blanched endives was accidentally discovered in the 1850s in Schaerbeek, Belgium."

Bloodhound (St Hubertus):

Bloodhound , as are 13 others are belgian official breeds , selectively bred by Belgian breeders to achieve their current shape etc. http://www.wezooz.be/video-huisdieren/hondenrassen-rasstandaard-royal-canin , http://www.kmsh.be/pages-nl/rassen/index.html

Vesalius books:

Those are what modern medicine and surgery are based on. They are universally acclaimed as being so.

Various gun types:

Absolutely , The concept of the mini machinegun , the concept of the "assault rifle", the new concept of the modern SCAR.

Real numbers:

Simon Stevin page quote : "According to van der Waerden (1985, p. 69), Stevin's "general notion of a real number was accepted, tacitly or explicitly, by all later scientists"."

Decimal Representation:

Simon Stevin again

Electric Railroad:

quote : "Charles Joseph Van Depoele (Lichtervelde, 27 April 1846 - 18 March 1892) was an electrical engineer, inventor, and pioneer in electric railway technology."

Siemens:

"Well attested" .. I have yet to see that .

Inventions done abroad:

If all inventions by inventors abroad would be credited to the country they were residing in at the time , I have quite a long list of things that would need to be amended. Neither Dr. Baekeland nor Charles Joseph Van Depoele were of American nationality during the time they made their discoveries.

Mercator Projection

Mercator was flemish which is clearly integrally a part of current Belgium and is not disputable.

Vesalius again

Same for Vesalius and for Simon Stevin both are flemish which is in it's whole part of current belgium.

Internal Combustion:

Etienne lenoir page : "Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir also known as Jean J. Lenoir (12 January 1822 - 4 August 1900) was a Belgian engineer who developed the internal combustion engine in 1858"

Land Sailing:

Again Simon stevin quote "His contemporaries were most struck by his invention of a so-called land yacht, a carriage with sails, of which a little model had been preserved in Scheveningen until 2102. The carriage itself had been lost long before. Around the year 1600 Stevin, with Prince Maurice of Orange and twenty-six others, made use of it on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten. The carriage was propelled solely by the force of wind, and acquired a speed which exceeded that of horses."

Not appreciating a revert comment :

I don't appreciate blanking nor neurotic behavior.

83.101.79.45 (talk) 00:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

To simplify this a little:
  • Is a "Flemish" invention a Belgian invention? Belgium didn't exist then. The location in question was part of the Dutch state at the time.
  • Is an invention by an expatriate Belgian a "Belgian invention"?
  • Does one invention of a further instance count as "invention", or is it strictly the first invention? See land yacht, where Simon Stevin may well have built a working land yacht, but he did it centuries after the Chinese did. Many of these claims appear to be based on using WP bio articles as RS and taking their isolated claims (which may indeed be real) as the only example of such an invention, even though there were other precedents.
  • Plants and animals. Is discovery or husbandry an "invention"?
  • Are new models of the same basic machine "inventions"? The Browning Hi-Power has novelty, the FN FNC does not.
Others are generally specific content issues that I recognise may be outside the scope of WP:AN. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:56, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


Have Flemish inventions historically been indicated as being Belgian after the creation of Belgium ? Is there room in Wikipedia to make Flemish , waloon etc categories , or are countries already broad enough a scope?
Is an invention done by a Belgian while he wasn't residing in his country at the specific moment he made his invention a Belgian invention ?
Is there room on wikipedia to credit the actual invention , or would there be a need to create multiples ? Stevin's Land Yaght is not a separate page but a paragraph , how would one go about distinguishing it as a belgian invention if it isn't an article? Would Land sailing in general , being accredited to multiple countries not be a way to avoid problems?
Does years of intense selective breeding mean nothing? Or does work that takes generations deserve some credit? The malinois did not spontaneously appear in the middle of a field.
Is it an invention if it has multiple patents and innovative unique design? Can one compare "a shovel" equal to "a gun" ?
83.101.79.45 (talk) 01:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
To me, this sounds as another case of categories which often results in historically incorrect statements - The two quotes "Brussels sprouts have been selectively bred , particularly in the area which is now Brabant, same for the chicon." and "Spruitkool of spruitjes (Brassica oleracea convar. oleracea var. gemmifera) werd in 1821 voor het eerst in de omgeving van Brussel geteeld en wordt in Europa al snel een belangrijke wintergroente. De oorspronkelijke naam is "Choux de Bruxelles". In het Engels gebruikt men nog steeds de term Brussels Sprouts. Spruitkool wordt binnen Europa voornamelijk in Nederland, Frankrijk en Engeland geteeld" - Belgium as we know it now did not exist in 1821 (actually, the whole area was United Kingdom of the Netherlands) - and unless the 'omgeving van Brussel' ('area around Brussels') is defined more precisely, Brabant could be anything of "Noord Brabant", "Flemish Brabant", "Walloon Brabant", "Duchy_of_Brabant" or Antwerp province (Antwerp is currently the Belgian province surrounding Brussels). Not to say that 'voor het eerst geteeld' is not the same as 'invented' - the invention may have been somewhere else, but it was cultivated for the first time in 1821. Similar for De humani corporis fabrica - that was in 1543 (not to say that the book may describe inventions, but the book itself is not an invention).
Moreover, to extrapolate the invention of the "automatic milking machine" (actually, "milking apparatus", by the way, the patent is for a part of an automatic milking machine) to the invention of Diary is also questionable - that is not the invention of Diary, it may be the invention of the automatic milking machine.
Whereas for some countries it can be properly and precisely defined - there are many things which can not be divided by country, especially not in an area where country-borders have been changed, redefined, countries have been split (and in history been combined). Either make this type of categories historically correct where possible, or consider other ways of splitting categories (if necessary) which contain items which 'go back in time'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
For my part, I do not see why a single idea cannot be in more than one category of inventions - for an idea like Remote controlled Car will involve several aspects, all of which can naturally be invented by different people at different times. In order to defend my inclusion of R-C cars, here is the source I was using: Jean Bourguignon - not excellent I know, but as good as any case that is made on the original page for the invention - I was not aware that category choices had to be cited...— Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])
Categories are based on the information in the article, and that information needs to be cited (extreme example: before slapping Category:Dead people on a BLP, I would expect a citation for the fact that they is dead in the article itself). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:16, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, on the subject of the inclusion of fire-arms, they are a technical product which requires development like any other. There is also a precident for their inclusion under from the category:Australian inventions. I did think that accrediting Belgium with the World Wide Web (Robert Cailliau) was a bit far-fetched so left it out. I also think that a category for "Belgian expatriot inventors" would be rather facetious, cannot the page be categorised under BOTH Belgian and (the other country's) invention? Brigade Piron (talk) 08:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Countries
  • There is no reason why an invention has to be categorised by country. If the country of invention is unknown, unclear, contested, or split across several, then we shouldn't attempt to.
In particular, we need external WP:RS that source the claim that the invention derives from a particular country, not merely that an inventor was from some country. Like remote controlled car, there is no real chance of finding a single defined moment of invention for this. Borrowing Jean Bourguignon's country for this is not enough, mostly because he might have been an inventor and a Belgian inventor, he might have invented aspects of remote control, but without sourcing that he invented remote controlled cars where they didn't exist before, then this wasn't any single invention bound to Belgium. Andy Dingley (talk)
Historical countries
Non-prime inventors
  • Two co-inventors working together, or in competition, is probably reasonable. However re-inventing an old invention, even if lost, is not. Our categorization is applied to the invention, not the inventor. Andy Dingley (talk)
Developments, not inventions
  • There are many firearm inventions from Belgium. Some are categorized here - as mentioned, the Browning Hi-Power is just one. However there are also many firearms here that just aren't "inventions". They're a basic evolution of previous ideas, not a novel thought. The FN Minimi has a claim to novel invention (and is Belgian), the M249 light machine gun is just a US derivative of this (but has still been categorized as a Belgian invention). Andy Dingley (talk) 10:31, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Of course - the Browning Hi-Power was designed by John Browning, an American, in America for FN, so isn't really a "Belgium invention".Nigel Ish (talk) 13:54, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


Overcategorisation from orders, decorations and medals categories?

I think when categories fill an entire screen height as in the Elizabeth II article it is a sign of overcategorisation. Half of those categories are orders, decorations and medals categories. Yes, there are decorations that become defining characteristics of their recipients, but when there are 2,712 pages under Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, the category fails its purpose of giving readers access between related articles, as all those subjects barely have anything else in common. Jane Harrison is certainly notable for her dedication to duty which earned her the George Cross, but I doubt anyone associates Queen Elizabeth II with the Order of Ojaswi Rajanya. I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, or what the currently accepted standards are, but shouldn't there be a way to reduce the clutter of categories in biographies (yes, other categorisation schemes also contribute to the overcategorisation, but none as much as ODM) while keeping the actually relevant and useful ones? Apologies if this has been discussed before. --Paul_012 (talk) 17:46, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I know its a little weird and I do wonder if we need to remove some of those Heads of State categories (Uganda? Really?) but these are pretty rare. As the Queen she has received a lot of awards and decorations and most heads of state do. Sometimes Generals too but in the end there really aren't that many folks so I would n't worry about it too much. Just my opinion. Kumioko (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
So what's the problem? The categories are down the bottom, so it's not as if anyone has to scroll past them. Their number is certainly unusual, but then there aren't many monarchs on WP, and this is just one of those obscure corner cases. There's always going to be an article somewhere that has an unusual number of cats, that's just the nature of distribution curves. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:20, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
The main problem with long lists of categories are that if some are useful, it takes a long time to find them. --P64 (talk) 23:05, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
There are a lot of categories for these orders, etc., and I'm just not sure that we should be categorizing all of them. It seems to somewhat fall within WP:OC#AWARD, but this guideline has obviously been roundly ignored by category creators as there are many categories for awards of all sorts. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Winston Churchill has the same problem. Well he hasn't because he is dead but the Wikipedia article has the problem. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:03, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I wonder how much weight WP:OC#AWARD will hold in an ODM CfD discussion. Most deletions would likely be problematic, though, as one award may be differently WP:DEFINING for the various individuals who received it. Are there guidelines or accepted practices regarding including only significantly relevant categories in an article versus tagging for completeness of the category? I think restricting categories in an article to those directly relevant to the notability of the subject would be better than including all possible categories. (If completeness is important, a list would better serve that purpose.) If Winston Churchill's notability as prime minister and his various political and societal roles overshadow all those honours, wouldn't it be better to just leave those categories off his article? --Paul_012 (talk) 22:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I can probably provide some background and observations.
  • Within WP:ODM, I am probably the main editor who has worked on a developing a coherent taxonomy schema for ODM categories, since the original endorsed category structure listed here was established in 2007. I started working in the area in 2010 at which point there was a well established practice of using categories for members of orders and recipients of decorations but with only a very rudimentary schema. I have meant for some time to put together a detailed proposal to facilitate discussion and formalisation of policy however this has been on the back burner due to other commitments (and is likely to remain so until I finish my current bout of university study).
  • Key discussion including amplification of my considerations are located at:
  • At CfD, WP:OC#AWARD is usually not considered to apply to orders and significant decorations awarded by the state (eg the CfD at Category:Knights of the Order of Ojaswi Rajanya).
  • The problem with extensive category lists for certain prominent individuals is acknowledged. The preference to sort categories alphabetically rather than by functional groupings only exacerbates the problem for these individuals as other categories get swamped. However, the solution is not to reduce the number of categories applied to prominent individuals. I (and no doubt others) use category lists precisely to see who has been admitted to an order or decorated (independent of my editing work); the omission of prominent individuals would significantly erode the utility of this usage. The solution needs to be a technical one (as I have previously suggested) with an ability to nest categories in a collapsible meta-category (eg Awards; Orders, decorations and medals; etc). This would reduce the clutter/distraction on the article whilst allowing those who are interested (or merely curious) to choose to delve into the extended detail. It also allows a resolution in articles with non-ODM instances of prolific, related categories. I don't know whether the idea was ever examined.
  • The WP:ODM approach has generally been to tag for category completeness (subject to the existence of a WP article). While decorations and all grades of orders are considered to warrant a category (but only to be raised when there is at least one article for the relevant category), higher grades of orders and higher level decorations (typically first and second tier grades/decorations, eg Knights/Dames Grand Cross and Knights/Dames of the Order of the British Empire) are considered to confer sufficient notability that an article can be raised on the individual (subject to meeting other WP criteria). Medals for campaign and long service, etc are not considered to warrant a category. Commemorative medals are usually not considered to warrant a category unless they are awarded for merit (eg the Australian Centenary Medal).
  • The problem with large categories is also acknowledged. For the most part, orders started life with one category for an entire multi-grade order, however these are now typically broken down for each grade to reduce category crowding and to increase precision. In some instances the categories still end up being quite large (particularly the Order of the British Empire) - the preferred method of managing this is to diffuse those categories further to suitable intersection categories. The detail of this is yet to be thrashed out, but could be based on chronology, nationality and/or occupation. Nationality and occupation are already used (but not comprehensively), whilst chronology is currently used for Commons:Category:Knights of the Garter. AusTerrapin (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the outcome is of this discussion navigation from article to category and category to article should both be easy. To achieve this categories should not be overly crowded and the category section at the bottom of article pages should not get to the level of clutter in the two examples mentioned above. It may be tricky to achieve that balance. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of a collapsible set of categories for awards. Worth bringing up at village pump. I agree, a technical solution is best here, the awards categories are not likely to go away.--KarlB (talk) 00:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Having that sort of technical fix for a small set of article seems the wrong approach to me. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:22, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Sebastian Coe is another example. Not as bad as the other two.. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:22, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

And hence my suggestion for a technical fix. The technical approach I suggested would work equally well for any of circumstances that generate large numbers of related categories for articles - not just for ODM. This is no different in concept to template shells and collapsible templates. Moreover, I suspect that the set of articles that would benefit from this capability may be much larger than you think and is only going to expand. AusTerrapin (talk) 10:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was also thinking recently that it would be helpful to have groupings for category tags on articles that could sort them and perhaps additionally show/hide them. These could be customizable for each article (though of course people would want MOS standardization to some extent) to reflect different groupings for different subjects. A biography article might have groupings for awards/accolades, occupations, positions held, education, place(s) of origin, ethnicity, affiliations, etc. Problems creating such groupings might arise from hybrid categories (occupation/place of origin like "Farmers from Foo County, Kansas"), but it could also be made possible to have a single category tag display in multiple groups. postdlf (talk) 17:46, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Query: how many entries should be in a category as a minimum?

A huge number of "Mormon" categories have recently been added -- f'rinstance see "Mormon missionaries by nationality" which has 28 subcategories with two or fewer occupants (actually hard to get much fewer). This is true of just about all the "Mormon" categories, which are also subcategories of "expatriate" categories as well <g>. Is there a problem here? Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:28, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: Category:Mormon missionaries by nationality, about half of the country-specific subcategories have plenty of members (with the American one at well over 500!), so it does make sense to subdivide by nationality, and nationality is probably the most obvious way to subdivide any people category for which subdivision makes sense. And this is a rather textbook example of a structure for which many thinly populated categories are tolerated just to make the structure comprehensive and consistent. postdlf (talk) 16:23, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Categorizing group members under the same category as group article?

If you look at Category:British Eurovision Song Contest entrants, there are some people like Cheryl Baker who are under this category mainly because she was a member of Co-Co (band). However she has never participated independently. Is there a neater way of re-arranging these people? Like have Cheryl Baker under Co-Co?. Bleubeatle (talk) 01:45, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

The example is not a clean one regarding any issue because one-third of Co-Co (band) is section "Cheryl Baker in Bucks Fizz" in which she is one of three people ... (read it). In this circumstance hers is likely to be one of a few biographies that remain in the category even if biog's of members of group entrants are generally excluded.
In order to exclude biog's of members, by default, expand the category preface (and Talk page) to explain that the both groups and individual artists may enter the Contest(s). Group members are not entrants in the former case. Personal biographies belong in the entrants category only if [a] the person entered or [b] the name of the group that entered the contest is a redirect to that biography.
Offhand I think I would prefer, in the latter case, to see the name of the group entry (the redirect) in the category. But I doubt whether this is a good exceptional categorization of redirects. --P64 (talk) 16:40, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
P.S. It's possible that you really want a standalone, complete List of British contest entrants, without any change to current categorization. --P64 (talk) 16:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Fictional Demons

Please report User:Niemti, relatively, a new user, to stop deleting this category from what was added into the Category:Fictional immortals as demonic characters are notably immortal. The user should be notified the angels and other subcategories are to be kept as well please, notify him of WP:RSN and WP:N, and the meaning of those subcategories are being used as immortal. Thanks. --GoShow (...............) 03:04, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Lower case sort keys

With the category sort capitalization "fixed" (although personally, I would think that having some flag to intentionally use lower-case letter sorting in some cases would be better), we need to fix some of the prior conventions; i.e.; change the (former) "µ" for stub categories to Σ, some "t" (for templates; e.g. Template:Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office) to "τ", and so on. I don't recall the former conventions, so I'm not sure there really is an "and so on". This would require a bot, but I'd like to make sure exactly what needs to be done before proposing it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:57, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

It is presently suggested that {{DEFAULTSORT}} be used even if it is identical to the article name. This screws things up when articles are moved. Perhaps it should be <{{DEFAULTSORT:{{ucfirst:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}}}, or something like that. (I haven't tested any of this....) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:02, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Liefting again, and more tendentious category removals

Removal of all hydroelectric plants from Category:Lakes of Guatemala, no reason (as ever) was given.

Raised here User talk:Andy Dingley#Dams and lakes

Per the definition already at Category:Lakes_of_Guatemala

This category is for articles pertaining to lakes and reservoirs in Guatemala.

This category isn't just for natural lakes. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:48, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

But the category is not for dams. A dam is not an artificial lake - it merely contains them. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Logic like that is why I would like to see a topic ban from you and anything involving categorization. In what way do you think that is a constructive change that improves the encyclopedia?
Apart from which, as an etymological note, 'dam' is also reasonably common as the term for the impounded body of water, not just its barrier. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:05, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I am of the opinion that the logic I used is precisely waht is needed for categorisation. If the articles were about bodies of water that would be acceptable as entries in Category:Lakes_of_Guatemala, but they are not, hence my removal of the categories. WP had "lost" nothing but there is that small increment in preciseness (which is important for an encyclopaedia). -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:12, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
  • "...'dam' is also reasonably common as the term for the impounded body of water, not just its barrier." - Is there a source/reference for this? - jc37 00:32, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
The question is academic since the articles in question are all about actual dam structures. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:47, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Most obvious (I grew up nearby) is Carr Mill Dam, but it's not alone. Here in South Wales there are plenty of the things, where old mining ponds still remain on the tops of hillsides. The usual name is either "... pond" or "... dam", even though most of them now have no discernible dam wall, unless you do archaeology to find it. There's also a huge one in Australia that Alan might be familiar with, can't remember the name offhand but it's where the world water speed record runs with jet boats are often done. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:06, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
WP:ENGVAR also comes into play. E.g. in South African English "dam" is the body of water, to indicate the artificial structure than contains it you have to say "dam wall". A statement such as "We were sailing on the Vaal dam" is perfectly correct in SAE. Roger (talk) 07:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Category for a large company

Is it acceptable to create a category for articles related to a single large corporate entity? The category would be used to keep track of articles covering the company's divisions, facilities and products. The company concerned is Denel, a South African state-owned aerospace and defence conglomerate. Several dozen articles are involved. Roger (talk) 12:58, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The creation of categories is not based on the subject but rather on whether there is sufficient articles for it per WP:SMALLCAT, and whether it fits into an existing scheme. A quick look at the Denel article indicates that there is less than ten potential articles for a category. That is a bit low in my opinion. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:34, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
You did not count articles about products made by the Denel group. The total number of articles is around fifty. BTW why did you strip out all the legitimate redlinks in Denel? Roger (talk) 07:09, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
So is around fifty articles sufficient to justify a category or not? I'd also prefer more than one person's opinion. Roger (talk) 07:50, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
You can take a look at how these things are done by browsing Category:Wikipedia categories named after companies. __meco (talk) 09:29, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Taiwan/Taiwanese category parents

Should categories that use "Taiwan" or "Taiwanese" have a corresponding "China" or "Chinese" category as a parent category for browsing purposes? This issue is (kind of) being discussed here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:09, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

American people by occupation by state

I am requesting comment on a proposal to clarify the scope of the American people by occupation by state category tree. I would highly appreciate comments or suggestions about how we could attempt to address the issues that exist. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 22:02, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Categorization of templates

I've recently been addressing some of the items in Wikipedia:Database_reports/Uncategorized_templates. Is it expected/desirable that every template should be able to be placed into one or more relevant categories? Or are there some templates that can't/shouldn't be categorised? DH85868993 (talk) 10:36, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the answer to the first question should be Yes. For every new template, there are probably some existing templates that do something similar. Putting them into a category helps to identify examples with good features that could usefully be copied. It will also help to trace where there are templates doing very much the same thing, in which case one may be redundant and can be redirected or deleted. – Fayenatic London 11:49, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
Everything should be categorized. Even if this requires the use of categories like "Things that it's not necessary to categorize, except that our dogmatic rule says that they ought to be".
The reason is simple: It's easy to check if everything is categorized, and to flag any that aren't as needing manual rework. OTOH it's impossible to automatically separate things that aren't categorized (within rules that don't require categorization) from things that simply haven't been categorized yet. So an "everything must be categorized" rule helps workflow. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:34, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
That's what I thought, but I thought I'd check. Thanks for your replies. DH85868993 (talk) 00:51, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Auerbach on Wikipedia's categorization

I thought I might leave this article here. It has a paragraph or two on the flaws of Wikipedia's categorization system. Leonxlin (talk) 04:03, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

There are numerous uncategorized "portal footer" templates ({{PFSfooter}}, {{PSCOTfooter}}, {{PZWfooter}}, {{PCANfooter}}, {{PIfooter}}, {{PAUTVfooter}}, {{PGoISAnnFooter}}, {{PMTFfooter}}, {{PBfooter}} - and probably more - these are just the ones listed in Wikipedia:Database_reports/Uncategorized_templates, which is an incomplete list) for which I couldn't identify a suitable category. (I didn't think Category:Portals was appropriate). Does it make sense to group them all into a single category, e.g. Category:Portal footer templates (or possibly Category:Portal templates), or would it make more sense to group them with their respective portal pages, e.g. put {{PSCOTfooter}} into Category:Scotland portal, together with Portal:Scotland? (noting that in most/all cases, that would involve creating the corresponding "portal" category, as there are currently very few individual portal categories - see Category:Wikipedia portals). DH85868993 (talk) 04:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Including templates in "non-template categories"

What's the current consensus on including templates and template categories in "non-template categories", e.g. including {{Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya style}} in Category:Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line, or including Category:Formula One templates in Category:Formula One? Personally I think it's fine, but over time I've encountered editors who believe this should not be done, so I thought I'd check the current state of play. I ask because sometimes when looking for the most appropriate category for an uncategorised template, there's no especially appropriate "template category" but there is an appropriate "non-template category". DH85868993 (talk) 04:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I know there is no true consensus (as you indicate), maybe a large majority.
Here are two good reasons to put templates and template categories in other cats such as Category:Formula One. First, it's useful to everyone that any template which is navigational be there as a "page" before the beginning of the alphabet (under *, say). Second, it's useful to editors that Category:Formula One templates be there as a "subcategory" beyond the end of the alphabet (under tau) it doesn't hurt other users. For example, editors working on NASCAR can visit Category:Formula One and more readily see how Formula One editors have organized that coverage.
Category:Harry Potter exemplifies both reasons; it contains both a template (page *) and a template category (subcat tau) such as I have described.
The former would probably be more useful to beginners with a different space name or page name, eg Navigation: Harry Potter or Template: Harry Potter navigation.
--P64 (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Category name with space before pagename

Is there a rationale for editing articles to delete spaces in category names? (--anywhere in category names altho i think these "category spacing" may be exclusively between colon and pagename)

Magioladitis user contributions
See the alphabetical sequence ending 18:37, 7 August 2012 (diff | hist) . . (-2)‎ . . m Zygadenia

The typical edit summary is "Fix category spacing + general fixes using" but the typical substance is simply to delete a space between colon and pagename. In the few cases I have checked there are no "general fixes". (--but Zygadenia does show one character category spacing and once general fix, namely space before [ref] tag)

--P64 (talk) 19:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC) 

       Perhaps there is someone I can talk to  that can help me to add a redirect to Wikipedia's: "Nickles (United States Coins)"

that apparently is not supposed to exist but is the image of the Jefferson bicentennial commemorative? This is a forward faced United States President Jefferson that has no tails to it and has the same forward faced image on both sides with Liberty, Year of print and mint mark with a D for the Denver Mint. Is this a miss print?, a joke that's is actually forgery?, or a rare nickle? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.170.82.21 (talk) 02:46, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Parent vs. child

I've posted at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Equating opposition to Islam with prejudice, discrimination and irrational fear. Some users are confusing items that go into a category with categories into which that category can be placed. Can someone from here try and explain the matter in a logical and instructional manner? __meco (talk) 15:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Rethinking year based categories

Currently we default, based on WP:OC#SMALL, to consolidate small by yearcategories to by decade or by century or by millennium categories. I'll note that the text behind this guideline clearly states Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme, such as subdividing songs in Category:Songs by artist or flags in Category:Flags by country.

In the case of by year categories, we are really violating WP:CRYSTAL when we say we will not have enough articles to populate these categories? As the encyclopedia grows we are be adding articles for the by year categories. But I have noticed if they do not exist they tend not to be created. I'm not advocating that every by year category would justify creation but clearly more of the top level categories would.

With a sparsely populated tree, we tend to create other categories which tend to hide information we know. So we would tend to rename Category:x in 1137 to Category:x in the 1130s or ocassionally Category:x in the 12th century. If and when this category gets well populated we then recreate Category:x in 1137 and leave the no longer needed (since its purpose was to eliminate Category:x in 1137) Category:x in the 1130s which may not offer any real navigational benefit.

If for main category trees we left the by year categories and placed them in the appropriate by century or by millennium categories we would not really be hurting anything. We would know that we actually have the exact year for these whatevers. Clearly the BC categories would be more likely to have only the millennium categories and the AD ones would be a mix with millennium mostly restricted, as the catch all, to the 1st millennium and the rest by century.

So I guess the question is, what damage would accepting a proposal like this do? Vegaswikian (talk) 22:01, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Creating doc pages just to add a category

I've recently been attempting to add categories to the templates listed in Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized templates. Sometimes I encounter uncategorized templates which include <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude> but for which the /doc page has not yet been created. Is it worth creating the doc page just to add a category to the template? (noting that in most cases, I don't know enough about the template to fill in the "Usage" or "See also" sections of the template documentation). Or would it be better to replace the {{documentation}} with the category, in the hope/expectation that another editor who knows more about the template will come along later and create a fully populated docpage (including the category)? DH85868993 (talk) 11:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I would create (and have done so) the empty documentation page. That is also an incentive for the template creator to provide missing documentation. __meco (talk) 14:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
OK. That's what I have been doing. Thanks for the reply. DH85868993 (talk) 15:17, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
I'd change it to
<noinclude>
{{documentation}}

[[Category:Foo templates]]
</noinclude>
There's no technical need to not categorize templates on the template page. It's convenient, and convention, to do this through a documentation sub-template, but if we don't have one, then there's no need to create one, simply to duplicate the function of <noinclude>. A redlinked documentation link is also clearer (and automatically testable) to show that there's no documentation provided yet. Certainly stub documentation that fails to reach a minimal documentation level is a real nuisance, as it's both no practical help, nor is its omission detectable automatically. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
Good idea also. __meco (talk) 20:30, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
Agreed, but not all templates need a documentation page so it should only be created if needed. If the collapse parameter is in the template then {{collapsible option}}) should be thrown in the <noinclude> section-- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit notice request

Have requested an editnotice: Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 14 -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:41, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Categorization with templates and deletion

Some userbox categorize user pages under categories like "Wikipedians using XYZ browser" (see Category:Wikipedians by web browser). Some of these categories may become empty and then get filled again once another user places the userbox on his page. My concern is that the very purpose of these categories is defeated if they can be deleted: once this happens, one should either remove the category from the userbox, or periodically check the category name and/or transclusion count to recreate it once someone places userbox to his user page.

One the other hand, it seems pretty obvious that the existence of such category should be decided upon only on the grounds of appropriateness of the categorization with particular userbox. That is: if this userbox is appropriate and the categorization it imposes is appropriate, the category should not be deleted.

I faced this problem in this thread, and my first reaction was to run to WT:CSD to propose a change to C1 criterion, so that all categories applied by templates should not be speedily deleted. But it seems that this talk page is a better place for gathering consensus on the issue. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Categories added to any page (including templates) are merely editorial action. If as a result of an editorial action a cat is empty, it can be C1 deleted, per normal guidelines. - jc37 17:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Sure, this is the way it works. My point is that by their design these categories are populated or depopulated as a side effect of another, seemingly unrelated action, and again by their design they normally may become empty periodically. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 18:07, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
I just read through the discussion you linked to. Just because someone creates a userbox (or any template for that matter) doesn't mean that a category must be associated with it, or even that one requires the other. Either may be deleted irrespective of the existence of the other. - jc37 18:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes, this is exactly what I propose to change in this or that way: either both category and template are kept or both are deleted. Otherwise it leads to ridiculous situation of template placing users in non-existing category or category, which isn't populated in any way. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 01:12, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Maybe a simple workaround (since policy changes take time) would be to place a note at the top of the category page saying that "this category is automatically added by ... template, so please do not delete this category if it becomes temporarily empty"? LittleBen (talk) 04:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
The problem is not with any particular category – I wouldn't oppose deletion of the template and category this discussion was about when it started on my talk page. (Though I wouldn't nominate them, actually: they are harmless.) The thing that I'm concerned with is the principle, that invalidates the note you propose. Effectively this discussion began when another user (rightfully, as it comes out) removed {{empty category}} – the standard way to post such note – from the category. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:58, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

See also sections on category pages

Is it possible to have a see also section at the end of the category list? On Category:Dams in Washington (state) I would like to have a See Also link pointing to Category:Dams on the Columbia River, since most of the states best known dams are on that river. Is this possible? Ego White Tray (talk) 18:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

It cannot be at the end but you can use {{Category see also}} at the start. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:03, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Surname category

Why don't we have a surname category like [[Category: Rentschler]]. We have lists that are often incomplete so we should have a corresponding category. If I am looking for "I. F. Rentschler" it would be so much easier to find them in a category. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Unrelated people with the same surname doesn't sound like a defining characteristic. If you know a partial page name then you can use Help:Searching#intitle. Enter intitle:Rentschler in the search box. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:11, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


How is year of birth or year of death defining, or school someone attended? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:19, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

"defining characteristic" is described in Wikipedia:Categorization#Articles. Your example appears to be fictional but if I. F. Rentschler was a real notable person then you would probably see sources saying things like "he was born in X", "he studied at Y", "he died in Z." You will rarely see "his surname was Rentschler". By the way, it sounds like your username has a year of birth and you have a userbox about a university you attended but I don't see "This users surname is Norton". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Eponymous categories

Shortcuts
See also: Category:Eponymous categories

A category which covers the exact same topic as an article (e.g. George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush, Mekong and Category:Mekong River) is known as an eponymous category. The article itself should be a member of the category and should be sorted with a space to appear at the start of the listing (as described below under Sort keys). Articles with an eponymous category should still be categorized in the broader categories that would be present if there were no eponymous category (e.g. the article France appears in both Category:France and Category:Western Europe, even though the latter is the parent category of the former).

Eponymous categories typically take on a selection of the categories which are present in their corresponding articles. Eponymous categories should only take a category if it continues a logical hierarchy: for example, the article American football belongs to Category:1869 introductions, but that category is not a parent to Category:American football, because the content of the eponymous category is not a subtype of 1869-related material. However, by convention, many categories do contain their articles' eponymous categories as subcategories, even though they are not "true" subcategories.

A clear link to the main topic article from an eponymous category page can be created using the template {{cat main}}. If eponymous categories are categorized separately from their articles, it will be helpful to make links between the category page containing the articles and the category page containing the eponymous categories. The template {{Related category}} can be used for this. An example of this set-up is the linked categories Category:American politicians and Category:Wikipedia categories named after American politicians.

Discussion

The section above is disputed, so I'm placing it here on the talk page for discussion/brainstorming. - jc37 03:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I've restored the section, but added template:under discussion for clarity. Obviously, please feel free to discuss as per normal. - jc37 00:04, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
What content is disputed?
The second paragraph, last sentence, is unclear whether and how severely the noted convention is deprecated. The word "however", the use of italics, and the use of scare quotes do not help. --P64 (talk) 20:17, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
The disputed tag was added before I reworked the eponymous section. The disputed sentence mentioned by P64 is present in both versions and is the source of the dispute, I believe. I have attempted to establish when certain categories should not be put in a certian eponymous article's category, using American Football as an example. What remains unresolved, however, is the dispute mentioned in the previous version:
  • "The question arises as to whether eponymous categories should be placed in (made subcategories of) the categories which their corresponding articles belong to. Logically they usually should not (for example, France belongs to Category:European countries, but Category:France does not constitute a subset of European countries)."
Looking beyond the clearly incorrect statement of "Logically they usually should not" (how can we draw this firm conclusion without even considering the logical relationship?), the main issue is summarised as: does category Category:France belong in Category:European countries? I believe it does, given that the logical sub-type of a European country is the geographically smaller analysis of that country (the contents found on the state of France for example). SFB 00:48, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Does anyone know how widely any of the conventions has been followed? For example of one alternative,
2012-04-09, the substantial article Nebula Awards is a member only of its eponymous Category:Nebula Awards. There it is identified as the main article and listed before the alphabetized articles.
The eponymous Category:Nebula Awards is a member of four visible categories:
  • Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
  • Science fiction awards —2012-05-03, "Nebula Awards" has been added to this category, so it now contains both the article and the eponymous category
  • American literary awards
  • Awards established in 1965
Does this practice violate a policy? a recommendation? a convention?
--P64 (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Immediately above, boldface marks what I have revised today.
I don't have any estimate how widely people follow any particular practice. Nor how widely-followed should be a practice that we call a convention. Nor how widely-followed a practice is effectively immune to change by policy-making. --P64 (talk) 15:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
I think having an article placed solely in its specific eponymous category goes against the very stated purpose of categories: "[Readers] can browse and quickly find sets of pages on topics that are defined by those characteristics.". For example, at the moment Category:American literary awards and Category:Awards established in 1965 do not list the entire "set of pages" on those topics because the article Nebula Award is not in them. Category-to-category relationships are a different matter, but if we are to maintain the purpose of a category as a set of articles on a topic, then the practice of reducing the eponymous category to the only category is untenable. SFB 21:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
"Category-to-category relationships are a different matter" --what does that mean here?
My expectation as a category user is that one must scan both the subcategories and the pages in order to browse the "set of pages" in effect --and it works only insofar as categories such as Nebula Awards are named eponymously or nearly so. (Eg, if all SFWA awards were in one category, the word 'Nebula' would not appear in the category display.) In order to look up a particular pagename, one must look-up twice, among subcategories and pages --and it works insofar as the sortkey is predictable. Look-up four places if two alternative sorkeys are predictable, and so on.
What we have reported about Nebula Award(s) remains true four weeks later. It's both an eponymous subcategory and a page in Science fiction awards; only a subcategory in American literary awards and Awards established in 1965. --P64 (talk) 17:58, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • This section was removed in toto from the guideline, even though only one sentence of it appears to be in dispute. I have therefore restored the section to the guideline, as it appears above; it may of course be amended as a result of this discussion.
    I am particularly concerned about the removal of the last sentence of the first para, which begins "Articles with an eponymous category should still be categorized in the broader categories that would be present if there were no eponymous category". This long-standing principle is important because it ensures that readers navigating the category tree do not have to open the category to find its head article. For example, if Category:Western Europe contains only the categories for each country and not their head articles, then a reader wanting to look at any of those articles on the countries in Western Europe would first of all have to open the sub-category. This contravenes the general principle in WP:CAT#Overview that categories exist to allow readers to "browse and quickly find sets of pages", because it breaks up the set. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:24, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Along these lines, is there any kind of category --any purpose of categorization except eponymous categories categories-- that
-- should contain eponymous categories as subcategories, and
-- should not contain their main articles as pages?
Cross-reference: Category talk:Eponymous categories#Categorization.
Meanwhile, I am not sure whether anything is disputed or everything unclear.
--P64 (talk) 00:00, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I've removed the section again, because as far as I'm concerned the whole thing is under dispute. I think in any case, this should not be a strict guideline (e.g. articles should always appears in the parent as well as the eponymous category). My general sense, and from looking at the article tree this usually obtains, is that the article should *not* be in the parent if the category is. This is duplicative, and more importantly, it makes is harder for people to find which articles are not yet diffused. In general, I also don't think that an article should *only* be part of its eponymous parent; there are cases where it makes sense for the article to be in another category, but not the eponomyous category as well (in some cases, you want to prevent a loop also). There are also container categories, which many 'by country' categories are (or should be), in which case the 'container' guideline contrasts with this one. I think we have to let different parts of the category tree decide; or work hard here to come up with general definitions. For example, if you look at the Category:Categories by country tree, in general the country-specific articles aren't bubbled up to the parent, and I think this is a reasonable result. There may be other types of categories where consensus holds that it is better to bubble the children up. I think another thing we should work on is cat main - this should always be in place for eponymous articles. --KarlB (talk) 18:33, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Note: previous discussion here Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Eponymous_RFC --KarlB (talk) 18:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Here is a severe example of the problem that deeply concerns at least one side, although it is not illustrated by strictly eponcats. Visit cat Literature portals which displays eleven Subcategories along with 22 Pages.
One Subcat is nearly a subset, with some other stuff, but that one cat Speculative fiction portals is "lost" among the other ten, which are topical rather than subset in type --and are dedicated to the editorial purpose of portal maintenance rather than for any reader purpose.
Only one of the ten may be adequately titled, cat Dragonlance portal pages; offhand I prefer "Category: Dragonlance portal maintenance" but that is beside the point now. The other nine are nearly eponymous and they do not have the virtue of the truly eponymous article categories that have been our focus (useful to readers rather than editors).
The plural 's' of Speculative fiction portals is inadequate practically to distinguish it from the other eleven category names displayed here --although it does make the distinction logically.
Clearly, many editors are unaware of the problem or greatly underrate it. Evidence: there are nine portals in that near-subset (along with two more portal maintenance cats) and only four of them are "replicated" as members of the parent cat Literature portals. The venerable editors of Nightmare, Buffy, Horror, Howard, and Superhero have left their work to languish only here in a portals category that is "impossible" to find. --P64 (talk) 17:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Today I have continued this line re our stricture, "Portals with their own categories are only categorized in that category, which in turn is put into the other categories that the portal would have been in."
Wikipedia talk: Portal#How to categorize a portal --P64 (talk) 19:58, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Here is another exhibit, radically different in my experience.
Astrid Lindgren is in sixteen categories, where naive readers may expect to find her, including the eponymous category in the middle of the list. Category:Astrid Lindgren is in merely two categories, both hidden: Wikipedia categories named after writers; Wikipedia categories named after Swedish people.
--P64 (talk) 19:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:EPON target

Perhaps there should be a permanent (sub)section of this page with heading "Eponymous categories". Recently there has been one at level three. It should include the templates.

=== Eponymous categories ===
{{Shortcut|WP:EPON|WP:EPONYMOUS}}
{{See also|Category:Eponymous categories}}

and text that says essentially, There may be some discussion or dispute about this section, in which case there may be no content following this note. See #Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Eponymous categories.

Currently the links (shortcuts) at the top of this Talk section, and links in the 2009 discussion cited by KarlB, unhelpfully target the entire page. I feel sure there must be other links that break. --P64 (talk) 19:43, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure; a short EPON section, while the guideline is under discussion, seems fine with me. --KarlB (talk) 19:56, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually, despite the inconclusive RFC in 2009, EPON section has remained in place since then and has guided practice across large parts of Wikipedia. Rather than removing it while discussion is underway, it should be restored and tagged with a note being discussed.
The removal of the section has been an excessive response to a discussion in which 2 of the 4 editors who commented explicitly supported the first para, and only one (KarlB) explicitly opposed it.
That is not a sufficient basis for completely removing a longstanding guideline. It should be restored while discussion continues. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:04, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Look at the following categories: Category:Religion by country; Category:Archaeology_by_country; Category:Architecture_by_country; Category:Military_by_country. In all of these, the pattern followed by editors seems to be - do not replicate articles if the categories already belong; the result is, for the user, the user can easily look at the top to see areas where there are a lot of articles, and even open up the categories to find sub-categories before clicking. In some cases, there is *no* lead article, in which case, they need to open up the category anyway. The articles in the top level cat are thus those which have no eponymous categories. Let me give another example - in some cases, the 'head' article is not truly eponymous - e.g. instead of Hospitals in the United Kingdom to match Category:Hospitals in the United Kingdom it is more like List of hospitals in the United Kingdom; so if we're following the epon guideline to the letter, in one case we'd bubble the child up, in another we wouldn't (e.g. for a list). I thus think the guideline should be changed, to be more flexible and worded as shown here: Wikipedia talk:Categorization/epondraft. You can comment here and feel free to make changes to the draft page.--KarlB (talk) 15:39, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

anyone have any thoughts on the revised draft? Wikipedia talk:Categorization/epondraft --KarlB (talk) 01:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

per WP:BOLD I made the edits references in the draft above. Further thoughts welcome. Thanks.--KarlB (talk) 17:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The principle that "Articles with an eponymous category should still be categorized in the broader categories that would be present if there were no eponymous category (e.g. the article France appears in both Category:France and Category:Western Europe, even though the latter is the parent category of the former)." is important to me, and I like the way it is phrased here (copied from the draft at the top of this section). I like the whole first paragraph, actually.

I'm less concerned about the issue in the second paragraph, and I find the wording confusing. The phrase "categories which are present in their corresponding articles" is just wrong. A category is never "present in" an article. Rather, an article is placed in a category. The phrases "take on a selection of ... categories" and "categories do contain ...categories as subcategories" are ambiguous about which category is in which. This paragraph needs to be rewritten to be more clear.--Srleffler (talk) 03:32, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this phrase,
"Articles with an eponymous category should still be categorized in the broader categories that would be present if there were no eponymous category (e.g. the article France appears in both Category:France and Category:Western Europe, even though the latter is the parent category of the former)."
makes huge sense, and i am really bothered by how many eponymous categories are not placed in broader categories. it seems like there has been some wholesale removal of the broader categories from various eponcats, which makes no sense to me. I hope that there can be a way to make it very clear (some sort of warning?), when adding "category:wikipedia categories named after foo" to epon cats, that the editor DOESNT also remove all the other broader categories.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:35, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
In line with my editing from a few months ago, I also believe that articles with eponymous categories should contain the broader categories and not just the eponymous category. I'm still yet to hear a compelling reason why excluding an article from the rest of the non-eponymous structure is desirable. The main reason to include them in the broader categories remains the same: to maintain the grouping of like articles within a category (the whole purpose of the system). In terms of the draft: what is the meaning of point 3.2 for articles? Where is the loop? SFB 22:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Uncategorized categories

While we have Wikipedia:Uncategorized categories, its way out of date. i found something similar, but i LOST it. does anyone know where i can browse for categories which themselves are neither categorized nor in the top tier of categories? I am particularly perplexed by Category:John Lennon, i know the whole Eponymous categories debate has determined that it can exist as an administrative category, but i just dont believe that we can allow editors to NOT place such categories in higher categories. example: we dont have Category:Categories named after United States cities, and Category:Hayward, California is in a nested category, so John lennon should be in say, Category:The Beatles.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:18, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized categories. Auto-generated weekly. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:52, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed change to WP:SMALLCAT

I have proposed a change to the wording of WP:SMALLCAT. The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization#A_tweak_to_SMALLCAT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Overcategorization/Archive_10#A_tweak_to_SMALLCAT. Apokrif (talk) 22:29, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorting

Any idea what the sort key should be for Wet'n'Wild? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly sure what you're asking. But first, I guess it depends on which one you mean. I'm seeing:

Colour me confused : ) - jc37 22:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Should the sort key be:
Wet'n'Wild
Wet and Wild
WetnWild
Wet n Wild
Normally we don't sort using the special characters. That's all I was thinking about when I posed the question. I did not realize that we had two articles on the brand. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:59, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
It would appear that the phrase in its various incarnations is rather widespread and not under a single entity.
Well, I think in this case, we should probably just IAR that rule, and sort based upon the page name. If WP:ACCESS is an issue, or some other reason, I suppose just standardise sorting to be Wet n Wild. Since this is only for sorting, it shouldn't be much of a big deal (I know, famous last words : ) - jc37 01:44, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there a graphical representation (like a family tree or taxonomical tree) of Wikipedia's categories?

Like the Figurative system of human knowledge? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Interesting question. No.
Wikipedia has a naive and really quite poor category structure, in terms of how MediaWiki is capable of being used. There is also a natural reluctance by WP sysops to add any complexity to the WP publishing model, such as MediaWiki extensions beyond the bare minimum - for both performance and reliability reasons. So although there are MediaWiki sites out there with really sophisticated categorization, and the tools to make this accessible and useful, it's not going to happen at WP any time soon.
It's not practical to draw a "family tree" of categorizations. If you did, it would be simply too large to look at, let alone use. It would also be out of date before it had finished rendering. So any real tool has to be focussed and interactive. Rather than showing a vast tree and a "You are here" marker, it shows the nearby neighbourhood of categories, with links fading outward into a "grey zone" of related categories. As you navigate along these links, the viewpoint shifts and the neighbouring detail is brought into focus. For a category tree like WP's, which is wide but not very tall, a portrait view of this can probably give you the whole depth of the tree (back to a root category of "stuff") at once, but looks approximately like a side-scrolling window.
Another issue is that MW categorization simply isn't a tree anyway (WP resolutely refuses to accept this). It's simpler, thus more powerful. All MW has for category relations is "membership", which really means a single directed link in a graph, not restriction to the single rooted tree that is so widely assumed. MW categorization can handle commutative links, recursive links, transitive links and a whole graph of any shape, not merely a tree. WP has policies against each of these, and narrow-minded patrolling editors who ruthless remove any such deviancy when they encounter it.
Rendering these graphs is pretty simple. Well, it isn't, it's hard, but someone else has already done the legwork for you. Head off into the Semantic Web world and focussed graph browsing was one of the first student projects, a decade ago. If you look into MediaWiki extensions, you'll find tools for doing so available for your use. The Semantic Wiki world makes use of these (and these aren't even the best tools around for it). Finding them available on WP though, that's not going to happen. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:32, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Andy. I confess I don't understand a lot of it but I get that there isn't an animation or image somewhere that I could use in a PowerPoint presentation when I'm discussing Wikipedia's category system. (I went to Semantic Web but am none the wiser because it takes for granted too much prior knowledge on the readers part - too much for this ignoramus at least.) Thanks for your efforts, anyway. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

There's NO alphabetical order rule? Seriously?

There should be. --Niemti (talk) 22:10, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I assume you mean in the ordering of category tags on a page? It's been discussed before and there's never been a consensus demonstrated in favor. My view is that alphabetical is unhelpful, because category names take many arbitrary forms. Category:Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, but Category:United States Supreme Court justices. Category:United States Senators from California, but Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from California. Alphabetizing would not guarantee that like categories are grouped together, nor would it help readers find categories in a mass of tags given that the first letter is arbitrary. postdlf (talk) 00:01, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
How can being ordered "unhelpful" as opposed to being random? --Niemti (talk) 22:49, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
Alphabetical order is rather arbitrary, and would have little contextual associative value.
That aside, WP:CREEP, comes to mind. - jc37 23:58, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
(ec; Jc37 says much of what I'm saying much more concisely.) Please read again my comment regarding how well alphabetical sorting actually orders categories; they do not group like categories together nor aid predictability for readers searching through a mass of tags, because the forms of categories are too variable. Some judge categories start with the name of the court (kind of; the formal name is Supreme Court of the United States even though the category is Category:United States Supreme Court justices), some with "judges" or "justices". Three years ago, "California writers" was moved to Category:Writers from California; without knowing that, I doubt most readers could predict the current form, especially given that we have Category:California politicians. Clarity and concision are the reason for particular category names, so an artificial uniformity to make alphabetical sorting more productive would undermine that. And what is considered the best category name of course changes over time based on who's showing up at CFD and based on the subject.

Anyway, alphabetical and "random" aren't the only two options. I've always preferred thematic groupings, trying to group like categories together and trying to order them according to relevance to notability. Start with the most important categories--those for which every member is necessarily notable (such as presidents of the United States, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, etc.). Continue with occupation categories, award categories, and alumni categories, and end with place of origin and other basic biographical categories (such as birth year and place of origin, the least remarkable facts about a person). Some subjectivity to that ordering, and it will vary somewhat from article to article based on the editors, but I don't see that as a problem as long as the basic principle is followed, and that will keep the same category tag organization regardless of what the peculiar name is. postdlf (talk) 00:08, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Apart from all that, it's a cost-benefit-question. A lot of people use HotCat which would have to reconfigured to include some sort-algorithm, a bot would have to programmed to re-arrange categories that people have "incorrectly" added, and if you really want to enforce it, you'll need a "Noticeboard for people who don't sort categories" with corresponding warning-templates and blocking-policy. It just ain't worth it. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Nobody "group like categories together". Everyone is doing either the alphabetical order or do it randomly (adding new categories to the end of the list). --Niemti (talk) 06:43, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's what HotCat does. End of list. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 06:54, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
ANd taht's why the "HotCat" thing should either fixed or removed. --Niemti (talk) 06:55, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
It won't be removed, too many people use it. "Fixed" is probably the wrong word since it's not "broken." But yes, you can suggest changes (WP:HOTCAT). Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 06:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

And returning to the subject, we need an order. Alphabetical one is the most obvious, also ensures no repetitions and minimalizes insertions of parent categories. --Niemti (talk) 07:00, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Right now, you're the only one who thinks there should be any kind of mandated order. Even if, how do you imagine any such mandate should be enforced? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
How will alphabetical order "minimalizes insertions of parent categories"? Only logical grouping can have any hope of achieving that and even then it would be fairly hit and miss because categories are not named hierarchically anyway. It also won't help with categories that have multiple parents. I'm afraid you are grossly overestimating the systematicality of the category system - it's nowhere near as neat and tidy as you seem to believe. Alphabetical sorting would be entirely arbitrary and thus no better than random. Roger (talk) 07:22, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
In a very simple way, because will be forced to look through the list while searching for the proper place to insert it, instead of randomly placing it at the end and callng it a day. And FOR SURE there would be no repetitions (unless there's a bad will involved). "Logical groupings" will be differently "logical" for every other person. Alphabetical order is not "arbitrary" at all, it's totally clear, UNIVERSAL, easily set, and unbreakable. --Niemti (talk) 07:33, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Enforcement? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:49, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
A rule. --Niemti (talk) 08:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
That's not what enforcement means. "Stop when the light is red" is a rule. Enforcement is "You ran over a red light, now you go to jail." So — you don't order alphabetically. Then what? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 08:08, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know there's a Wikipedia jail. I meant the Manual of Style type way of setting this (and I always believed there's this rule already). --Niemti (talk) 08:12, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Well, there is a form of jail: blocks and bans. You can try suggesting something like that to be put into the MOS, but I don't think people will actually adhere to it. But first of all you'd have to convince more people of the necessity. You haven't done that yet. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 08:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
And I'd like to be convinced of the superiority of randomly placed categories over the intuitive and easy-to-navigate alphabetical order that will ensure no repetitions and minimalize parent categories, and to be told more of these "logical grouping" that I just heard of (also to check if my logic is compatible with yours, so this "logical groupings" would be never "arbitrary" by the different users in the different articles). --Niemti (talk) 08:22, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Nobody needs to convince you because the status quo is what it is, and it will remain regardless of what you're convinced of. You're the one who wants to see changes made, so you're the one who needs to convince others. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 08:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Awesome arguments right there. Just come on and tell me how these "logical groupings", whatever they are, are never-ever being "arbitrary" ("rather arbitrary", or even "entirely arbitrary"). And how the alphabetical order (which is always starting with 1 (1111) and ending with Z, in every article of any kind) allegedly is "arbitrary". --Niemti (talk) 08:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, I really like to know how a single, universal alphabetical order (absolutely the same for every user in every article, also intuitive), is any "arbitrary", and what constitutes an universal "logic" in the alleged "logical system". --Niemti (talk) 08:16, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Why alphabetical is arbitrary and unhelpful here has been explained to you, with examples above. Instead of just repeating your question and insisting upon your opinion over and over again, please actually address the counterarguments that have already been made. Otherwise, we're done here. postdlf (talk) 19:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
Niemti, I am one of the few people who actually agrees with you. I think categories are more useful if placed in alphabetical order. That said, I realized a long time ago that I was in the minority on this, I wasn't going to change anyone's mind on it, and further discussion was a waste of a lot of people's time. And let's be honest, at the end of the day, whether categories are listed alphabetically, grouped thematically, or completely random, it doesn't matter to the majority of readers (who probably don't even know categories exist). So if I could make a suggestion, accept it and move on. --Kbdank71 21:10, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

This should be a "non-issue". The vast majority of articles have less than about four or so which means that an alphabetical sorting is not needed. One thing that should be done however is the eponymous category, or what ever category that is deserving of a space or asterix as the sort key, should be the first one in the list. Another thing I have done, but only rarely, is to shove the birth and death date categories at the end. I see them as a lower importance. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:49, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Just a note, in my experience on the site some articles categories are ordered in one way or another but most are not. The categories are just randomly planted at the bottom. With that said most pages only have a few so its rather easy to read through them. Some folks though have 20 or 30 and it becomes very difficult. I personally don't think that ordering the categories is a bad idea. Especially for articles with a large number of categories, say more than 15. Maybe that could be a compromize? Kumioko (talk) 00:26, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
In the case where there are numerous categories I am not opposed to an alphabetical order for the categories per se but I think the relative importance - if able to be determined - is a better way of arranging them. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
And I'm firmly against your (actually) arbitrary "relative importance". --Niemti (talk) 22:17, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I am also in favor of alphabetical as the standard for categories. Others (relative importance, chronological, etc) are really open to subjectivity. With alphabetical order at least editors can see if the category they want to add is already present. The only exception I would suggest are that the year of birth and year of death (or "Living People" if not deceased) categories should be the first two for individuals. We do this by and large in the various basketball project articles and, in my opinion, it is helpful for editing. I don't think it's an issue one way or the other with most readers. Rikster2 (talk) 23:43, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Well how many exceptions do you have to add? You have added one. There all of the stubs that should be displayed last. If there is a category with the same name as the article that should be first. How do you deal with categories where the dates are in different places in the name? Should everything about a year be grouped, your proposal would separate these. Bottom line that is not a trivial solution. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:31, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Honestly, it doesn't seem to me that there are many exceptions needed at all. Eponymous category, Birth and death dates (including Living People since that is one of the few categories that needs to change over time) at the front, stub categories in the back (I may be wrong, but it seems like those categories are automatically added so they don't appear in the list when editing a page). Number categories before (or after if preferred) letter categories in numerical order. These don't have to be the rules, but I don't think we're talking much more complex than that. I don't really get why people prefer no order or subjective order to something as simple and easy to grasp as alphabetical order. Rikster2 (talk) 12:06, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
That's enough exceptions that it can't be done by a bot, and that it can't be done by a human not familar with the exceptions. We could make it a guideline, but note that there are enough exceptions that raw alphabetisation can be reverted if there are any exceptions, and that it is exempt from 3RR as being a reversal of a bot (even if done by a human). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Ivory Coast or The Ivory Coast

Please see Talk:Rugby union in the Ivory Coast#Requested move as that discussion will probably determine whether categories as well as article names should include "the" as part of the country name. Categories and articles have just been renamed from Côte d'Ivoire, and nobody had settled in advance whether "the" was going to be needed as part of [some] page names. – Fayenatic London 20:33, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Nationality and citizenship categorization

The category Category:People by nationality includes subcategories by country, for example, Category:Canadian people. This category and its subcategories are clearly for Canadian citizens. A subcat of this category is Category:Canadian people by ethnic or national origin. This category and thus its subcats are again clearly for Canadian citizens and its inclusion criteria says: "People who have acquired naturalised Canadian citizenship should be found in the sub-category Category:Naturalized citizens of Canada while those living in Canada without (confirmed) Canadian citizenship are found under Category:Expatriates in Canada." Next and confusingly, we find Category:Expatriates in Canada (clearly non-ciziens) as a subcat of this very category Category:Canadian people by ethnic or national origin. Further, Category:Naturalized citizens of Canada are a subcat of Category:Immigrants to Canada (which never says all its people are Canadian citizens), but which nevertheless is also placed as a subcat of Category:Canadian people by ethnic or national origin.

This same confused pattern is basically repeated for 200 plus countries. Clearly Category:Expatriates in Canada does not belong to this category tree at all but what category should it be in at the country level? Just in a Canadian foreign relations category?

What to do with the Category:Immigrants to Canada category is a complete mystery as nothing is every said about the citizenship attributes of this category. If it is not meant to imply citizenship in Canada, then it cannot be in Category:Canadian people by ethnic or national origin and what country category should it be in? Just in a Canadian foreign relations category?

We don't seem to have an overarching category structure for residents of a Country which would include both citizens and non-citizens who are residing in the country. Is there a need? Hmains (talk) 05:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

How would readers be helped by moving the expatriates category from a parent category for people to one for foreign relations topics? Can you point to instances of readers being confused by the structure you're describing, and what the consequences of that confusion were? postdlf (talk) 06:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I understand Category:Canadian people in a wider sense: people who live in Canada or are closeley related to it. Seen that way, there are no hierarchical problems. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:37, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Who are American people of XX descent?

User:Johnpacklambert has recently taken on the monumental task of cleaning up categories of ancestry on US biographies. There seems to be some disagreement about the use of Categories of Americans of various descents. It has been suggested that such categories should be only used for natural born Americans and that all immigrants should use the "XX emigrants to the United States" categories. However, take the category for American people of German descent for instance; in the instructions on this category is says "citizens of the United States of German ethnic or national origin or descent". National origin would include Americans born in the nation of Germany. Lets open up a discussion on the use of these categories. --Dkriegls (talk to me!) 02:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I read "American people of German descent" to be simply people who are both "American" (i.e., citizens) and of German descent (i.e., former German citizenship of them or an ancestor). I don't see anything in this title that limits it to German descent of ancestors only. --Dkriegls (talk to me!) 02:33, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

You are missing the issue entirely. Category:German emigrants to the United States is a sub-cat of Category:American people of German descent. The rules on subcats is that articles should not be in both a sub-cat and a parent category. Thus, all articles in Category:German emigrants to the United States have been placed in Category:American people of German descent. This is why I have left articles in Category:American politicians of Filipino descent that are also in Category:Filipino emigrants to the United States. Most of these edits are merely reflecting that articles should not be in both parent cats and subcats. There is a more complexed issue though that I bring up below, but that has not involved many edits. Actually the biggest number of edits I have done have been a result of people putting articles in categories with no mention in the articles of anything suggesting that the article belongs in that category. I sometimes wonder if some people think they can assume ancestry from a last name.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:41, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Since you aren't leaving edit summaries it is hard to deduce your reasoning. So let me ask. On the article Werner Krieglstein, what is your reasoning for removing the Category:German people of Bohemian German descent and Category:American people of Bohemian German descent? Dkriegls (talk to me!) 20:16, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
My reasoning is that it creates a mess of categories when he is an emigrant. My more basic reasoning is that I feel that x people of y descent should be limited to people born in that country, otherwise we get people who were born as Bohemian-Germans in a whole mess of categories. Maybe I have to high an aversion to people being in lots of categories, but that is my reasoning.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:44, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • User:Johnpacklambert states above that 'The rules on subcats is that articles should not be in both a sub-cat and a parent category'. That is true in some cases, but is not the general rule applicable to all cases. Read: WP:SUBCAT. Inappropriate use of the misinterpretation of these rules creates errors throughout WP work. Hmains (talk) 00:13, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I have read those statements. Nothing in there implies in any way that emigration categories should be non-diffusing categories of people of x descent categories. I see no reason to not diffuse in this manner. In fact it is a very logical way to diffuse.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:41, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • First, Werner Krieglstein was born Bohemian-German as the article states (i.e., "born in 1941 at Blatnice, (near Plzeň)"). Second, the Category:German people of Bohemian German descent in no way subjugates under the Category:German emigrants to the United States. Krieglstein being both a German and American fits both categories. Third, please define "mess of categories". If you are making errors in your mass deletions as frequently as your talk page suggests, I hope it is not simply because you think a category section looks "messy". Finally, you really need to start using edit summaries so other editors know the reasoning behind your mass deletions. --Dkriegls (talk to me!) 09:03, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
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