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Redirects

I'm relatively new to looking at categories, so please excuse me if this problem has been addressed before. One problem I've noticed is that redirects don't appear under the categories of the page to which they are redirected. For example, I looked for Type I error under category:hypothesis testing, but it's not there, since it redirects (incorrectly in my view, but that's another matter) to False positive. I can see the undesirability of having lots of marginal variations appearing under the category page, but there must also be a lot of cases like this. Is it possible to add categories to a redirect page? JQ 04:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is possible, and I have done so for Type I error. I believe you have to add the categorization to the redirect on the same line as the redirect because nothing is processed on the page after the first paragraph. I think this is not recommended, but I don't remember off-hand where this is discussed. I don't remember the details, but I'm guessing this should only be done for redirects that could and should eventually become articles, or in cases where there are multiple fairly different names for the same subject, and both are equally likely to be used. Certainly, most redirects should not be categorized to keep categories from getting cluttered with minor variations of the same name. -- Samuel Wantman 08:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I've now done the same for Type II error, and this seems like an adequate solution. I didn't know how to edit a redirect page, but now that I can do that, it's just a matter of adding the categories where necessary. I agree that this should be done where there are two alternative titles for the same article, but not for minor variations on the same name. Of course, that's a matter of judgement. Thanks for your help on this JQ 12:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
There are a series of templates which essentially add categories to redirects.These categories generally include only redirects though, see Category:Redirects. When creating a series of redirects it's generally a good idea to add also a specific template, e.g. {{Redir from US postal ab}}. Note that such categorization didn't work in all previous versions of Mediawiki. -- User:Docu

Subcategories

Another newbie question. At least on the skin I'm using, the number of subcategories that are displayed for a category page is quite small (variable, but as few as 10), with the rest going on to a subsequent page. I think it would be better to display all the subcategories. If there are too many, that should be addressed by changing the hierarchy or something. JQ 04:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a recurrent issue. There are (at least) four ways to deal with this:
  1. Depopulate the category into smaller subcategories so that there are only subcategories to display. Personally, I think this is the worst option, and should only be done as a last resort.
  2. Display all the subcategories first by piping them with a space or an asterisk. This option is a quick fix, and I would only recommend this if there are a small number of subcategories (a dozen or so), and they are all major subcategories. There is no need to pipe subcategories when they have eponymous articles which also get displayed. Often, those eponymous subcategories do not belong and should be removed from the category.
  3. Create a new subcategory to contain all or most of the articles. For example Category:Opera has a subcategory Operas so that the articles about specific Operas do not clutter the category. This is a good option if there is a natural name for the new category, but it is quite a bit of work to set this up.
  4. Create one or more new subcategories to contain all or most of the existing subcategories. Categories with :more than just a few subcategories usually have some relationship to each other. They may be "xxx by nationality", "xxx by language", etc... All or most of the numerous subcategories may be organized into just ::a few new subcategories (or even just one). When each new subcategory gets displayed, there won't be any articles to break up the list of subcategories. Since there are likely many less subcategories than articles, this is an easier option to set up than the previous one.

Does this help? If you have a specific problem category, mention it so we can discuss the best option for that category. -- Samuel Wantman 07:56, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm working on Category:Economics, and I think any reasonable listing of subfields, along with some list categories that belong at the top level (economists, economic journals and so on) will get you up to around 20 subcategories. There were more top-level when I started, but I tried to put most of them under subfields As far as I can see, there's no better option that running over to a second page in this case. Your advice would be welcome on this.
I know it's easy to call for a software fix and hard to implement it, but I think displaying more subcategories on the first page is the optimal solution here JQ 20:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem in Category:Economics isn't the subcategories, its the article pages. I think that creating a logical subcategory scheme and re-categorizing most of the articles to be under those pages would make it easier to find whatever you're looking for. Fixing your subcategory problem would be a side benefit. --JeffW 21:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm hard at work on that very project. I'm currently working mostly on Mathematical and quantitative methods (economics) and I'll report back here when I have something worth looking at.JQ 21:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Show documents that fall within several categories

I'm trying to show documents that fall within two categories, does anyone know if there is an easy way to provide this?

I have a lot of design documents and want to be able to create a set of pages that contain only matches that are assigned to a set of categories.

For example, I have document types in categories of "Design Docs", "Test Docs", "V1", "V2" etc. Users want to be able to quickly bring up a list of V2 Design documents.

Is there a better way I should be categorising my documents for this type of groupings?

Apologies if this is a simple request!

(Just checked archive and will look into some more of the search options...someone mentioned using that for multi-cat searching)

  • I'm not really sure what you're asking, and from your description I'm not sure that it's something that belongs in Wikipedia, but I'll take a stab at your question. An article is put into a category by putting a category tag on it, i.e. [[:Category:Example category]], and there is no reason that you can't put more than one category tag on an article. Does that help? --JeffW 18:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, thanks for the reply, I actually meant to ask this in the MediaWiki site, not the Wikipedia site, guess a link took me further than planned! Anyway, yup I've got a lot of document that are assigned to multiple categories, but wanted a way to list documents that were in several specific categories. So at the moment I could go to the "Example Category" page to see all documents within the category "Example Category". If I say tagged 3 documents with an extra category of "Draft", I would want a page that just returned documents that contained both category tags. I could create a new tag "Draft-Example Category" but I dont really want to do this. I'm working on a few other customisations at the moment to a local Wiki, so I'll probably just make some advanced search screens for the users.

Category intersection is not currently supported by the MediaWiki software. There is a tool called catscan that runs on the toolserver copy of Wikipedia content, see m:User:Duesentrieb/CatScan. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Allow me to opine that we desperately need this feature on Wikipedia! Lots of heated debates over the merits of category flattening and dual-member categories like "German singers" or "Multiracial Americans" would go away if there were a simple way for the novice user to search by multiple categories. --M@rēino 15:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Births and deaths

For the hundreds of categories that organize by year of birth and year of death, what are the membership criteria? Is it only for real humans? In other words, what about:

  • organizations?
  • fictional characters?
  • famous animals?

--M@rēino 14:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Subcategories of Category:Births by year/Deaths by year are only for people. See Wikipedia:People by year. BTW for organizations there is Category:Establishments by year. -- User:Docu
I agree. In a stretch, I would probably allow these categories for famous animals, but not organisations, and certainly not for anything fictional. It's best to keep it for real people only. JIP | Talk 20:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Economics categories

As discussed above, I've been working on Category:Economics using the JEL classification codes. I've gone furthest with Category:Mathematical and quantitative methods (economics) including a lot of links to relevant articles at JEL_classification_codes#Mathematical_and_quantitative_methods_JEL:_C_Subcategories. The process showed up a lot of gaps in article coverage. Kevin kzollman made a nice template, which improved the look. I'd appreciate comments, suggestions and criticism. JQ 07:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Category Flattening

A good number of the above discussions involve whether articles should be placed in a certain category and its parent category or categories. This is becoming more and more of a problem for me. I recently got yelled at for removing redundant categories from some articles (i.e. I removed [category:foos] (real name not used) from articles that were in [category:Barian foos]).

I think that this would no longer be a problem if it were possible to "flatten" categories: to have the option to list all articles in a given category, including the ones in its subcategories. Cat Scan on the toolserver does that used to do that before it stopped being updated, but it's not a part of Wikipedia itself. The feature request [1] on Bugzilla is the closest thing that I could find there. Ardric47 02:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorizing sub-lists

I think I brought this up before but I can't find it. When a list becomes too long, a natural thing to do is to make individual pages for sub-ranges and link to them from the main page. When this is done, often it is undesirable to have the subpages be categorized in the same category as the master page. Logically, they're just extensions of the master page and operationally, all access to them should be through the master page.

So, is it ok to leave the sub-pages uncategorized? If I do, they'll get picked up on someones list of uncategorized pages and someone will attempt to add categories to them. Should I create Category:Pages that purposely don't have categories? If I did, what category would I put it in? --JeffW 02:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I have no problem with leaving subpages uncatgegorized. They should have a link to the main article prominently displayed. Another possibility is to make it truly a subpage like List of foo/A-F. I don't know if there is any policy about this, but there are already many Wikipedia pages that already do this like WP:RFA. So be bold and suggest a new guideline about subpages and see what type of reaction you get. -- Samuel Wantman 07:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that I saw a policy stating that true subpages aren't allowed in the main space. Do you mean to edit an existing guideline page and see what happens, or create a new page and put it on WP:RFC? I'm not sure what the best way is to propose a new guideline. --JeffW 13:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, subpages are deprecated. I have no idea where that policy is, maybe Wikipedia:naming conventions. -Will Beback 20:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Subpages, True subpages are not functional in the main namespace. However, you can have article with slashes in the title, which can look exactly like a sub-page, but without the associated functionality. older ≠ wiser 21:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Ethnic categorization and ethnic cleansing

I would like to know where it is possible to discuss the policies about ethnicity? Categorizing the French people as an ethnic group, although it clearly is not (see the entry and the talk page: France is a nation-state historically founded on various ethnic groups and which considers this indifferent; it only cares about the individuals', not about their alleged memberships to this or that ethnic group). This is plain confusion between nationality and ethnicity. Such confusion may lead, in certain type of situations, to ethnic cleansings. Therefore, I think we should discuss this, and limit the ethnic categorization stuff to articles in which it is really necessary. Concerning biographies about living people, I'm sure many living people dislike being categorized like this. To categorize people is to divide them, this is not a goal for an open society like Wikipedia. We must be careful, lest an encyclopedia, instrument of enlightenment, becomes a hate-monger propagandist. Lapaz 02:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Page split of Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention

I've proposed we split some of the text for the header of Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention into a Wikipedia: page. Please discuss or leave your oppinions at the talk page. SeventyThree(Talk) 01:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

cat vs. article in cat

If an article has its own category, should that cat always be put in a higher level cat, in place of the article itself? For example, if Mick Jagger were to have his own category, should the category or the article go in the Rolling Stones's cat? Would this rule always apply, or only in certain circumstances? Like, would we also put Mick's cat in the English singers cat, or might it be more appropriate to use his article in this (or any) instance? Is there consensus (or even majority) opinion on this? -Freekee 01:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

This causes many disagreements. Unfortunately, I avoid messing with things like that, because people who have been working with certain subjects have their own special way of doing things. Often, I get reverted or yelled at when I try to change something. See Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category Flattening above, too. Ardric47 02:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorising redirects

Has categorising redirects been discussed here? I've started a debate on this at the Village Pump. Please add your comments there, or ask for the discussion to move here. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Naming categories help

I would like to subcategorize the entries in Category:Newspaper publishers (people) by nationality. What is the proper name for the resultant categories? Would it be Category:Newspaper publishers (people) by nationality with subcategories such as American newspaper publishers (people)? The idea of the "(people)" part is, presumably, to separate these categories from publishing companies, which are categorized under Category:Publishers and its subcategories with no disambiguator. This leads to the question of whether the "(people)" disambiguator is necessary on further subcategories of Category:Newspaper publishers (people) at all, as these will, if I'm not mistaken, follow the Fooian foos convention, whereas categories for the companies will follow the Xes in Foo convention. Is this correct? — BrianSmithson 19:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Re Category:Newspaper publishers (people), I'm not sure that disambiguation parantheses are encouraged... in which case, perhaps names such as Category:People who publish newspapers and Category:Newspaper publishing companies needed...?  Regards, David Kernow 01:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories to delete

On the 'categories to delete' page, I see what I view as abuse of the page. An editor list one category name, says he does not like it, proposes to delete an entire class (perhaps hundreds) of categories that are named in the same fashion. A half dozen or so editors come on the page to agree; a few disagree and then presumably all the hundreds of categories will soon be deleted. Some of the dislike of these categories are stated in POV terms--no matter, right? Is this how things are supposed to be? Thanks Hmains 02:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Harold!  I think deleting a whole raft of categories must be very rare; I don't recall such an event since I began following WP:CfD a few months ago. But I guess that, yes, if such a vote was successful, that's what would happen. There could always be a subsequent vote to reinstate deleted categories if/when people realised what had happened, which yes, if successful, would nullify the original action. I guess that's Wikipedia's "modified consensus system". If such an event perturbed enough people, I'd hope it would then become less likely to be repeated; also, there are people like yourself trying to flag potentially undesirable outcomes before time and effort is spent on them. Thanks!  Regards, David Kernow 14:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Deaths by cause

Input is requested in a discussion taking place on Category talk:Deaths by throat cancer, which was created as a subcategory of Category:Cancer deaths. —Viriditas | Talk 12:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Most deaths are not important enough to warrant categorisation. Please see my responses on that talkpage. JFW | T@lk 12:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Massacres categories debate

In case anyone else is interested, there is a debate on categorising massacres (or not) going on at Category talk:School massacres. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

"60-article guideline"?

Recently, at Talk:Haditha massacre#Categories, I had this guideline quoted at me: "the general rule is that there should be 60 articles in a certain set before you subdivide into a new category". Does anyone know where this comes from? It seems overly prescriptive to me, and missing the point about how there is sometimes a need for large and small categories. Carcharoth 13:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Making these decisions by counting articles seems like the wrong criteria. The most important criteria for categorization is "usefulness". Some categories are useful if they have 10 articles and some are useful with 3,000. -- Samuel Wantman 09:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
My guess this is someone (half-)remembering the size guidelines for stub categories (contained in WP:STUB), and mis-applying them to the (permanent article) category space. Alai 01:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Eponymous categories (again)

Where are the guidelines on categorising eponymous categories? This goes far beyond just the eponymous people categories (see Category:Categories named after people - this was once a mere 50 or so categories - now it is 120 categories!). There are also numerous eponymous categories in other areas, which I will in general define as categories named after articles. I want to make a plea here on whether it is possible to take a list of article names (including redirects), and to twiddle the list so that it gives a category list (ie. turn [[ARTICLE]] into [[:CATEGORY:ARTICLE]])? Then there can be an attempt to solve the problems being caused by these categories (this method won't find all of them, but it should find most of them).

  • The bigest problem is that people are nearly always categorising the eponymous categories as if they were the articles. This is, as I've said before, wrong on so many levels. It leads to articles within these eponymous categories ending up connected to the wrong parts of the category structure.
  • These eponymous categories often end up being broad portal-like categories or overview categories, lacking a tight focus. They are also very similar to "see also" or "what links here" for the eponymous article (often also the lead article). Often, if no eponymous article exists for the category, an overview article could be written based on the articles in the overview category. This is true of most categories, but is even more true of these categories. Also, unlike a list category, these portal categories often duplicate the efforts of "article series" boxes/templates (I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing).

So, do we want to stop people inappropriately categorising eponymous categories, and how? And how can a list of eponymous categories be generated? Carcharoth 10:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I've nominated a few eponymous categories for deletion on the June 25th CFD. EVERYONE! PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE DISCUSSION AT CFD and then we can put together guidelines for what stays and what goes. --Samuel Wantman 06:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a general consensus that eponymous categories are ok as long as there are enough articles or subcategories to go in it. I'm more concerned with how the category is linked up with other categories. I think it is confusing if the parent category contains both the category and article with the same name. I think it makes sense if the parent category contains only links to articles, because only some of the articles may have eponymous categories. That leaves the problem of what the parent of the eponymous category should be. Since, I think its generally agreed that only really fundamental categories should be without parents, maybe we need Category:Eponymous categories just to hold these things. --JeffW 22:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be a general consensus on this page that "eponymous categories are ok as long as there are enough articles or subcategories to go in it", but at CFD categories with just a handful of articles or subcats routinely get "kept". This is currently the case for Category:Todd Rundgren. The consensus at CFD seems to be, if there are a handful of things in the category, and I find this person notable, it is a good category. The problem with this is that be setting a low bar for acceptance of categories, they proliferate and confuse the logic of the larger categorization scheme. Eventually, every person, every TV show, every film, etc... will have their own eponymous category. I don't think this is a good idea. -- Samuel Wantman 20:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Pipe sorting in very large categories

Is it possible to use pipe sorting to force subcategories to appear on the front few pages of very large categories? Take a look at Category:Year of birth missing. There are two subcategories that were hidden several pages deep, and which I've brought to the front using the pipe sorting trick (" |"). These are actually duplicate categories, but I only spotted this by chance as I flicked through all the pages in Category:Year of birth missing - there may be many other "hidden" categories that should be placed side-by-side to allow comparisons like this. Carcharoth 11:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I found not duplicate, but nonsense or empty categories buried deep within large categories. As you've found, you can use the pipe to sort them to the first page. But discovering such "hidden" subcategories is either hard work or serendipity. Although there are problems with the Toolserver (that I don't really know anything about) which limits the current usefulness, the Category Tree and Cat Scan are useful tools that make it easier to browse category structures. older ≠ wiser 12:14, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Follow this trail (which will bring you back above and solve the issue <g>): Step 1 --> Step 2 (and three from there ends above! Closure! (lol) Best regards // FrankB 16:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


Categorising people ethically

Hi, I hope I'm asking this question in the right place ... I'm doing lots of categorisation of Category:Category needed right now and have a dilemma on the Bill Kamal page. Clearly the obvious category he belongs to is Category:Convicted child sex offenders, fine - but should I also add him to Category:American meteorologists? I mean - it's not remotely relevant to his fame. With some criminals (I'd think of Harold Shipman as an obvious example) their occupation is clearly relevant: in this case, it certainly isn't. So - what's more encyclopaedic? What's more useful? What should I do? (For now I've left it out, but put this page and that one on my Watchlist so if someone replies differently I can change it.) Cheers, --JennyRad 19:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

One rule of thumb for categorization is that the article should be relevant to the category. In the Bill Kamal article there is just one word about him being a meteorologist. Had he not been arrested, there would probably never have been an article about him. So I'd say there is no pressing reason to list categorize him in Category:American meteorologists. Another way to consider this is to consider if putting an article in a category would make the category more useful. Again, someone looking at articles about meteorologists is most likely not looking for Bill Kamal. -- Samuel Wantman

Individuals and kinds

Customary disclaimer: Sorry if this has been discussed already, but... I recently reverted some pipe trick cat sort edits by another user on Category:Informal settlements. The other editor had re-sorted Shanty town, Favela and Villa miseria (kinds of informal settlements) by adding a space before the sort key (i. e. [[Category:Informal settlements| Villa miseria]], etc.). This was done to follow this guideline, since those kinds of informal settlements are "main articles" in the category, while the rest of it is devoted to specific settlements (e. g. Cidade de Deus and Tent City). Now I see there are other "main articles" also sorted this way. I've never seen this before (only with single articles that are named the same as their category) but I'm not sure whether it's wrong. What should we do? —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 02:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

You could create categories to match each of the articles and then each article could be the same-name main article for the category. But I don't think there's any rule that says that the main article has to have exactly the same name as the category or that there can only be one main article. --JeffW 03:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I have seen (and also edited) categories so that there was more than one article piped to the top of the list. If the article(s) is eponymous it should be at the very top by using a space. Others can be sorted with an asterisk, which is probably the case for informal settlements. This is just my view and what I have seen done elsewhere. I don't think it has reached the level of codified policy. -- Samuel Wantman 06:57, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Pablo, the other person was correct, so please revert your revert.

Generally, a single space -- "|_]]" -- is used for the main article, whether or not "eponymous" (there's no requirement that a main article be the same name as the category). For other important articles, it would be space pagename -- "|_{{PAGENAME}}]]". Asterix (star) is used for lists -- "|*Fooian legislators]]" would be "List of Fooian legislators" in Category:Fooian legislators. I'm sure I've seen it written down somewhere, but cannot remember where.

--William Allen Simpson 21:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be relatively long-standing consensus about top-sorting, at least of some kind, on this talk page; I think the guideline should be updated to use somewhat more advisory language than it does at present. The wooliest remaining area seems to be when to use a space, and when to use an asterisk, or other top-sorting character. If it exists someplace else, fair enough, but this page strikes me as the most directly relevant. Alai 05:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Would there be some way to upgrade the Wiki code to allow for simple searches of articles that belong to multiple categories, like singers AND songwriters, or African-American AND Asian? --M@rēino 19:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a frequently discussed and frequently requested possible upgrade. We are all waiting. -- Samuel Wantman 21:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
This is actually long overdue. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The Allincluded template for duplication cases

There's a recurring strand of discussion about handling a minority of categories where editors want to have articles in one or more sub-categories AND the main category. That is, of course, not the standard guideline but it does occur (and sometimes for a properly-discussed reason). My own interest started with a discussion about an ethnic group Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#By_race_or_ethnicity but that's not my focus here. As I see it, there's clarity for editors about the standard guideline and then vagueness about handling exceptions in practice. My thought was that having a standard template, available on Wikipedia:Template messages/Category namespace, would be useful to make clear that something exceptional is the practice on a particular category page. What I didn't realise is that one already exists, as I found on Category:American film actors:

Wouldn't it be useful to tell people about this in guidance somewhere, so that exceptions can be tagged in a consistent way?--Mereda 11:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The template was created (by me) in response to discussions about duplications in the actors category. The discussion at that time, was that the actors categories would be a test case for repopulating some rather large categories that had been broken up into smaller subcategories. (The subcategories were not affected.) Since policy at Wikipedia is (for the most part) descriptive more than it is proscriptive, it seemed pre-mature to put this in the guidelines. Perhaps it is now time to create guidelinse for repopulating categories and the use of the template. -- Samuel Wantman 09:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Category naming conventions for clothing -- Please help!

Hi, a few of us have been working on articles about clothing/fashion and their history and we'd like to make a sensible set of top-level categories under Category:Clothing. We've come up with the following proposal and we'd appreciate your input very much

  1. Category:History of clothing
  2. Category:Clothing by nationality
  3. Category:Clothing by ethnicity
  4. Category:Clothing by culture
  5. Category:Clothing by geography
  6. Category:Clothing by use
  7. Category:Clothing by person
  8. Category:Design and construction of clothing

One point that may catch your eye is the distinction between nationality, ethnicity and culture. Presently, we're thinking of using these terms as they're defined in Wikipedia, roughly speaking, peoples defined by political boundaries, genetic heritage and common viewpoint, respectively. For example, "Polish clothing" (which would include clothing worn by Poles at all points in their history) would seem to belong under Category:Clothing by ethnicity, since Poland was politically Swedish, Russian and German at various points in its history. Similarly, "Clothing in ancient Rome" would seem to belong under Category:Clothing by nationality and, I dunno, "Goth subculture clothing" would belong under Category:Clothing by culture, since it covers people linked by a common culture, not genetically or politically.

The other categories are relatively straightforward. Category:Clothing by geography covers subjects such as "clothing worn in cold climates" or "clothing worn at high altitudes". Category:Clothing by use covers clothing by occupation and occasion, such as "fireman clothing", or "maternity wear", or "wedding clothing". Category:Clothing by person groups articles by the person wearing it, e.g., "women's clothing", "men's clothing", "children's clothing", etc. Finally, Category:Design and construction of clothing covers the technical details of how clothing is made and designed.

We've tried to make these top-level categories as independent of each other as possible, e.g., so that the time can be specified independently of the ethnicity, independently of the occupation, independently of the person, etc. We've also tried to be as consistent with Wikipedia definitions as possible. Please let us know if you like these categories and if you have any suggestions -- thanks muchly! :) WillowW 14:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

There are articles and categories that have the same name. What I cannot readily determine is where category links should go. Example: Abraham Lincoln article and category. What guidelines exist or could exist as to what category links should go where: all links in the article; all links in the category; some mixture? If some mixture, what to where? This question applies to people articles/categories and non-people. Thanks Hmains 02:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure if I understand the question, but I'd recommend keeping the majority of wikilinks in articles pointed at other articles; categories themselves are usually listed at the very bottom of the page (say, at the bottom of "External links"). Hopefully that's an answer you were looking for. Luna Santin 09:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
The guideline is that the articles go with their siblings and the categories go with their siblings. This has been in flux for the last year or so. It used to be done quite differently. Articles should be put in their eponymous categories and there are categories for holding eponymous categories such as Category:Categories named after people. Many eponymous categories do not need to exist, but they are hard to get deleted at WP:CFD. I would suggest not making them unless there is a large number of articles that would be hard to find otherwise. A small number of articles can be linked to an article in a "See also" section. Often, Eponymous articles contain similar articles and there may be other categories that make sense for them. For instance, the categories for US presidents are in Category:Presidents of the United States as well as the articles for each president, and Category:Suspension bridges is in Category:Bridges as is Suspension bridge. This is constantly getting screwed up with presidents, and I often try fixing it. One reason there is not more specific guidelines is because it depends a great deal on the subject matter. I suggest discussing this in a WikiProject for the subject matter. -- Samuel Wantman 09:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Objective, specific, consistent, and useful

While browsing CfD, I just thought out these four criteria, and I was wondering what anybody else thought: "A good category name is objective, specific, consistent, and useful."

  • Objective, the category adheres to NPOV policy. Listing articles in the category would be intuitive; it should be clear without major debate whether an article does or does not belong in the category. For example, "Prime Ministers of France" is objective, "Cool people" is not.
  • Specific, it is clear what sorts of articles the category refers to and should include. An outside reader, anywhere in the world, could get a general idea of the articles listed in the category just by looking at its name. This implies that acronyms should generally (if not always) be expanded in category names.
  • Consistent, the category's name is consistent with similar categories, whether that means being consistent within particular topics, or within particular parent categories. Inconsistent category names make it more difficult to browse and edit Wikipedia.
  • Useful, the category makes Wikipedia easier to browse, and is a useful tool in finding similar articles. "Pop singers" is a useful category, but "Musicians whose first name starts with M" is not. Sometimes a category will grow too large, and should be subcategorized to remain useful; other times, subcategories will only make it more difficult to browse between similar articles.
  • Succinct, the category's name is brief, but not to the extent of compromising English (e.g. using more than two consecutive words as adjectives) or any of the other features listed here.

Thoughts? Comments? Rotten tomatoes? Luna Santin 09:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good. How would you incorporate it into the existing guidelines? -- Samuel Wantman 09:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
It would be great if I had a thought-out answer to that. x_x If anything, it seems like a bit of an introduction, I guess? I'm very much open to suggestions in that regard. Luna Santin 10:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Suggest adding something along the lines of "Succinct, but not to the extent of compromising English (e.g. using more than two consecutive words as adjectives) or the other features listed here."  Regards, David Kernow 10:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Ohh, that is a good point. Added it under "specific," per Mereda, if that works for you. Luna Santin 15:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
See below – David 15:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed, the four criteria look pretty good. I'd suggest we should have them just below "Some general guidelines" with a heading of "Category names"; and probably delete the existing Michael Jackson example above that. On the examples, I think it would be really good to get beyond North America, and that would also avoid the deliberate mistake with Members of the United States Congress! Maybe too the second criterion could say something like "a reader, anywhere in the world, could get a general idea". Lastly, I think I get what David Kernow's aiming for, and my feeling is that the concept of balance (succinct wording v. specific wording) is already almost there with "a general idea". --Mereda 16:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, that does look like a good spot. The next example that comes to mind is "Prime Ministers of France." Are we happy with this? Luna Santin 15:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Re specific/succinct, I'm wondering if a distinction between the two ought to be made, as some efforts to be specific have yielded names that are anything but succinct. Regards, David Kernow 15:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. I'm only hesitating because for some reason give guidelines seems more intimidating than four. It's silly, and you're right. Adding. Also, I just realized that if we change it to "terse," this could be abbreviated as SCOUT; good idea? Luna Santin 03:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I like the acronym idea, but not for the sake of including "Terse"; "terse" has negative connotations for me, viz. "too brief", but maybe that's just me. I'll try to think of an alternative; ultimately, though, I'd rather have no acronym than one including a word that might be too prone to misinterpretation... Yours, David 04:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Good point. I'll see if I can come up with anything different. Luna Santin 08:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
The sequence of points looks logical to me as it is, starting with O as a matter of policy. On the proposed fifth criteria, I think "brief" isn't ideal; and I doubt whether the double adjective issue is worth picking out here. How about: "Succinct, a good category name is readable and concise, without compromising the other criteria or the rules of English. The category page can be used to give more detailed information." --Mereda 10:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Images in categories

Images seem to be popping up in many non-image categories. I think they should only be in categories of images. How can we control this? -- Samuel Wantman 09:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but don't know how this would be done or even if the software permits it. Sorry not to be more useful, David Kernow 15:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Category relationships

What do plate tectonics have in common with electric vehicles? A whole lot of things, apparently:

Is this standard operating procedure for categories, or is there some precedent for fixing some of these (so that Socialism isn't associated with Anti-war, and Tax resistance isn't associated with Sustainability or Human rights)? It would be nice to be able to use tools to get some useful data out of category relationships, but I didn't realize the relationships could be so random... --Interiot 11:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the chaotic state of categorization on Wikipedia. As has been discussed extensively here and elsewhere, much of the chaos arises from two aspects: 1) there is no clear distinction between strictly hierarchical categories (article X is a type of/member of category Y) and associative categories (article X is somehow (often tangentially) related to category Y). The related to categories can turn into trails of free association. 2) Some editors will inappropriately remove an article from a parent category and instead place the article's eponymous subcategory within the parent category. This can lead to very strange hierarchies. Well, and aside from those two fundamental problems, there is always the problem of inexperienced users naively (mis-)applying categories.
In the chain that you list, it seems very odd that Category:Simple living is a subcategory of Category:Tax resistance. I suppose a case could be made for including the ARTICLE Simple living within the Tax Resistance category. Similarly, having Category:Tax resistance as a subcategory of Category:Anti-war seems odd, at least to me, since in the contemporary U.S., the most vocal opposition to taxation comes tends to come from the conservative side, which in general also tends to be rather hawkish in defense matters. Similarly, it seems a littly POV to have Category:Human rights as a subcategory of Category:Socialism, but not, say, of Category:Liberalism or some other political philosophies. older ≠ wiser 13:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Apparently every human being is linked to any other by six (or so) degrees of separation, so perhaps plate tectonics to electric vehicles in twelve is not surprising... maybe even to be expected, regardless of how well or poorly organis/zed the category system...?  Regards, David Kernow 21:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
    • The Six Degrees game is based more on free-association and links between peers. I had expected categories to hierarchical for the most part, and the above is a list of successive parents, so it seems like the equivalent of saying "Kevin Bacon is my great-great-grandfather", which is clearly rediculous. Anyway, I'll have to read the various discussion about the merits of hierarchical vs non-hierarchical. --Interiot 01:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Since categories may be made subcategories of other categories, I suppose Wikipedia's categoriz/sation system already has some bias toward hierarchy. I recall reading somewhere on Wikipedia that categoris/zation is expected to be both cyclic and hierarchical; given the (theoretically limitless) scope for topics that a general encyclopedia embraces, I guess focusing too much on the hierarchical or cyclic (or something else) will sacrifice some of the links between categories that might otherwise be made... I haven't studied graph theory or the like, however, so I'm aware my instinct may be specious. Intriguing area. Best wishes, David 06:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Many people assume categories are meant only for a hierachical "is a" relationship, for example I've seen it argued that every article that appears "under" category:people must be an article about an individual person and not any other kind of article (like an article about a group of people or an article that is a list of people) because the "top level" category is called people. There is no rule that says member to category consists of an "is a" relationship. A category is a group of related articles and "sub"-categories, and that's all that can be concluded. Not "is a". Not a hierachical tree structure. Not completeness. Not database normal form. Groupings of related articles and categories. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Where is discussion on sorting cats at the bottom of articles?

A item was recently added to Talk:IBM by a bot that has something to do with flagging items for Peer Review and one of the things that the bot suggested was to sort the categories alphabetically. I wanted to add a note to User:AndyZ's talk page (AndyZ seems to be responsible for the bot) that there is no consensus for this action but I can't find the discussion now. --JeffW 19:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

It has already been agreed that alphabeticising by bot is not acceptable as there is widespread and strongly felt opposition to alphabetical sorting. Bots should only be used for non-controversial tasks. See Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people. Chicheley 09:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

CatLadder tool

For what it's worth, I've written a tool called CatLadder, which can aid in confirming whether groups of categories are more or less hierarchical. Per above, I don't yet understand when it's appropriate to be hierarchical, but if it's appropriate in specific places, then maybe the tool would be useful. The tool started from the idea that if every article listed all of its parent categories, that editors might quickly make categories be hierarchical of their own volition. (though that it might be impractical currently, with Category:Electric vehicles having more than 500 parent categories). --Interiot 12:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Uh? Category:Electric vehicles has 2 parent categories: Category:Vehicles and Category:Green vehicles
The tool shows the parents-of-parents, and parents-of-parents-of-parents, etc... The point is, if one's goal is to have hierarchical categorization, then you should be able to keep clicking on parents, and no matter how many times you click or which parents you click, you should never reach a topic that has nothing in common with Electric Vehicles. Per the discussions above, maybe that's not the goal in most places on Wikipedia. From the looks of it though, the Commons and some of the root-level categories on Wikipedia are pretty close to hierarchical, and this is one way to help keep them that way. --Interiot 17:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Another category by article type

We have Cat:Lists, Cat:Discographies, Cat:Timelines... Is it worthwhile to make a category for plot summaries of fiction?

I hardly want to encourage the creation of more of those (which the creation of a category will only encourage, in my experience), but it seems pertinent to keep them where they can be seen.

In relation to that: should there be a category solely dedicated to pages that are not standard encyclopedia articles, as with the examples above? I suppose Cat:Reference is somewhat like that, but that's not exactly all-encompassing right now. Or is there an existing category I'm missing? –Unint 22:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Policy on Categorizing Images

Whilst looking at Category:2004 establishments, I noticed a graphic on the page. On further investigation I discovered the the graphic in question (Image:WwII memorial kilroy was here.JPG had been included in a number of categories, including 2004 establishments. This creates an undesirable effect, but before removing the categorization from the image, I wondered if there was a policy against this. If not, unless someone can point out a good reason for categorising an image in any category, other than one specifically for images, I would like to propose such a policy. Greenshed 22:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Category duplication

(This discussion was moved here from User talk:Chicheley)

Hi Chicheley, I've been dealing with this issue for about a year and a half, so I want to give you some background on the issue and explain what I'm doing:

When Categories began, about 2 years ago, the situation was very different than it is now. Category "clutter" was not an issue because nothing was in categories. The big problem that shaped the initial discussions was the problem of categories getting "too big". "Too big" at that time was larger than a few hundred categories because there no easy way to navigate a large category. Back then, there were no table of contents for categories. To deal with large categories the standard practice was to create subcategories and depopulate the larger ones. The first categories that were "too big" were people categories, and subcategories "by nationality" were created to break them up. As this was happening, I and others became frustrated as some perfectly fine categories with 500 or so articles got broken up into 'by nationality' categories that were much less useful for browsing.

Another oft stated principal of categorization is that categories could be broken into different systems of subcategorization, so that several systems of subcategorization could co-exist. As more and more subcategorization methods proliferated, more and more categories got broken up into small pieces. Early guidelines for categorization reflected this way of doing things.

This was about the time I started getting involved in categorization policy. Two categories particularly bothered me. One was Category:Film directors which in its first incarnation contained film directors from all over the world. One day I discovered that it had been depopulated and replaced by Category:Film directors by nationality. The original category made it very easy to browse through all the articles on film directors. When it was broken up it became difficult. I found this especially irksome because I don't find nationality to be at all relevant to film directors.

Another category that bothered me was Category:Bridges in New York City. I spend alot of time working on articles about bridges. At the time, all the toll bridges in New York City had been removed from the category because they were in the sub-category:Toll bridges in New York City. It didn't make sense to me that a reasonably sized category would have half of its contents removed because there was a sub-category that was a subset of the larger category. Someone looking for the bridges in NYC shouldn't have to look in both places. The distinction of a bridge being a toll bridge may be of use to some people, but it is not an important attribute of bridges.

When I inquired about the reasons for the categorization policy, the rationale given was that categories had to be broken up when they got to big to make them useful. This inspired me to create the first version of a category table of contents which has evolved into the TOC found in virtually every large category in wikipedia. With the acceptance of CategoryTOC, I started examining what parts of the categorization policy was out of date. This led to some long discussions at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, a rewrite of the page about 7 months ago, and the addition of Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories.

This leads us to our current situation. Here is the issue in a nutshell:

  • Wikipedia's categorization scheme allows for multiple taxonomies. This is a good thing and a powerful feature.
  • People want to create subcategories which are essentially intersections of larger categories.
  • Wikipedia categories act as indexes that help users browse through subjects.

The problem is that these 3 qualities of categorization conflict unless there is categorization duplication. If there is no duplication, the larger categories are less useful for browsing and indexing. If everything is broken into small subcategories it is very difficult to browse through all of them. If they exist combined and broken up, you can browse at whatever level you desire. After the discussion about this at Category talk:Film actors, or the relevant discussions at Wikipedia talk:Categorization (linked from that talk page). We decided to fully populating the actors categories as an experiment to see if this way of categorizing can gain wider acceptance.

If populating higher level categories gains wide acceptance, we will need a way to make it clear which categories get populated and which do not. We have noted on the Category:Film actors page that the listings are duplicated, and there can be some sort of standard format for this. I don't really think it is all that bad, and our new way of doing it fits into the natural order of how people put people into categories. First they get entered into the more general category, and then added to the more specific subcategory The populating of categories should be an all or nothing decision. Either they contain all the articles that fit or none of them. I find the current common situation, where categories only contain the un-differentiated articles to be very unsatisfactory.

The downside, as you mention is category "clutter". Categorization is imperfect. The solution, most talked about is to have an automated way to do category intersections, so you could take Category:Film actors and Category:American people and find the intersection. If this is implemented, there would be no need for a great number of the subcategories we now have. Categories would be populated at the "level of notability", by which I mean that people are notable for being actors or film actors. In these days of globalization, people are rarely known for being American film actors. So what we are doing is fully populating the actors categories at the "level of notability" and below. This essentially is the system that people hope will happen by having a software upgrade. The upgrade (if it happens) will add intersections that do not yet exist, create them on the fly, and remove a good deal of category clutter in articles.

Until there is a software upgrade the question is which is worse, having a little "clutter" in the category listings of articles, or depopulating categories at the topic level. I'd much rather live with the clutter. As more and more category intersections are created, I'd like to hope that people will think of the intersection categories as the clutter, and not the topic level categories. -- Samuel Wantman 07:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not against putting things in parent categories and main categories in a few special cases, but I don't think that the actors categories are special cases. It started off with film actors, then it seems all American actors were also to be put in Category:American actors, even if they had been fully subcategorised. But what about television, stage, musicial theatre, silent film, voice and radio actors. What about people with dual nationality? We could end up with people in not one or two, but 14 or 16 or more extra categories. That would be a disaster. I remain convinced that your approach is misguided, and that the "consensus" you trumpet for it does not exist. Chicheley 21:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
You also utterly misunderstand the usage of categories. The upgrade would not reduce the desirability of thorough subcategorisation at all, because they facilitate browsing. The intersections would only be used by people who were actively looking for something, whereas sharp subcategories encourage serendipity. Your proposal would either rob parent categories of huge amounts of relevant material or encumber them with even more irrelevant material. For example instead of placing Category:British stage actors in Category:Theatre in the United Kingdom, a choice would have to be made between using Category:British actors, withs its hundreds articles about actors who do not work in theatre, and having no actors in the theatre category at all. By suggesting that the subcategories should be abolished you are proposing to chronically undermine one of Wikipedia's finest attributes, that is its serendipity. Chicheley 21:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Another issue is that many of the actors are not actually in both categories. If we work on getting everyone out of Category:American actors and into the appropriate subcategories, then we will know that people who visits those places will be see all the names the should see. Otherwise, that happy situation might never be reached. I try to recategorise at least a hundred people a day across a wide range of fields as the general standard of precision and completeness of categorisation of biographical articles is low, and I am quite happy to do much of the donkey work in this area. Chicheley 22:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Having clicked on some random names, it seems that only a minority of the names are dual categorised. Not a minority of the big stars, but a minority overall. Thus your basic premise that we currently have a dual system is false. We just have a messy, inaccurate, incomplete system that needs an upgrade. Chicheley 22:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, and I'm also not sure that you understand what I am saying, so let's keep at this. There is nothing strange about having Category:American actors fully populated. Actor categories from other countries are fully populated and other American occupation categories are fully populated. There is nothing against policy old or new about having this category populated. Except for two incomplete subsets (actor-singers and child actors), American actors are only fully duplicated in their grandchildren categories and not their two children. The two subsets are incomplete and fits one of the acceptable exceptions for duplication. As for Category:Film actors. Film is international. I have seen films with Americans, Canadians, Brits, Italians and French all in the same movie. If an occupation category is international, it seems that it should be populated with people of all nations. I have not proposed adding people above their level of notability, and this might just mean repopulating Category:Film actors. It doesn't mean that we would fully populate Actors, Entertainers, etc... Theatre, by its nature, is not very international, so perhaps this would not need repopulating. Instead, I'd probably want to add actors "by language" as this seems a natural way to collect theatre actors. Under the current system, there would be no reason not to add "Theatre actors by language" as a subcategorization scheme, so adding this category has nothing to do with the issue of duplication. My point is that there is a natural place to combine people together in fields that are international in nature.

I think you have misunderstood what I was saying about a software upgrade. Many subcategories are being added below the level of notability that are the intersection of larger categories. For example, there ethnicity subcategories like, Category:African Americans and occupation categories like Category:Film actors. So currently an African-American film actor like Laurence Fishburne is in | African-American actors | American film actors | etc... but maybe after a software upgrade he would be in | Actors | People of African descent | American people | Film people | etc... With such a system you could find and browse through categories for

  • all actors
  • all people of African descent
  • all Americans
  • all film people
  • all American actors
  • all film actors,
  • all American film actors,
  • all American film people
  • all actors of African descent,
  • all film people of African descent,
  • all African Americans
  • all African-American actors
  • all African-American film people
  • all African-American film actors.

By categorizing Fishburne in the four large categories he would also automatically be in all 11 of the intersection categories. Now I don't know if, when and how category intersection will ever be implemented, but my question to you is which of the 15 possible categories mentioned above should Fishburne be in now, until a new system is created? The problem as you point out is that we cannot create and fully populate all possible categories without creating quite a bit of clutter. Each additional attribute roughly doubles the number of possible combinations. My point is that Fishburne is notable as a film actor. I will forgo many of the other possible combinations if he is in at least the category for which he is known. In my view, what has happened in the past is that the important categories got chopped up and depopulated for the sake of the intersections. I just want to add back some of these significant categories.

I am certainly NOT advocating removal of ANY subcategories. Absolutely not. I am just saying that duplication should be considered more acceptable since there has been a proliferation of subcategories that are the intersection of larger categories. Let me give you another example. Recently, someone took Category:Bridges in England and depopulated it by moving all the bridges to dozens of smaller categories, one for each county in England. I plan on repopulating the larger category because I find the smaller categories are much less useful, and unlikely to create serendipity for users (especially those who are not British).

It may seem useful for those of us who categorize to have these large categories function as a holding tank for the articles that haven't yet been categorized more precisely. But I think these categories, randomly populated with a small number of obscure people, look very bad to the general user of Wikipedia. If people have a natural inclination to put someone in the category "Film Actor" I think that sends the message that this is what makes the person notable. A small number of people appearing in a category may be be the result of users not understanding how to categorize. A large number seems to be evidence that WE have made a mistake and the category needs to be repopulated. I know this means some extra work, but I think it is worth it.

Yes we have a messy, inaccurate, incomplete system that needs an upgrade. It also needs a consensus as to how it works. I think you are misunderstanding what I am trying to do, and I hope you will reread what I have written above. When I mention a dual system, what I mean is that some people think it is x and some think it is y. I'm trying to push this issue so that there can be some agreement about how it works. What I am proposing is that whenever we categorize someone we should say "this person is notable for being _______." If they are notable for being a film actor they should be in the category for film actors. If they are notable for being a film director they should be in the category for film directors. Same for English-language authors. If their profession is not international, they may be notable for being an American politician, a German lawyer, etc... Just because someone is in a small subcategories should not be a reason for taking them out of the larger notability categories. They can be duplicated in the smaller categories. People who want to browse through the small categories are able to. I don't understand why we don't want to have a single category that functions as a central index of film actors, yet allow dozens of Actor by series categories adding to category clutter. -- Samuel Wantman 08:40, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not going to write an essay, but I completely disagree with your arguments and objectives. I am against dual categorisation except in special circumstances because it creates category clutter. The category clutter on the articles about well known actors is some of the worst in the whole of Wikipedia. I do not accept that the general consensus is not against dual categorisation, and you accepted that by inference when you tried to create special rules for actors. This policy is not followed outside the actors field; not for musicians of politicians, or scientists etc. etc. Chicheley 18:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Chicheley: dual categorization is non-standard. If it is applied to Film actors, then it must be applied to all other professions, otherwise it becomes too confusing. For example, Michel Gondry is in French film directors, not in French directors or in Film directors. I'd like Film actors to become empty, just like Film directors. This will make it easier for us, because if something is added to it we will be able to quickly re-categorize it, whereas now Film actors contains so many articles that it's difficult to browse all of them to find the ones that have to be subcategorized. This will also make it easier for the readers, because they don't need to have a list of thousands of "anonymous" names when they have proper subcategories. If you think it's not easy enough to find the articles, we can create more subcategories. And to answer your question, I would put Fishburne in Category:American film actors because this is in Category:Film actors by nationality, and maybe in Category:African-American actors (though ethnicity categorization is quite problematic and I don't like it very much). Obviously, if/when category intersection is implemented this won't be a problem anymore, but in the meantime I'd prefer to avoid dual categorisation. Mushroom (Talk) 23:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
I will work on clearing the categories. It is just a variation on the kind of work I have been doing anyway, so I don't mind doing it. Chicheley 13:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
So now you think that YOU have consensus? You have the agreement of one person! -- Samuel Wantman 22:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Actors are not a great example to use to talk about a general policy, for lots of reasons including there are so many, some film actors did one theatre production in 1992, nationality is not key to acting, neither is style of acting, etc etc. I found this discussion via the mess existing in Category:Board games (see below) where duplicate entries are being added for individual articles in the parent category where there is an entire category devoted to the article/game a half inch away. With something like games, you can have a dozen or even fifty variations on a game that have articles that fit neatly and sensibly in one subcategory. Instead of one entry for one type of game you could have hundreds of articles tossed into the parent category. Simply listing everything in every parent category logically leads to listing every board game in the Games category... which means everything simply gets categorized by alphabet, which is about as user anti-friendly as you can get. Duplication further makes category entries at the end of articles a useless blob of text that is again user-unfriendly. Badly named subcategories are no good either of course, but we should be moving toward better subcategorization and better cross categorization, not towards alphabet piles. If people already know the name of something, they can find the article. Categories should be there to help users and editors find closely related articles. As the encyclopedia grows, we need to think of users using it. Piles should be avoided when they can. Depopulation and organized subcategorization leads to giving users a helping hand to find out more about their area of interest, and very importantly helps editors prevent duplication of articles under the names of different variants... that isn't a problem with people categories, but is a major concern in areas like games where the same game is called by different names. 2005 07:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Most of what you say is true, but here is the problem: Subcategorization continues unchecked. Categories get divided into smaller and smaller subgroups that have use for browsing only for a small group of people looking for something very specific. All I am am askig for is for us to say that there is a certain point in the categorization tree where something is "notable". A game may be notable for being a board game, a director may be notable for being a film director, etc... For each subject area we can discuss where this point is. Once there is consensus on where that point is, we can lable that category and any of its subcategories to let people know that everything at that level and below is included in the category. That way people can subcategorize to their hearts content without destroying the ability to browse through categories at the level where many people want to browse. It is not helpful to take the child actors and silent film actors out of the actors category. It doesn't help to take the toll bridges out of the bridge categories. There are categories where this process has worked very succesfully. At the WikiProject Bridges (which I am part of) we decided to put all US bridges into geographic categories by state, and to duplicate listings at any smaller geographic unit. This may also be the best solution for Philatelists (currently under discussion at CFD) and British categories (see below). --Samuel Wantman 07:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The main problem is different people have different categorization trees in mind. It may be very hard to get consensus on this (eg there's a serious argument over disambiguation page about what to put in democracy (disambiguation). They are arguing something which is considerably certain to me). What's more, people may disregard your rules, sometimes no matter how obvious or clear they are. Finally, the faster way to locate a specific topic is never by browsing category. It is search. 3 steps: 1) type the name; 2) Press search; 3) Select the link. Done! So category is usually for people who have no specific ideas or forget the title or subject involved. Every category method has its own flaw. Like sorting by geograhical locations, its problems emerge when the person does not know the location of the bridge or if the person wish to look for a particular type of bridges only. The best way in my humble opinion is to allow multiple taxonomies and category methods, as many as practically and technically possible. In this regard, each one can offset and remedy the disadvantages of another, while maximising benefits. It's what I do when I organise my personal stuff in my computer. --Wai Wai (talk) 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
It is impossible to come up with a catch-all scheme for categorizing, it needs to be done on an individual basis. The purpose of the categories is to provide a way for users to be able to find similar articles, not to have a tree heirarchy. I find myself on the other side when it comes to images on the commons, because images are much more difficult to navigate than article names. It's all about what works best for browsing a category. The "what works best" standard can also change as the category grows. Cacophony 23:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of categories per article

Is there a single continuing space for discussion of "should there be a limit on the number of categories on an article" or does each restart of the debate get archived again? Currently the page says "categories become less effective the more there are on any given article", which strikes me as completely baseless. True, the more articles (after a certain point) in a category, the less effective the category is; however, the more categories in an article, the more effective the article is. jnestorius(talk) 01:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a limit is not necessary. What's more, there is no hard and fast rule to decide the limit. Finally unless there are far too many words/terms in a page, it should be fine, eg it is relatively easy for me to find the desired term as long as there're less than, say, 100 words starting with the same alphabet.--Wai Wai (talk) 19:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation by nationality re. English, Scottish, Welsh etc

We have a problem here, I think. The three above listed nationalities, along with Cornish and suchlike, are not actually nationalities. Englishness / Scottishness etc are not provable concepts, but attitudes with which people identify. No-one can prove he/she is English, given that birthplace does not denote nationality. When someone puts Andy Fraser in "English bassists", or Danny Kirwan in "English guitarists", we are assuming nationality without any proof. None of us has asked Fraser or Kirwan (or anyone else) whether they are English or not. By descent, neither are English. By birthplace, they are. What is verifiable is that both are British. Can we not rename categories such as "English guitarists", "Scottish singers" "Welsh actors" etc, as something to which we can safely attribute notable people, without fear of calling someone English when he prefers to be identified as Scottish, for example?

I realise that people want to divide British personalities into subcategories, but I don't see a satisfactory way of doing it. Bretonbanquet 19:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The English, Scottish, Welsh, etc... bassists are all subcategories of Category:British bassists which are part of Category:Bassists by nationality. So I see a few possibilities:
  1. Just remove the English, Scottish, etc... bassist subcategories from Category:Bassists by nationality, they would remain as subcategories of Category:British bassists. Put only people who identify as English, Scottish into the subcategories. Everyone else gets put into British bassists.
  2. Put people who identify themselves as such in the English, Scottish, Welsh, etc... bassist categories and also put all British bassists into Category:British bassists.
  3. Delete the English, Scottish, Welsh, etc... bassist subcategories and move all the bassists to Category:British bassists. Also put them into Category:Welsh people, etc...
All these options are likely to be controversial -- especially #3. For now, I think # 1 is your best bet for being the least controversial but is problematic because people will think people are miscategorized and likely to move them out of the British category and into the subcategories. This problem points out one of the biggest problems with our categorization scheme. Personally, I like option #2. See the Category duplication section above for my reasons. -- Samuel Wantman 22:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
All these identity categorisations are POV, identity politics, regionalism, nationalism or communalism (in the Asian sense of the word) (that is, apparently, sectarianism) which should not be accepted on Wikipedia. It's just like the user-boxes, as Jimbo Wales himself as pointed out. Not overdisplaying one's identity is a condition of everyone's freedom of thought, but few Wikipedians appears to be aware of this. Lapaz 23:11, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

If we accept that we need to do something about this problem, I think the only workable solution is #3 as proposed by Samuel Wantman. Sure, some people will get angry, but the other two options there (and every other option I can think of) will result in endless revert sessions as people add and delete articles from these subcategories. As Lapaz outlined, Wikipedia is not about putting notable people into pigeonholes which they may well not agree with, and indeed may despise! Short of asking each and every subject whether he/she regards himself/herself as English/Scottish/etc like some kind of global census of the rich and famous, categorising people according to English/Scottish etc is totally unworkable and rather sinister, in my view. Bretonbanquet 23:24, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be best to leave "as is" to be quite frank. What is the need, apart from causing completely unnecessary aggravation? Particularly in regard to bands and musicians, people tend to refer to them more specifically than something as generic or loose as British. They are in the public eye, and is usually known where they were born, where they've grown up, their accents etc etc and the same can be said for actors or anyone infact. I would say more people being labelled British are offended & your proposal or wish would involve deleting dozens and dozens of categories which you have had no input into & moving thousands and thousands of records. I believe people should only be put into the British categories, if they're exact origin is not known, and if it's known that someone is born in Wales, England or Scotland and grew up in those countries they should go into the more specific category. I plan on "populating" the Welsh categories (which I just started the other day), and would be somewhat annoyed if they suddenly disappeared because you enforced your opinion on the matter. Agap 09:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, well the problem with all that is you're saying if someone is born in Wales then they're Welsh, which patently isn't always the case. When you say "exact origin" what do you mean? Their birthplace? This is just a totally flawed way of deciding who is Welsh / English etc. You can be born in Wales of German parents - it hardly makes you Welsh. Likewise "where they grew up and their accents etc". Also I don't see how anyone can be offended by being labelled British when they are undeniably British by citizenship. Deciding whether someone has fulfilled some of these extremely wobbly criteria and then categorising them accordingly is about as unscientific as you can get. Wikipedia is surely not in the business of arbitrarily designating "nationality" on the basis of what certain Wikipedians consider to be evidence?
My input or otherwise into these categories is irrelevant of course - do you mean that if something is wrong, only the people who made it wrong can do something about it?? As for enforcing my opinion, that's exactly what I'm not doing by talking about it here first. Bretonbanquet 10:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your first point, your user page states that you are "proud to be Cornish", but you say in a talk page that you are Scottish. Hardly Cornish then, going by your point above. Someone born in Wales to German parents, would make them Welsh of German descent. People rarely refer to themselves as British (you refer to youself as Cornish, I refer to myself as Welsh etc) and is a term used to describe something that involves several countries within Britain, and you seem to be refusing to accept that Britain is made up of different countries with their own identities. There would be a many more people opposing your view/idea than getting behind it, the replies you have got here are not from people within Britain, and I imagine very vew people who this matter would concern would even see this page. You are suggesting that the categorisation is wrong, when most of the British public would not - because it isn't. Agap

Firstly, you must read things properly. I wrote I can claim to be Scottish even though I've never been there, and no-one can prove otherwise. This is a hypothetical argument as I thought was patently clear - I never said I was Scottish - I am not Scottish. I am Cornish (and part Welsh), but I am also British. I generally refer to myself as British. I disagree that people don't generally refer to themselves as British - I don't know why you've said that. If there were a Wikipedia article about me, someone would plant me in the "English" category because I was born within what is politically England, and that would annoy the hell out of me.
Anyway, you clearly don't grasp my main point. Of course I accept there are distinct identities within the UK - I am not stupid. People obviously think of themselves as English / Scottish / Welsh, but we cannot verify which "nationality" they identify with - we just guess according to where they were born. This isn't good enough, and it's open to mistakes that are liable to upset people. I have experienced mistakes made by people on various articles, and it ends up in a revert match when they don't accept that they're wrong. I am not suggesting the categorisation is wrong - the fundamental point is that we are unable to adequately verify which categories suit which articles. The only nationality which is safely verifiable for these people is their official one, which is British.
I don't want to get into a slanging match particularly; this page is for discussion, which is what we're doing. It would also be better if you didn't purport to speak for "most of the British public". Bretonbanquet 15:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to get into a slanging match either - but from looking at your edits you seem to be pushing this. I disagree that most people refer to themselves as British, if they are referring to something or someone from a particular country within Britain. I don't think it's guessing that someone identifies with being Welsh, Scottish or English at all either - if someone was born in Wales to Scottish parents and then moved back up to Scotland after the birth it's safe to say they are Scottish and they would cosnider themselves Scottish... it isn't based on just where someone was born, but where they have also grown up. To suggest everyone should be labelled as just British is mad. As a side point - you initially mentioned members of the band Fleetwood Mac, whom I would have thought classified as English as the intial lineup were all born in England, they formed in London and they released an album entitled English Rose and incorporated English folk into their sound. I understand some people in Cornwall don't like to be labelled English - so categories could be made to accomodate that, or they can still be placed in the British sections. There are many people constantly editing articles, so I believe it should be left up to who contributes to the articles to choose and you look after the articles you have be contributing to.

Agap 16:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, we've both said our piece and I guess it's up to other people to add what they think. If there's a movement towards recategorisation then we can look at it. That's what this page is for. If nobody really agrees with me then we'll leave it - I'm not about to go deleting categories of course. I'm just not comfortable about the lack of verification when categorising people according to these nationalities.
As for Fleetwood Mac, my initial feeling about Danny Kirwan was that his mother was Irish and his father Swedish - he may identify with being English, but he may not. I've never seen or heard him say anything about it, so I would prefer not to label him either way - I just feel it's safer that way and unnecessary to categorise him further. Mick Fleetwood was born in Cornwall - I doubt he feels Cornish, but he might do, I don't know. Peter Green has ancestry from various parts of Europe, but he may indeed count himself as English. He may not. English Rose was so named by the American arm of the record company, and the band had little to do with it. I guess I'm just not happy about labelling people with no verification from them. I would also add that I don't edit articles in this way if I have not contributed towards them. Bretonbanquet 17:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Very strong oppose English, Scottish and Welsh are absolutely legitimate category designations, and many thousands of people across hundreds of fields are categorised to one of them. Where there is doubt or lack of information leave them in "British" or put them in more than one category. Nonomy 13:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Not sure exactly what you're opposing - there's no actual proposal to delete any categories. What you're saying is great but I don't think people will accept it when there's doubt over an article's inclusion. In fact I know they won't accept it, because that's why I started this discussion in the first place. Too many people still think English-born means English. There are simply hundreds of articles in these categories without any verification whatsoever. Bretonbanquet 20:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Categorization: "Board game" and "Abstract strategy game"

Hey, I would like to ask people for advice. I would like to add some articles into the category of board games. Some of the articles are backgammon and Go (board game). They have been listed in Category:Abstract strategy games.

The reason behind is related to the principle - it prefers "facilitating readers to find articles" to "avoiding duplication". Duplication does not matter as long as it facilitates readers.
Quoted from Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories_and_subcategories#Reasons for duplication:

The basic principle is that the duplication makes it easier, and not harder, for users to find articles

Clearly when people search for games like backgammon and Go (board game), it is likely they browse at Category:Board games (instead of Category:Abstract strategy games) to find the article. According to the above principle, we should add them into the Category:Board games.

It is not a denying reason even if it is already listed in the subcategories and/or its own category: Quoted from Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories_and_subcategories#Reasons for duplication:

SECONDARY CATEGORIZATION METHODS When an article is put into a subcategory based on an attribute that is not the first thing most people would think of to categorise it, it should be left in the parent category as well. This includes articles placed in ethnic subcategories within national menus, for example articles in Category:African American basketball players should also be left in Category:American basketball players.

AND

THE TOPIC ARTICLE RULE — When an article is the topic article for a category. Articles should be placed in the category with the same name. However, the article and the category do not have to be categorized the same way. The article belongs in categories populated with similar articles. The category should be put into categories populated with similar subcategories. For an example of this see George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush. When an article and the subcategory with the same name end up in the same category, the double listing sends the message to the user that there is an article about the topic, and there are also more articles to be found in the subcategory of the same name. It makes it easier to find main topic articles (by eliminating having to go to the subcategory). It also creates a complete listing of articles at the higher level category. It points readers of the topic article to the category and vice versa.


Question: I think we should add the category of board game due to the above statements. Do you agree? Please judge based on the understanding of the above statements/policy, but NOT your personal opinion. The reason why I ask this question is to see whether I understand the policy correctly. Thanks so much for your help.


PS: Special note about Go (board game):
Originally, I thought it might be okay not to add the Go article in Category:Board games. It is because I forget Category:Go is listed already in Category:Board games, so the article Go may exempt from it.
After a check, my thought may not be correct. There are other cases which is listed again regardless of the above reason, eg Monopoly has been listed itself as a subcategory. It is also listed in various board-gamed-related field, namely "Party board games", "Board games", "Economic simulation board games".
Any advice on this particular case is desired too.

For details of this discussion, see also User_talk:Falcorian#Go_category (User:2005 and I have different opinions).
--Wai Wai (talk) 03:25, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I think your understanding is correct, (though I couldn't follow the discussion on the Go talk page). I think Go is correctly categorized. Both the article and the category are in Board Games. I also think backgammon should be duplicated. I had never heard of its category before. I don't think the subcategories of board games are a clear taxonomy. The fact that games appear in several of the subcategories indicate that they are just categories of games by non-related attributes. I think this substantiates the "secondary categorization methods" exception. Another consideration is to look at how people naturally want to categorize the game articles. Has there been any effort to empty Category:Board games of all the articles and only have them in subcategories. I doubt it. For this reason, I'd probably expect every board game to duplicated. That way users could browse through all the board games and could also browse through smaller subsets by attribute. However, this is still a controversial policy as you can see above in #Category duplication. If there is complete duplication, lable the category with {{Allincluded}}. -- Samuel Wantman 07:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I haven't had time to empty the board games as similar games categories are, but probably will in the next few weeks. The suggestion to put every board game into the board games category is just creating work that will have to be undone. This proposal is suggesting to do things illogically because some things have not been done logically before. The guidelines on this are pretty clear but there is significant work to be done to fix the sloppiness in place. I would hope editors wouldn't do things sloppy because there are examples of sloppiness, rather I would hope they would work to improve the categorization. Also, the title of this is very deceptive as the issue is not board games versus abstract strategy games, but rather including Go or Backgammon twice in Board games, as a category and a second single listing. Granted, in the case of the Backgammon category it is labeled "Tables games" which few people are going to know means "Backgammon games", but still we should be looking to go forward in a logical way rather than just "it's a mess so let's make it messier". 2005 06:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Read SECONDARY CATEGORIZATION METHODS and TOPIC ARTICLE RULE. We are just following the rules/policy, not proposing new rules. We are not doing sloppy things either. You still can't get through the idea that "Facilitating readers (to find articles)" is in a higher priority over "avoiding duplication". You should respect the rules instead of putting your own critieria, or if you feel the policy is incorrect, you should discuss the issue first by opening a new section.--Wai Wai (talk) 07:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
To remind you, there're already 4 votes for my approach, ie Falcorian, Samuel Wantman, ptk✰fgs and me. Only you vote for your approach. But don't get me wrong that I am to say my approach is superior or mine is better. Actually I just follow what the policy says. I realise you keep saying I misunderstand the policy. However Samuel Wantman has proved my interpretation is correct. Thus you should not insist that your interpretation is correct, and undo the change arbitrarily without discussions and mutual agreement as it's against the philosophy and rules of Wikipedia!!
Deleting my contribution to a discussion page as vandalism is more bad faith from editor than I can handle so I'm finished dealing with you. Please learn to follow at least some of the Wikipedia guidelines. 2005 08:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Category duplication

I am curious to know what people feel on this issue. What do you think about Category duplication to facilitate readers and provide other benefits:

  • very good or strongly agree
  • good or agree
  • no preference or indifferent
  • bad or disagree
  • very bad or strongly disagree

You may express any personal ideas or comments. Thanks for your participation! --Wai Wai (talk) 19:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It might depend on what the category contains. If the category is of people (eg English cricketers) I am strongly in favour of duplication. Eg Michael Vaughan should be in both Category:English cricketers and its subcategory Category:English Test cricketers (as he is). He should also be in the category of Sheffield people (as he is) and ex-Silverdale School pupils (yet to be created). Nearly all the excellent Category:English cricketers would disappear if duplication were to be rigorously proscribed and one would have to dig into endless subcategories to find anyone. (I have made no edits in cricketing.) -- roundhouse 21:01, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
  • As Test cricket is a form of cricket (i.e. Test cricket is subsumed by cricket) I'd say it wouldn't be necessary to categoriz/se a(n English) Test cricketer as a(n English) Test cricketer and a(n English) cricketer; likewise with other categories. Maybe, though, I'm missing something...?  Regards, David Kernow 00:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm personally very, very skeptical of any category duplication at all. The reasoning behind duplication appears to be that it is significantly easier to find articles due to the duplication, but I'm not all that convinced of the difference. The reason is that it is very easy for a user to click on a category, then go up or down via parent categories to the article desired. For example, in the English cricketers/English Test cricketers example above, you can view all the English Test cricketers in one category, then click on the parent to go up a level and view all the articles that are about cricketers who either aren't Test.
In fact, I feel that duplication causes a few problems. First, it makes maintaining categories on articles more difficult, because there is no clear objective way to tell if the category "should be duplicated" or "shouldn't be duplicated". The guidelines just have "common sense" standards. In addition, duplication makes categories significantly larger, which correspondingly makes it much harder to view the subcategories included and to browse the list. Finally, duplication can make it difficult to discern which articles can be subcategorized which articles have been considered for subcategories but don't qualify for subcategories. By eliminating duplication, you likewise significantly cut down the number of articles required on a pass through a parent category.
So in my estimation there should be almost no duplication. The benefits of duplication appear to be offset by the benefits of consistently using only appropriate subcategories. Just my opinion.Dugwiki 22:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Category diffusion effort

I've been cleaning up Category:Politics, and noticed how many articles landed in it that were barely related to Politics at all, and how it has turned into a "dumping ground" for articles. Since it seems to me that there are categories that people will abuse in this manner permanently, I created Category:Categories requiring diffusion and {{catdiffuse}} to mark those categories for maintenance. It is these categories that I expect to never be "completed" in any sense, and will require monitoring to ensure quality. Cwolfsheep 13:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Categorising categories

The issue I want to raise is probably related to #cat vs. article in cat and #Eponymous categories (again) above, but I'm not sure it is really covered anywhere. By my understanding, the point of putting a category in a parent category is to indicate that the members of the subcategory could be considered members of the parent category. For example, I would think that Category:Sydney Swans should be a subcategory of Category:Australian Football League, not Category:Australian Football League clubs, as it seems strange to categorise seasons, players, coaches or club songs, under "clubs". To refer to the example at Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories#Topic article rule, in deciding whether Category:George W. Bush should be a subcat of Category:Presidents of the United States, the question is whether something such as Dude, Where's My Country? should be in Category:Presidents of the United States (assuming that Dude, Where's My Country? is correctly categorised to start with). Obviuosly this descision depends on whether it is meant to be an "is a" category, or how close the relation between article and category needs to be, but whatever view is taken on this, I would argue that the associations become too loose without the simple criterion "a subcategory's members could be members of the parent category". JPD (talk) 17:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your reasoning --Lini 22:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:Categories that do not contain themselves

Wouldn't that be awesome?! (Russell's paradox). WikiSlasher 10:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Category%3ACategories+that+are+not+self-inclusive. Created by yours truly, April 1, 2005. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That April Fool's joke lasted nearly a whole year? :-) Carcharoth 23:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Category check needed

What do people think about the use of {{catneeded}} on pages that are already in a category, but where the tagger is unsure whether it should be in the category or thinks it should be in other categories as well? I was assuming that tagging the pages to a "best guess" category would flag them up to the people interested in those categories, who would then recategorize if necessary, but I've seen the {{catneeded}} tag being put on pages where there is already a category. I've created an alternative template {{checkcategory}} which I think would be a good solution. Let me know what you think (or point me in the right direction if I've missed something obvious). Yomangani 11:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

catdiffuse

there is an issue that is arising where a series of people are using Template:CatDiffuse as justification to restructure and subcategorize the larger categories. The issue is that many of the things that they are subcategorizing are also being decategorized across the board as redundant categories. This is causing a general dis-integration of wikipedia and will likely make it harder to find relevant knowledge. I'm bringing discussion here to encourage discussion on the catdiffuse talk page, because the template is fairly recent and the problems that it is causing in terms of justification of categorization can either be nipped in the bud, or depending on consensus promoted. --Buridan 11:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed guideline for Wikipedian categories

Please browse Wikipedia:Guidelines for user categories and comment on whether it should become official policy. Thanks! --M@rēino 03:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably a stupid question

I added a [[Category:SAR Wikipedians]] to my user page, since I am a SAR member. When I checked the category listing, I see that I am listed under U, instead of C, probably because I am User:Crockspot. But the others listed are categorized properly by the first letter of their username, even though they are listed as User:Username. Did I do something wrong? Is there a special usage syntax for userspace categories? Or will this sort itself out all on its own? Crockspot 20:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

You need to list as follows: [[Category:SAR Wikipedians|Crockspot]] Cacophony 23:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Thank you! I knew it had to be something simple. Crockspot 14:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrestling

Hi - I'm a bit concerned with articles associated with professional wrestling - that is in the performing arts category. However articles about the WWE and the like, which all start with a link to the professional wrestling article make use of all sorts of sports categories and no mention of performing arts. I am also currently discussing this issue here

--Charlesknight 17:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Category diffusion in economics

Thanks to User:Cwolfsheep for the idea of the catdiffuse tag. I've been working on Category:Economics and have diffused about half the articles using a categorization system based on the JEL classification codes. I think this has worked really well, and that a similar approach might be useful in other areas covered by an academic discipline JQ 06:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Adding from WT:Category

The threads below were added from Wikipedia talk:Category, which now redirects to WT:Categorization.

Old talk from village pump

There are many lists of people in Wikipedia, and many more are coming. Most are useful, but many are just "rubbish". Of course, whether a list is useful could never be really NPOV, but we should have better ways to avoid any potential conflict.

Is it possible for us to generate such lists automatically? If it is possible, then (1)all our current lists are more complete as they includes every people mentioned in Wikipedia and (2)Whether a list is useful or not is none of anyone's business, for it is generated on the fly.

--Wshun

Yes, it will be possible to generate these lists automatically with the soon to be activated category system.—Eloquence 01:31, Sep 7, 2003 (UTC)

More old talk can be found at Wikipedia:Category/Topic Maps.

Category-tag

For a month I saw an article containing a [[Category:]]-tag. Is it something implemented or something that is going to be implemented ? (I.e. as a way of categoring articles on wikipedia.) // Rogper 20:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's in the next version of the software. We'll be installing the updated version this weekend, then enabling the categories and a few other new features later once everything's a little more thoroughly tested. --Brion 02:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Aha, that is a interesting news! :-) BTW, is there any newsgroup or discussion-list where you talk about issues like this ? (never mind, I found where it is.) // Rogper 16:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Where? Andrewa 09:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The best bet for this sort of discussion is the Wikitech mailing list. Best starting point for mailing lists is Wikipedia:Mailing lists. Pete 11:43, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Placing

I don't know who came up with the categories idea, but adding it to some pages has, with all due respect, ruined them. Look, for example, at the Professor Birch article, the Pokémon Colosseum article, or the Chansey article. I know these all belong to the Category Pokémon, but since these are pages I've contributed to, they're the only one's I've seen (since they are on my watchlist) in the last couple of minutes.

So that this criticizm is constructive, I'd like to suggest that instead of having the text floating at the right pushing everything over, simply align it at the right over the article like this:

category alpha

This is the begining of the article; blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

--Fern 00:28, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I'd bring it to meta:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. grendel|khan 01:15, 2004 May 31 (UTC)

For the record, the rule is

  1. catlinks {
   margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
   width: 34%;
   text-align: right;
   float: right;

}

As you can see, it's already floated to the right. kelvSYC 17:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

You obviously did not understand me. I'm saying that the problem is presicely that it's floating to the right pushing everything off. I'm suggesting having it aligned like regular text on its own paragraph line.
--Fern 06:07, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Alphabetical Order

It would be very helpful if categories would be automatically displayed in alphabetical order. -Sean Curtin 07:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

They are - but for names they're displayed in alphabetical order by the first letter in the first name. john k 08:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
They are sorted on the Category pages, but not on the articles. It was as mistake for wikipedia to use 'Firstname Lastname' rather than 'Lastname, Firstname' naming convention, because it makes sorting in examples like this more difficult. Edward 10:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
You can write [[Category:People|Lastname, Firstname]] on every person's page that you are adding. Then, it will be sorted as "Lastname, Firstname". Andris 17:53, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

Categories are new, and this is the first instance where this is a problem. I think the aesthetic benefits of "Firstname Lastname" are such as to warrant a slight amount more work when making categories.

Plural or Singular

Should category titles be plural or singular? For instance, we have [[Category:People]] and [[Category:Writers]], but also [[Category:Playwright]] and [[Category:Poet]]. This is awkward. (The fact that you can't link to category pages in talk page text is also annoying, if anyone is interested.) john k 08:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

The prevailing mood seems to be plural (and that's what I think, personally, too).
And you can link to a category the same way you can link to an image without any special effect - [[:Category:People]] --> Category:People.
James F. (talk) 10:59, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. john k 20:02, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Discussion on the subject of categories is taking place at Wikipedia:Categorization. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:06, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Top

A "Categories: American football" link is at the top of Philadelphia soul, right above information about soul music. It actually applies to a team in the Arena Football League, information about which is at the bottom of the page. I don't know and haven't been able to find out anything about Categories yet, so I'm asking anyone/everyone, can we move the Category link from the top? Hyacinth 00:15, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Move the team to its own page Philadelphia Soul, and then put the category there. The category ought to be Category:Arena Football League teams, though. 68.174.88.103 05:22, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that was me. john k 05:23, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Categories on User pages

I doubt that allowing this is a good idea: User:Eequor/Eequor is flagged up by Category:Goddesses. -Sean Curtin 04:30, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Spam protection filter" problems

Has anyone else gotten the problem of being blocked by Wikipedia "Spam protection filter" while putting categories on articles? If you put the same text on a bunch of articles one is automatically blocked?

That bug seems to have been fixed. -- Infrogmation 04:22, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Template and category namespaces

66.167.49.222 18:26, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC): See Wikipedia talk:Template namespace.

Question regarded redundancy

I know I had the impression that it was policy or quasi-policy to not include category redundancy on a page--i.e., if we have a science fiction writer, that page would get Category:Science fiction author but not also Category:Writer. But I can't seem to find out where I got that idea from. Am I smoking crack? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 20:22, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You probably got that impression from the first section in Category talk:Writers --ssd 03:48, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Whitespace

Could someone please explain me why I'm seeing random amounts of whitespace before the categories at the bottom of the page whenever a page is edited? Compare for instance [2] and [3]. The first one has no extra whitespace, the second one has a huge white space (four lines, looking at the page source) after the {{airlistbox}}, and I see no difference in the wiki source for both versions [4].

cesarb 23:17, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template

I was excited when I first heard of Wikipedia:Categories because I apparently misunderstood and thought that the list which a category generates would then be useable as a template.

For instance, we have a list of diatonic functions at Category:Diatonic functions, which would fit perfectly at Diatonic function.

Given that this appears to be impossible, it seems like a waste of time for me to create categories since, as the page states, they are much like "What links here" except less useful. In almost all cases they show you a list (in meta-space) which it is then necessary to duplicate elsewhere (in non-meta space).

So, question one is: Am I mistaken and is this already possible? Question two: If it is not now possible, could it be done in the future? Hyacinth 20:30, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Category:Main ?age

I don't wanna cause too much trouble here, but shouldn't "Category:Main page" be "Category:Main Page", since the Main Page has both words capitalized? - dcljr 08:59, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oops, forgot about "Category talk:". I've asked this question there instead. - dcljr 09:05, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Lag time

The lag time between when you remove something from a category and when it actually gets removed remains irritating - I removed a ton of people from Category:Great Officers of State to more specific categories earlier this evening, and it still shows them all there on the Category page. When trying to clear out a category, it would be very helpful if things no longer in the category would actually go away, so that one can see what is still left there. Is this being worked on? What's the deal? john k 05:48, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've noticed that if you add another article to the category or (maybe) actually change the category page, it tends to update the listing of articles. (At least, I think that's what's happening.) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:39, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Problem with Category:Goa'uld?

I just created Category:Goa'uld yesterday, to hold the articles for fictional characters from Stargate SG-1 who are members of the Goa'uld species. Everything seemed to work normally, but none of the articles I added have shown up in the category. An example of one I've added is Apophis (Stargate). Is perhaps the apostrophe causing trouble? Bryan 02:13, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Everything's in there now. I guess something's just being very slow to update in the database. Bryan 07:17, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Alphabetical order, re-visited

Background: I recently went through some of the pages in Category:Wikipedia style and how-to and Category:Wikipedia official policy appending |{{PAGENAME}} to the category tags.

  • What, if anything, is accomplished by adding |{{PAGENAME}} to a category? Isn't that the default? -- Jmabel | Talk 17:35, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
    • Reasonable ordering. No. Consider a page that is in a non-default namespace, such as (as in this instance) "Wikipedia:". Without the |{{PAGENAME}}, a category of Wikipedia:XXXX pages ends up with all of the entries filed under "W", which isn't particularly helpful. (If you want to see an example of this, look at the "W" section of Category:Help.) With |{{PAGENAME}}, however, the entries are collated according to the page name alone, not according to the namespace+pagename. So, for example, Wikipedia:Editing Math is now filed under "E", rather than under "W" as it was before. Uncle G 18:01, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Subcategories instead of numerous categories

I was looking at Michael Jackson and saw a load of categories including Category:Michael Jackson. That category is a subcat of Category:United States musicians, but Michael Jackson is also included there - one of them should surely be removed. However, should we remove virtually all of the categories and just place them in the Michael Jackson category? violet/riga (t) 19:43, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I know this is an old discussion, but I've noticed a similar situation over at Category:United States television networks. I should think (speaking as a librarian and cataloger) that categories should reflect a hierarchical structure. Any article placed in Category:Michael Jackson should be assumed to also be a part of any category of which Category:Michael Jackson is a subcategory. We shouldn't need to repeat ourselves. – Seancdaug 07:30, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding an article to a category

Please feel free to move this discussion to a more relevant place.

If I were to add Winston Churchill to a category alpvcy, the usual procedure is to edit the page and add at the bottom [[Category:alpvcy|Churchill, Winston]] - the idea being last name followed by first name. I wanted to know if this is a standard practice. For South Indian names, editors unaware of the local custom assume either caste names such as Reddy or suffixes such as Rao to be last names and add categories accordingly, creating a huge nightmare in terms of categorisation. I request help on two counts - (1) Wikepedia standards, if any, on the naming issues and (2) How to ensure continuity, especially in South Indian names. (apart from having a warning visible in the edit mode, which can be tedious to insert in all articles). --Gurubrahma 06:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories need not reflect established fact

Is it right to say that, in an encyclopedia, categories need not reflect established fact? Andy Mabbett 16:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox categories

As noted above (Wikipedia_talk:Category#Categories_on_User_pages), it seems that articles being developed in the sandbox or in user subpage sandboxes are added to the relevant categories. Perhaps there should be a comment somewhere (on this page? on the instructions for user subpages? on the instructions for the sandbox? all three places?) that this should be avoided until the page goes 'live'? Ziggurat 03:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Merge categories?

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but Category:Treaties and Category:Official documents are two separate trees that probably should be if not merged, then put under a closer tree.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 04:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you missed that fact that Category:Treaties is a subcategory of Category:Official documents. This seems like a good relationship to me. -R. S. Shaw 04:52, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Categories and Lists

I've noticed lately that the community seems to be very uneven about whether a list of articles article is worth having vs. having categories. I'm thinking of my recent experience on List of cryptographers. Basically, here are the problems with category-based lists:

  1. They aren't informative. For any X, there are some X things that are X but aren't worth having on a list of X. For instance, if we did List of cryptographers as a category, it would include every cryptographer, not just those we'd actually want on a list.
  2. Subcategories and supercategories are ugly to navigate.
  3. There's no way to add descriptions.
  4. Finally, if every list was done this way, articles would end up in too many categories.

On the other hand, lists are harder to maintain. To properly edit info on some article, you basically have to edit the article, plus all lists that refer to it.

I was thinking that some additional technology would help this. The ease of maintaining categories is really great, it's just that they don't make good list articles. I'd like to see the following features, which would make lists of articles nearly obsolete:

  1. A "listworthy" tag you can add to an article, saying that it should show up in concise lists. Thus, Ron Rivest would be listworthy and would show up on the short list of cryptographers, whereas, perhaps, Matt Blaze would not, and would show up only the list of all cryptographers. Alternatively, listworthy could be the default, and the tag could be for obscurity or something.
  2. A "listworthy" tag to add to categories, to make the category specifically show up at the bottom of articles, while non-listworthy categories could be either hidden completely, accessible through a link. Again, non-listworthy need not be the default.
  3. A way of adding brief text for use in verbose lists derived from categories.
  4. Sometimes subcategories are too specific, which makes category pages less useful because sometimes the article you want is in a subcategory and not in the parent category. It would be nice if you could make a subcategory automatically categorize all things in it as things in the parent category as well, though this wouldn't always be good.
  5. This may be unrealistic at present, but it would be nice to be able to find intersections of categories: that way we wouldn't need a category for muslim athletes, we could just intersect muslims and athletes.
  6. It might be nice to have a List: namespace, that would make lists automatically based on categories... and where you could set list-specific properties (like, whether a list should default to verbose or not, or concise or not, et cetera).

I don't know if people would like this, but I sure would. Too many list articles are created because they're manually done searches. The nice thing about categories is that they do the work for us. But in the current state they leave too much to do. Anyway, just an idea. If people get behind this maybe it'll happen. Mangojuice 23:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. Many of these issues have been discussed many times, and many of the software improvements you speak of have been requested of the developers. I would suggest that you read Wikipedia:Categorization, its talk page and archives of the talk pages. There is also recent discussion about the overly specific subcategories and how to deal with them.
I particularly intrigued by your last idea, I've been thinking of something similar, basically an Index namespace, which would work like categories but list everything in the category and all its subcategories as one big index of articles. -- Samuel Wantman 08:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation based on ethnicity

I think its bad taste to categorise based on ethnicity even when a census such as the United States Census, 2000 is avalible. For instance US census considers all middle easter people as "white". A number of arabs, kurds, etc would disagree

Currently we have Category:Kurdish provinces, Category:Kurdish cities, Category:Kurdish inhabited region. I'd ike to note that we do not even have any census data on kurds.

If these categories are ok, I am sure no one would mind me tagging france, uk, germany... etc with categories like "White cities", "white provinces", "white inhabited region". How about categories like 'Arab inhabited region' or 'black inhabited region'

--Cat out 09:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Using categories with redirects

Is it a) possible and b) allowed to have redirects in categories?

Possible use:

The Ur-Quan Masters seems to be some fan-made remake or sequel of a game that is described in the Star Control article. The Ur-Quan Masters redirects there.

Having the Star Control article in Category:Fanmade computer game remakes and sequels wrongly implies that Star Control is a fan-made remake or sequel. Wikipeditor 20:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It is certainly possible. It should probably only be allowed in specific cases. I would agree with the case you mention above. See also the discussions here and here. Carcharoth 10:02, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
No, redirects are not meant to have categories. As Help:Redirect says, "A redirect is a page with no other content than" the redirect. IIRC, all lines after the redirect line are ignored anyway.
In this case, my inclination would be to not worry about the problem; a user browsing would soon figure out that only some of games listed in the article are Fanmade. An alternative is to make The Ur-Quan Masters into an article, but I don't see that as warranted. -R. S. Shaw 17:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it is certainly possible to categorize redirects and it is desirable in very limited circumstances. Please see the earlier discussions that Carcharoth links to above. older ≠ wiser 18:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Please note that "A redirect is a page with no other content than" the redirect. fails to realise (as I did initially) that redirects are already categorised for maintenance purposes - see Wikipedia:Redirect#What do we use redirects for? to see the templates used to add categories. I too looked at the Help: page initially, but the Wikipedia page turned out to be more helpful. Sadly, getting the Help page edited at Meta is a real pain, and not something I am about to try and do. I think all these "Meta" pages should have "may be out-of-date" warnings on them... Carcharoth 18:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

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