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RfC: BC births and deaths categorization scheme

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The strongest support appears to be #5 by far, with no clear responses against it. The other responses never gained close to consensus. AlbinoFerret 16:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

(Per closer's recommendations at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2015 September 3#Category:1 BC deaths:) For the BC births and deaths categorizations the recommendations of WP:COPDEF ("...year of birth, year of death...") and WP:COPSEP ("...Keep people categories separate...") have been left. There are a few possibilities:

  1. Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme;
  2. Middle solution (births and deaths remain by decade, but COPSEP applied by removing biographies from "by year" categories);
  3. Reflect current scheme in guidance.
  4. Middle solution variant (...merger by century for the most ancient BC centuries...)
  5. Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme adding "rollup" categories by decade/century
  6. ...other... (feel free to propose additional options)

--Francis Schonken (talk) 09:22, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

please make clear which option is preferred, and clearly explain what the option consists of if proposing a new one
  • Comment – just starting up the RfC, links to earlier discussions can be provided as useful. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:22, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Option 1 (Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme), for reasons explained in earlier discussions. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:22, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Option 2 This option maintains WP:COPSEP literally and I can clearly see that this guideline makes sense for this particular case. However for the other aspect of the discussion I don't see that WP:COPDEF is deliberately overruling WP:SMALLCAT, rather it's just explaining that birth and death are considered to be defining characteristics. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:24, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
    • Re. COPDEF, the guideline currently says:
    "rule of thumb ... year of birth, year of death and ..."
    Which for option 2 would need to be changed to:
    "rule of thumb ... (AD:) year of birth, year of death (BC: decade of birth, decade of death) and ..."
    ...which imho is an unnecessary complication. Following the acceptable WP:SMALLCAT exception ("... unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme") seems much simpler. Note that the current "year of birth, year of death" categorization scheme is one of a few that has been put down in a guideline, and exists for a very long time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:48, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Suppose two groups of ten people were given computers to find as many names as possible of persons that were killed in the retaliations after Caesar's death, with for each of the casualties when and how (proscription? war?...) they were killed. One group has Wikipedia with the "by year" categorization scheme, the other with the "by decade" categorization scheme. All other things equal, I suppose the first group would win this little contest.
So, a first thing I want to say with this: don't assume you know what's best for navigation when just starting from prejudice.
Further, re. "the paramount goal should always be ease of navigation": actually the general guideline says:

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

WP:CAT identifies the hubs of navigation as "defining characteristics". Year of birth and year of death are defining characteristics for the people about whom we write biographies. That's how WP:CAT works, that's how WP:COP works. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:37, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Zing "Don't assume you know what's best for navigation when just starting from prejudice." --Francis Schonken @Francis Schonken: RevelationDirect (talk) 03:29, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Re. "Zing": either my prejudice is as good as yours (but then my prejudice is at least based in current guidance, and confirmed by actual users of the categorization scheme like Lamassus below), either I'm a bit more experienced (by, for example, conducting the kind of usability tests I described above). No offense taken either way. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Give me back the single year categories ... I have published this comment in different places before. Hopefully this is finally the right one: Unfortunately I've seen this too late, when you started merging, but it affects a lot of pages I use. I had already written a comment in August, but probably in the wrong place. In my daily research Wikipedia Categories are one of the instruments I use most and I have to say that I really do not appreciate the changes decided on this one. The new config makes it much more complicated to find specific persons. Previously it was easy to find a person who died for instance in 333 BC and if my search was for someone who died in the 330s I had to click only a maximum of ten pages. But now, to understand who died in a specific year, I have to click many dozens of pages. This makes my work much more difficult. Actually, it is my impression that people discuss and decide these changes who have rarely used the instrument at all. I would therefore prefer a return to the previous situation. And if that is not possible, I'd invite everyone to reflect and and try to understand the function of a useful instrument before you "simplify" it to something much less useful. Unfortunately I have noticed this not only here, but even in other places, where guidelines were forced to "simplify" or "unify" things and the result was the exact opposite. Most features on Wikipedia were introduced for a reason, and the fact that someone doesn't get it on the fly should not be enough for abolishing them.
... why this change is no progress: For my kind of research it is exactly the opposite. I'm a writer of novels with exact historic reference. When I come to a specific year, I start looking for potential victims of murder and similar situations. To this purpose the yearly categories were perfect. Currently I'm writing on the year 226 BC. Previously to the changes I had a very simple overview over the people dying that year, but now the Category:220s BC deaths has over 40 entries and I have to read each article to understand who died in 226 BC. Please consider that many ancient bios haven't yet been categorized. One more example: In one of my novels (yet unpublished) I killed the philosopher Dio of Alexandria. I didn't know about him previously and I don't remember how I came upon him, though it wasn't the wiki category, because his year of death (57 BC) isn't given in the English article. But if he was categorized it would have been very easy to find him. However now the new Category:50s BC deaths has already 44 entries and if it was only half complete there would probably be hundreds. That means the more it gets complete the more it gets useless for my kind of research. And I think that my kind of research is exactly what the categories are made for. One last consideration: All these specific references like year of death or place of birth and similar have been included by the hands of Wikipedia editors who have done a lot of research to be as precise as possible. It is quite easy to undo with a single bot what was done by thousands of hands, but I don't think it is very fair. It would be more productive to help and categorize more bios regarding the year of death instead.--Lamassus (talk) 12:17, 13 September 2015 (UTC) Integrated to avoid misinterpretation of bold characters.--Lamassus (talk) 18:27, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I understand your concern. Categories are meant to find related articles easily. With the single year categories it was very difficult to find related articles because many categories consisted of only 1 of 2 articles so you had to go to the decade parent, then go to another year etc. Categorization by decade facilitates finding related articles a lot. I think for your purpose listification would be much more suitable than categorization. And these lists already exist! See e.g. 333 BC
By the way, it looks as if you've posted two contributions from two different people now. Could you please integrate them? Marcocapelle (talk) 13:09, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Single year categories with "rollup" categories by decade/century I don't understand why single year categories, with tables like the one at Category:4 deaths are undesirable. Is the issue that if you want to find people who were born or died in a particular decade, you have to look at the contents of 10 categories rather than just one? How about adding <categorytree mode=pages>Category name</categorytree> to each of the BC decade births/deaths categories? I've done this (for example purposes) at Category:0s deaths. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:05, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I think I prefer Option 1 (returning to the earlier scheme of single year categories). Single year categories in this case provide more information and make it easier to use the categories. I think one of the main purposes of these categories is to provide an easy way for people to see who died in exactly which years. So in this case I think WP:SMALLCAT shouldn't be applied, as it removes most of the utility that the categorization provides. Calathan (talk) 16:56, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Category:220s BC deaths has over 40 entries. I don't think that the difficulty is "insurmountable", but it's a difficulty, while this feature was meant to facilitate our work. Other categories have even more and will continue to grow. But now I've seen the Category:0s deaths and I think it's just great. A perfect solution! Go for it!--Lamassus (talk) 18:27, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

For the record, the implementation of this is traceable at Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_71#BC_births_and_deaths_categorizations. – Fayenatic London 13:46, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Military service categories

An editor has recently been deleting RAF categories from individuals who served in the RAF in the war but were not regular RAF personnel. See for instance [1] and [2]. I believe this is against the spirit of categorisation and should be reverted. Military service is usually very defining for those who served, even if they only served for a few years, and especially if they served in a world war. It's also something that interests many people and deleting these cats is doing them a disservice. Thoughts? -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:56, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

We normally categorise people only by those occupations for which they are notable (see WP:COP#N). If someone spent a period (e.g. during wartime and/or as a conscript) in military service (alongside many thousands/millions of other people) which did not make them notable (or, for that matter as a non-notable fireman, barman etc) before going on to become notable (as an actor, politician, businessman etc) then the military service is a WP:NON-DEFINING characteristic. It may be appropriate to mention the military service (and other occupations) in the article text (alongside info about parents, marriage, children and many other things that may be an important part of their life, but we don't categorize for), but not categorizing them for it doesn't "do them a disservice" (the purpose of categories is to organise articles, provide navigation etc). DexDor (talk) 09:38, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Whether something is non-defining or not is entirely down to interpretation. I would say that military service is extremely defining (I would certainly expect my military and police service to be categorised if anyone ever wrote an article about me, even though neither of them have been my main career!). Would you say receipt of a gallantry medal is defining? Surely it is, even if the recipient is not a regular member of the armed forces. If that is defining is then the fact of military service not defining? Of course it is. Or is it only defining for people who weren't decorated? None of this makes any joined-up sense. Just as where someone went to school or university is defining (surely we'd just delete all these thousands of categories otherwise, since nobody goes to school or university professionally). Your interpretation would actually lead to most categories being removed from articles. Discussing such moves before you impose them unilaterally is always a good idea. Our guidelines are not set in stone and not everyone thinks as you do. "the purpose of categories is to organise articles, provide navigation etc"? Er, yes, exactly.
I should point out that one of the categories you have removed is Category:Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II. Given the RAFVR was for part-time and war service personnel only, what's the point of it at all if everyone who only served part-time or in the war is removed from it? The same goes for other categories (e.g. Category:British military personnel killed in World War I. Most of them weren't regulars and had other careers outside the forces!). As I said, this all makes no sense and has not been thought through. You are basically arbitrarily deciding what you think is defining. That's not necessarily what others think is defining or what the subject themselves thinks is defining. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
I will give you a perfect example. My father gave six years of his life to the RAF and his country during the Second World War. He was in the RAFVR. He wasn't a regular RAF officer. Like the vast majority of other people who served, he wasn't killed or decorated. At the end of the war he returned to his old job as a cinema manager and never set foot in a Spitfire (or any other aeroplane) ever again. But did his service define him? Yes, most definitely it did. It defined him and his memories and it defines my memories of him. He wasn't notable enough for an article on Wikipedia. But it's just as defining for those who are, even if they're famous for other things. Military service, especially in war, is defining, both personally to those who served and to the historical record. Make no mistake about that. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:19, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Having served in the military may be a (very) important part of some peoples lives, and for many people other things (e.g. being a parent, having a religious faith, being gay/straight, male/female) might be an important aspect of their life (and all are worthy of mention in the article text) - but, we are talking here about how we categorize encyclopedia articles so, for example, a person who was a non-notable soldier then a non-notable clerk, then a notable politician only needs to be categorized for the occupation(s) that made them notable. DexDor (talk) 06:15, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Second what Necrothesp is saying. In particular, removing the RAFVR category is completely bizarre, and should stop forthwith, regardless of any other community consensus reached in this discussion. Removing the other categories is, at the very least, removing truthful information about a person!! Buckshot06 (talk) 21:11, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
Removing a category tag is not removing information from an article as the information should also be in the article text (where it can/should be cited) - and if it's not then the category tag should be removed anyway.
Are you saying that you think WP:COP#N is "completely bizarre"?
COP#N exists for a reason; many people who are notable for one occupation have also done a variety of other occupations (for which they are not notable) (for example actors before their acting career takes off and sports stars after their sporting career is over) and it is not appropriate to categorize for such occupations (e.g. Clint Eastwood should not be categorized as a firefighter and Cecil Parkinson should not be in an airmen category) as this causes category clutter on articles (see essay WP:DNWAUC) and makes the categories less useful (e.g. anyone looking at categories such as Category:Soviet military personnel is probably interested in notable personnel, not the many thousands of people who were a non-notable conscript before becoming a notable artist or whatever). It could also complicate categorization - e.g. if an article just says "After doing national service he..." then we wouldn't be able to put that article in a category for a specific branch of the military and info about a previous job could be removed from the article text. Many articles about people who have served in the military are currently in such categories, but many others are not (e.g. Nicolas Sarkozy, Ora Namir).
It might be possible to make an exception to COP#N for military service, but then why not firefighter, police officer, coastguard, miner...? An exception only for military service in wartime could also be considered, but that would still mean many people (e.g. Israelis) being added to such categories.
Part of the problem here may be that we do have some categories for non-defining characteristics (e.g. year of birth, place of death and sometimes university/ies attended), but those ("standard biographical characteristics") are different in several respects - (1) normally a person is only in one (or a very small number) of each of such categories and (2) such categories don't mix people who are notable for that characteristic with people who aren't. DexDor (talk) 06:59, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
I think the problem here is that you have interpreted WP:COP#N in a specific way and assume everyone else will agree with that interpretation. I don't think we're making an exception for military service at all. We are taking it as a defining characteristic. Because it is a defining characteristic. It is indeed true that many jobs people held for a bit may not be defining. But military service not defining? Frankly, utter rubbish. Look in Who's Who, the principal British biographical reference work, for example. Almost everyone who has done military service will list that military service, often in some detail. They probably won't list the fact that they worked as a builder's labourer; they will almost certainly list the fact that they served in the Royal Air Force, even if it was only National Service. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

D'Agostino sorting

Just trawling through Category:Living people correcting Default sorts, and have found 17 D'Agostino's sorted as Dagostino, looking at the guidelines am I right in thinking they should be sorted as D'Agostino instead (to join the 4 already sorted thus ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:30, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

GrahamHardy Per WP:MCSTJR, apostrophes should be kept, therefore D'Agostino is correct. The only exception is if the surname starts with O, such as O'Neill. This would be sorted as ONeill. Bgwhite (talk) 22:03, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming, I will correct them GrahamHardy (talk) 22:27, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
All done, thx GrahamHardy (talk) 22:40, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Categorization of people by place

Re this edit - North Norfolk District did not exist in Cubitt's lifetime. Does that matter ? Feel free to point me at archived discussions, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 09:37, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I have found Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people/Archive 9#by place but it appears inconclusive. My feeling is that he was born near Dilham, and Dilham is in North Norfolk. We should try to as specific as possible in such categorization, hence my belief that the change was correct... GrahamHardy (talk) 20:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, in these circumstances we usually categorise by the current district unless that would be completely anachronistic (usually where the county boundaries have changed). -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:09, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Sortkey ONeill vs Oneill

@Bgwhite: My edit, summary...:

  • Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}. not {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}}

...was reverted, summary:

  • No it's not. See ref. It also no longer matters as Wikipedia has changed to treat upper and lower case letters as the same

There are three relevant questions:

  1. Does the English Wikipedia setup permit case-sensitive sorting?
  2. Does the reference specify case-sensitive sorting?
  3. What is the actual DEFAULTSORT of the Eugene O'Neill article?

My original edit reflected the answer to question #3, namely that the article actually uses "Oneill" and not "ONeill". I presume this dates to the old days when the answer to question #1 was "Yes", and you had to use be careful with sortkeys to ensure case-insensitive order. The answer to question #2 seems to me to be "No", despite the exhortation "See ref". The reference (Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed. 18.72) says:

Names with "O'." Names beginning with O' are alphabetized as if the apostrophe were missing.

Onassis, Aristotle
O'Neill, Eugene
Ongaro, Francesco dall'

Only a pointlessly literal interpretation of "as if the apostrophe were missing" would demand {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}} rather than {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}. There is no point in changing the thousands of DEFAULTSORTs that use the no-longer-necessary "Oneill" convention. jnestorius(talk) 19:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Jnestorius I've changed tens of thousands of articles that had the wrong defaultsort. Spanish, Asian and Icelandic are the worst. But you are missing the entire point:
  • It doesn't matter anymore about lower vs upper. Wikimedia software treats {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}}, {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}, {{DEFAULTSORT:oneill, Eugene}} as the same sort value. There is no reason to go change any article's defaultsort value, Originally, the software treated upper and lower case differently. This change was made around May-June 2011.
  • Sorting references from International Federation of Library Associations, British Standard and national libraries all sort with case sensitive. The Chicago Manual of Style ref says the same thing... are alphabetized as if the apostrophe were missing Thus O'Neill, Eugene becomes ONeill, Eugene. It doesn't say remove the apostrophe and use lower case. When it comes to rules, don't imply something that is not there.
All bots and scripts will sort as {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}}. This is because things are sorted as spelled (unless an exception happens).
The point of the rule is about apostrophes, not case. There is no reason to change case in any new or old defaultsort because there is nothing that says changing case must be done. Bgwhite (talk) 21:13, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
  • "There is no reason to change case in any new or old defaultsort" — I agree. "there is nothing that says changing case must be done" — I disagree. I interpret For example, Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}} as implying that {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}} would be wrong. If this is not the intended reading, it could be clarified, say: For example, Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}} (or equivalently {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}) If the parenthetical is too cluttering it could be relegated to a footnote.
  • As a factual statement (as opposed to a normative one) For example, Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene}} is false. Check the article's markup and you will see. An MOS example should be an article that actually does what the MOS says it does. Simplest would simply be to edit Eugene O'Neill to match.
  • There is in fact nothing on the page that explains that sorting is technically case-insensitive. I have added a statement to Help:Category#Sort order to that effect; perhaps it might also be made at WP:SORTKEY and/or WP:NAMESORT.
  • The Chicago example above is type C not type B in the table below; O'Neill is after Onassis.
A. Sort case-sensitive with apostrophe B. Sort case-sensitive without apostrophe: C. Sort case-insensitive without apostrophe:
  1. O'Neal, Shaquille
  2. O'Neill, Eugene
  3. ONERA
  4. ONElist
  5. Onassis, Aristotle
  6. Oneida
  7. Ongaro, Francesco dall'
  1. ONERA
  2. ONElist
  3. ONeal, Shaquille
  4. ONeill, Eugene
  5. Onassis, Aristotle
  6. Oneida
  7. Ongaro, Francesco dall'
  1. ONASSIS, ARISTOTLE
  2. ONEAL, SHAQUILLE
  3. ONEIDA
  4. ONEILL, EUGENE
  5. ONELIST
  6. ONERA
  7. ONGARO, FRANCESCO DALL'
jnestorius(talk) 22:54, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
Jnestorius It doesn't matter who's right or wrong, what you think about the table or what should/shouldn't be capialised. Wikipedia is case insensitive. Stop. There's no reason to add a disclaimer about Oneill and ONiell. To be thorough for your disclaimer, you need to add {{DEFAULSORT:oneil eugene}} too, but it's not needed As bin, von, dell and the other 50 particles can be lower or uppercase, I'm not adding disclaimers for them. I'm not changing every example to have only lowercase letters, {{tq|DEFAULTSORT:oneill, eugene}}, because that's what Mediawiki treats defaultsort as. The example is only about apostrophes, not case. You are way over thinking this. Nothing on this page needs to be changed to talk about lower or uppercase. How MediaWiki functions is at Help:Category. This is where cases should be mentioned and you have already added it. Bgwhite (talk) 04:58, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Country-specific WP:NAMESORT cases (Thailand)

I previously asked this some time ago, but the answers weren't conclusive then. Although Thai names follow the Western order, they are academically sorted by given name, and this is reflected in the guideline. This is good for categories containing only (or as the majority) Thai people. My question is this: Should the Thai order apply to all categories, or should the Western order be used for international categories? I.e., should articles just list

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forename Surname}}
[[Category:International people]]
[[Category:Thai people]]

Or should a distinction be made, like this?

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Forename}}
[[Category:International people]]
[[Category:Thai people|Forename Surname]]

--Paul_012 (talk) 11:39, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh. I just noticed the #Clarification about the DEFAULTSORT/sort key for the Icelandic names discussion above. This probably means the distinction should be made for Thailand as well. --Paul_012 (talk) 06:03, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
I've edited the guideline to read, "In categories mostly containing articles about Thai people, Thai names should be sorted as they are written with the forename first." --Paul_012 (talk) 20:50, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Alphabetical order

At Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization, the advice under In what order should categories be listed within the article? is this: "Both the alphabet and importance are used to order categories currently." But this sounds like a bit of a contradiction to me. Is it a waste of time to do bother to do either? Do individual projects have their own preferred styles? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Brito de Martí before Brito

Just stumbled across this one: Per Defaultsort Esperanza Brito de Martí (Brito de Martí, Esperanza) is sorted before Leonora Brito (Brito, Leonora). To me, the logical way would be the other way round but maybe the machine sorts per "Brito d" and "Brito L"? It's just a very minor issue as there can't be that many comparable cases but I am still interested in the opinion of others concerning this case. But if the sorting is logically wrong but can't be fixed because of technical constraints that's okay for me. --Proofreader (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Just found another one: Enrique Campos Menéndez before Julieta Campos, so it has nothing to do with the first letter of the second surname, it is just that a space in a name is always sorted before names consisting of just one surname. --Proofreader (talk) 22:17, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Interesting – my guess is that the space in "Brito de Marti, Esperanza" is sorted before the comma in "Brito, Leonora". The software probably isn't intelligent enough to ignore the comma... and even if it was it would still get it wrong! --Deskford (talk) 22:32, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Sorting would be more reliable if we omitted the spaces from the sort keys. If we used "BritodeMarti,Esperanza" and "Brito,Leonora" as the sort keys then I think the software would get it right. --Deskford (talk) 22:36, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
True, but that would also appear a bit unnatural to do. I'll try a bug report/feature request instead; maybe the technicians can find an easy way to fix this one. --Proofreader (talk) 09:20, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
Done:[3], let's see if this can be fixed. --Proofreader (talk) 09:46, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Brazilian names

I was just looking at the section Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category, sub-section "Sort by surname", shortcut WP:SUR, and I saw that the seventh bulleted item starts, "Portuguese names (Portugal only)...." I looked in the list for some mention of Brazilian names but could not find any. It is my understanding that Brazilian names are written differently from Spanish names, and with the exclusion of "Portugal only", readers might think Brazilian names are to be sorted the same as Spanish names. Shouldn't there be a note specific to Brazilian names? Also, what about names in all the former Portuguese colonies in Africa?  – Corinne (talk) 18:30, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

No, it just means that Brazilian names are not problematic, if I understand correctly, because in Brazil the full last name (even if composed of the last names of both parents) will always, unambiguously, have the father's last name first, so, for sorting, one doesn't need the exception that applies in Portugal where the order of the two last names needs to be switched if one wants to collate alphabetically by the last name of the father (collating by last name of the father is the general principle for all Portuguese names). --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Brazilian footballers

Many are known just by a forename. Many others are known by forename surname, for example David Braz. Should such 'forename surname' footballers be given {{DEFAULTSORT:surname, forename}} as a matter of course ? I believe this to be the case so attempted to do so for David Braz but was reverted, (despite the player being referred to as 'Braz' in the body of three of the 11 references cited in the article). Rather than concentrating on this specific article I was am seeking general guidance on 'known as forename surname' footballers, which I could then cite in disputes such as that over David Braz, Thanks ... GrahamHardy (talk) 21:17, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@GrahamHardy: As I've told you in my edit summary: the player is known as David Braz. Period. Not only by Braz. "[...] player being referred to as 'Braz' in the body of three of the 11 references cited in the article": okay, what about the other eight? A quick Google search shows us the difference (David Braz and Braz), note that the first search actually brings us a lot of info about the player, while the second one does not bring the player at all. By searching Braz jogador ("player" in English) you get more results from Fábio Braz than from him... MYS77 ✉ 22:04, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
Same happens with Braz zagueiro ("stopper" or "centre-back" in English)... MYS77 ✉ 22:05, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
  • And replying to your main context here, no. That's not the case. You have to analyze the players one by one because some of them are actually known by two names (like David Braz, Gustavo Henrique, Renato Augusto), others can be known by his surname (like Ricardo Oliveira), others can be known by some nickname (like Zeca (Brazilian footballer), Rodrigão) and others can be known by his first name (like Jean). Playing it short: Brazil is a complicated country in the means of sorting, indeed. But I don't think such sorting ('forename surname') should be taken as default. MYS77 ✉ 22:10, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
All I am asking about is where they are commonly known by forename surname, in these cases I believe [[DEFAULTSORT:surname, forename]] should always be used, just need this confirming (or otherwise) by the wider community...GrahamHardy (talk) 23:07, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
My thoughts entirely, but this approach is being challenged, hence this discussion...GrahamHardy (talk) 10:18, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
And I'm answering the challenge. We have a standard practice here, and there's no basis for trying to diverge from it on a micro-topical basis. The fact that some members of the press like to treat a few of these people as mononyms, like Madonna and Prince, when they're not really is immaterial.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  14:47, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
I am only interested (at present) in those known as 'forename surname', I have also had my edits on Fabrício Bruno and Fabrício Carvalho reverted. Am I OK to redo these changes as it appears there should be no dispute for players known as forename surname...GrahamHardy (talk) 07:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Right. The category sorts for those should be "Bruno, Fabricio" and "Carvalho, Fabricio", per standard practice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  16:48, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

category

hi please make categorys Bacillales described by years and other pages example Firmicutes described by year — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.75.36.160 (talk) 08:04, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Thai names

Update: Never mind, see below. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

People's names are customarily sorted by given name in Thailand. The guideline currently instructs that Thai names should carry a Western DEFAULTSORT value, which should be overridden by manually entering the by-given-name sort key for Thailand-related categories. (I made the addition in December 2016.) However, it's become clear to me that this construct is practically impossible to maintain. (Without a bot, that is; I'd asked at WP:BOTREQ but assistance doesn't appear to be forthcoming.) I'd like to suggest that things be simplified by removing the distinction between Thai and non-Thai categories, and just list the DEFAULTSORT by given name. That is, Prayut Chan-o-cha should have {{DEFAULTSORT:Prayut Chan-o-cha}} for all categories. Since the large majority of categories most biographical articles carry are already nationality-specific, the categories affected by this change would be few. (An exception would be Category:Living people but it's not really used for navigation anyway.) Thoughts? --Paul_012 (talk) 14:19, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

  • I'd oppose this: I'd rather sort all Thai categories by last name. Could you provide some examples of lists of names in English-language reliable sources that contain as well Thai people as non-Thai people? That could be enlightening, tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:30, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Well, for example, see the index to A History of Thailand.[4] Note how Thai names are listed: Dhanin Chiaravanont; Dhida Saraya; Jit Phumisak; compared to Western names: Dodd, W. C.; Donovan, William; and Eisenhower, Dwight. --Paul_012 (talk) 16:26, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
      • I see, but we can't do that in categories, where names show up as they are in the actual article titles. "Jit Phumisak" shows up as "Jit Phumisak" in a category, and "Donovan, William" shows up as "William Donovan" in a category, so the distinction made in your example where all names sort by the first letter shown, using a comma to throw the given names to the end for non-Thai names, can not be imitated in Wikipedia categories. In a category there's only one logical thing to do, and that is either sort them all by last name or sort them all by first name, anything else would be confusing. As the majority of English Wikipedia's readers are probably accustomed to lists of names sorted by last name, any category that has a mix of Thai and non-Thai names should be sorted by last name. And I propose the categories with only Thai names do the same. Principle of least surprise for the largest group of readers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
        • Have you seen WP:SUR? It's simply not possible to sort all names by surname and last name, because lots of names don't follow the Western order. It's a technical limitation that we just have to accept. Your proposal to turn Thai people categories upside down is contrary to widely established practice; I think it would confuse and do more harm than good. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Update: TheSandDoctor has kindly offered to help with the bot request; please disregard the original proposal. I'll work on implementing the current guideline. I think this is the best outcome, as it should allay the concerns regarding categories with a mix of Thai and Western names, while keeping the established practice for Thai people categories. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: Courtesy ping....see above --TheSandDoctor (talk) 16:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: yes I saw the above, and saw Paul 012's BotReqs. Not too sure it is all going the right way, but didn't want to post an outright oppose to the bot plans unless I was sure it's not what's needed now (and if it is OK with current guidance there would be no need to interfere with the BotReqs whatsoever). Anyhow, since I'm typing here, I have doubts regarding:
Article Sort key
Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro Sodh Candasaro, Luang Pu
Luang Pu Thuat Luang Pu Thuat
(extracted from the permalink provided by Paul 012 in the 2nd botreq). Why the different sort key for these two Luang Pu's? IMHO this is going nowhere. I also found Paul 012's remark above a bit off-topic: yes I know the difference between last name and surname, and yes I should have said surname in order to be technically correct (to include also all other types of names besides the ones discussed in the examples), but for the examples that were discussed "last name" was as correct as "surname". And yes, I'm familiar with WP:SUR, I wrote part of it and had to explain a few times that, for instance, sorting by last name is not the same in Belgium as in the Netherlands for last names like "Van den Wyngaert". So I know what I'm talking about. That being said, I don't think a bot should introduce {{DEFAULTSORT}} values that are identical to the actual article title. So the {{DEFAULTSORT}} should be "...:surname, given name(s)" for Thai names as for most other names, with per-category sort keys for those categories that only contain Thai people. And if that is too difficult, then no exceptions for the Thai people categories: sort them all by last name (in which case we'd have to change the guideline first). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:52, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Francis Schonken, my apologies for the remark. That said, the bot requests were made in accordance with the current guidelines. Since the remaining concerns are rather specific to the requests, I'll continue the discussion there. --Paul_012 (talk) 17:09, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
No, it would be better that the discussion came to a consensus here before launching a bot request: launching a bot request that is not supported by consensus would normally be declined, and it seems that both bot requests go beyond what is mandated by current guidance, so would need an explicit consensus. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:30, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I must reiterate that the two bot requests have nothing to do with the above revoked proposal, and are in accordance with the previously established guidelines. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Notification of bot request

In order to clarify the confusion in the above section and to address User:Francis Schonken's concerns, I've made two bot requests for edits that will bring biographical articles of Thai persons in line with the guideline. The first, Wikipedia:Bot requests#Mass editing {{DEFAULTSORT}} values, is to fix incorrect DEFAULTSORT values for articles, mostly about royalty and nobility, whose titles do not contain surnames but may have mistakenly had DEFAULTSORT keys incorrectly formatted as such. The second, Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fixing sort keys for biographies of Thai people, is to enforce the Thailand-specific guidance under WP:NAMESORT, i.e. make the DEFAULTSORT follow the Western order, while overriding with the Thai order for Thai people-related categories. --Paul_012 (talk) 19:01, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

I asked you about the two Luang Pu persons: a vaguish "mostly about royalty and nobility" does not answer the question for these two (both appear to be Buddhist monks). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:44, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Also, the Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro article already contains {{DEFAULTSORT:Sodh Candasaro, Luang Pu}} and the Luang Pu Thuat article already contains {{DEFAULTSORT:Luang Pu Thuat}} (I checked for this article: the DEFAULTSORT was added in 2010), so I'm really, really questioning whether these proposals have been thought through at all. Seems a solution in search of a problem. In the format as proposed at the BotReq page I'd still decline both: far from the solid consensus needed for such requests. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:23, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Francis Schonken, I already answered your question regarding the Luang Pus: "This is because all the other Luang Pus are titles preceding the person's name, but Luang Pu Thuat is a specific name in and of itself—the subject's name wasn't Thuat." That the DEFAULTSORT in the articles are already correct is a good thing—the bot will simply take no action. I still don't quite understand what you're concerned will be a problem. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, shows the disadvantage of having the same discussion in two different places. The place to have the discussion is here (i.e. where it initiated), and it should not have been split out to the BotReq page before consensus. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:57, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
With the splitting of discussions, asking for tasks that appear to have been performed many years ago, etc, you're at least doing a very poor job in trying to convince me to join a consensus.
That being said, I think the {{Thai name sort}} tag for categories, as mentioned in the first BotReq, has some merit. Here's how I'd proceed:
  1. start the {{Thai name sort}} template, containing Note on sorting: Thailand people are usually called by the first name, even telephone books are sorted by the first name [...] or some such text that explains the sorting, and include a maintenance category (specifically and exclusively for Thai people categories) in the template.
  2. add the template, manually, to a handful of Thai people categories
  3. Then evaluate whether content and execution of the template are OK for the Thailand WikiProject
  4. Then come back here to find consensus for an update to the WP:SUR guidance, which should now mention this specific template
  5. Then evaluate, also with involvement of the editors of the Thailand Wikiproject, whether following bot tasks would be a good idea ("how" should find consensus too if these are deemed useful bot tasks):
    1. Add the template systematically to all Thai people categories
    2. "force" all names in categories that are listed in the maintenance category to collate alphabetically according to how the name appears in the article title
  6. If and when all the preceding has worked out: file the bot request(s).
--Francis Schonken (talk) 08:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestions, Francis Schonken. What about the other task, which does not involve {{Thai name sort}}? I'll explain a bit more that it is only to fix DEFAULTSORT keys for certain articles if they are currently incorrect, and is not specific to Thai people categories. As you noted, some (probably most, even) of those listed articles already have correct sort keys, but it would still be a huge effort to manually check them one by one. This is why a request for automation was made. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
And for the record, WP:Bot requests is not Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. I'm not sure if you're confusing the two. None of your suggested steps would be of any use if no one was available to code a bot for said task, so it was entirely appropriate that I asked first at WP:BOTREQ, which, as noted at the top of the page, "is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots," and can often be where consensus for a bot is hammered out, with the discussion advertised at relevant project pages (as I have already done for WT:WikiProject Thailand). Only after consensus is established will a WP:BRFA be filed. (And technically, the posts at WP:BOTREQ were made before I posted here, meaning that the original discussion is located there, and was forked here. But never mind that.) --Paul_012 (talk) 09:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
The "other" task would be step 5.2 in the scheme proposed above (and the task would probably need to be redefined completely in order to be eligible for running a bot on it). As said, I'd decline the current proposal, for the reasons given (including COSMETICBOT, apparently by and large redundant, etc), and for being poorly defined.
I'm well aware what WP:Bot requests is (also there: don't assume I don't know what I'm talking about, I have a long standing involvement there). Expanding a bit what I mentioned before: tasks that don't have a *clear* preliminary consensus would not be performed by bot; tasks that go against the letter of COSMETICBOT would need a near-unanimous and very, very broad consensus, established in advance of filing the BotReq, or it would be very unlikely you could find a bot operator who would be prepared to run the risk of going against policy. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry if I offended, I wanted to be sure that we weren't misunderstanding. In response to the issues you raised, I've revoked the Mass editing {{DEFAULTSORT}} values request and gone ahead and manually done the editing. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:44, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Coming back to Luang Pu: if I understand correctly, in a name like Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro the "Luang Pu" part would be something like the "Mahatma" part in the (Indian) name Mahatma Gandhi or the "Father" part in the (Western) name Father Damien. For clarity, such article titles are not covered by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility) but by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Titles and styles. Sorting by given name would be "Gandhi, Mahatma", "Damien, Father", and thus also "Sodh Candasaro, Luang Pu" for such examples. Is that what you meant? For my proposed scheme above this could be tackled by instructing the bot performing the 5.2 task to work with a preliminarily defined "escape" list of articles that should be left alone when forcing the "given name" collation in Thai articles. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, your understanding of Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro is correct. So if I'm reading correctly, your approach so far would involve identifying categories by placement of the template, and identifying articles to exclude using a preliminarily defined escape list. This would be converse to my original proposal, which would identify articles to include via inclusion of the template, and using a predefined list for the categories.
I still prefer my approach. I think adding the template to each article as it is created would be easier than maintaining a central list. Also, more importantly, while the Thai sort order is to be limited to categories populated by Thai people, there will inevitably be some mainly-Thai-people categories that still have a handful of Western names mixed in. For example, Gordon Lowden is a member of Category:People from Bangkok, as he was born there. But he otherwise has no connections to Thailand and it would be inappropriate to list his name using the Thai name order. I appreciate your aforementioned concerns regarding the principle of least astonishment, but as I have shown, this is standard practice in Thailand-related scholarship. Differing from it (by excluding such categories) would cause more confusion to readers who know and are expecting to see the practice followed (and who are probably more inclined to browse Thai people-related categories), IMO. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:44, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Coming back to what I said way up above (my second reply in this section): "...your example where all names sort by the first letter shown, using a comma to throw the given names to the end for non-Thai names, can not be imitated in Wikipedia categories. In a category there's only one logical thing to do, and that is either sort them all by last name or sort them all by first name, anything else would be confusing." (emphasis added) – so in the Gordon Lowden article that would mean [[Category:People from Bangkok|Gordon Lowden]] *or* have the entire category sort by last name. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:54, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's a proposal of what a {{Thai people category}} template for Thai people categories could look like:

+ the template would carry a maintenance category, for instance called Category:Thai people categories.

I'm still not convinced it's worth all the trouble, and whether we shouldn't simply go back to collating all these categories in the usual order (i.e. surname, + exceptions when the article title does not contain a surname). The "principle of least astonishment" applies to the readership of English Wikipedia as a whole, and does not start from assumptions like Thai people categories being most likely visited by people who are aware of this particular approach of Thailand-related scholarship and Thai telephone books. There has been an effort recently to reduce the number of country-specific styles for English in Wikipedia (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 201#Can we clarify what does and does not constitute 'strong national ties'?: not directly relevant, long discussion, and no apparent conclusion – but it shows that specific style-related issues being catered for every variety of English, per country, is not necessarily something we would do in Wikipedia), so I'm still on the fence whether we should do this type of country-dependent collation in categories. This can be done in lists, but for categories inserted in a whole system of categories where one would rather expect the system to be coherent and consistent throughout I don't yet fully see the advantage of these layers of complications that would be perceived as quite unusual by the larger portion of the readership. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Understood. But I must disagree. Both of those options contradict the guideline as it stands, and I don't think there's going to be consensus for sorting Thai people by surname (a practice established since the beginning of time in Wikipedia terms and first documented in 2006). Not sure about sorting Western people by given name in Thai categories, but I'm not optimistic. I think we should value compromise (between established standards and technical limitations) rather than pure cold logic (which does nothing to solve confusion in cases like Van den Wyngaert anyway). An imperfect solution would still be better than maintaining the status quo—pointing again to Category:People from Bangkok, where even the Thai names are a jumbled mess of given name and surname sorting. Shouldn't we at least try to fix this, bringing them in line with current guidelines, at least until clearer consensus is achieved on how to deal with Gordon Lowden? --Paul_012 (talk) 13:11, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Well I was proposing a compromise solution: something that adheres to the spirit of the current WP:SUR guidance (requiring very little fine-tuning to it) *and* would be fairly straightforward to maintain by automated operations *and* would generally avoid confusion for the reader. Your proposal is unclear, on the one side you propose to "coldly" follow what is already in the guideline (be it as confusing as it may), on the other side you seem to want to get away from "status quo" while you don't like it and it led to a mess (me having doubts whether effort vs. sustainable result was properly assessed in what you propose). At this point I'd really like to hear more opinions of people connected to the Thailand WikiProject: not sure whether they would in general consider this category collation issue important enough to put much effort in, and if so, in which direction. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:49, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Moving forward

I've left a notice, but WikiProject Thailand hasn't been the most active of WikiProjects for quite a while. If input appears lacking, perhaps an RfC would be in order? So far I see four options for the main question of how to sort Thai names and names in Thailand-related categories:

(1) Leave the guideline as-is, i.e. use given name sorting for Thai people only in Thailand categories;
(2) Sort all people in Thailand categories by given name;
(3) Sort Thai people by given name in all categories (this was how the guideline read between 2012 and 2016); and
(4) remove all exceptions for Thai people and sort by surname.

Details on how to enforce the changes, including the use of bots, would be a secondary question.--Paul_012 (talk) 15:20, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your report on history:
  • Without delving too much in "how" systems can be implemented, I suppose an important factor is whether a system is easy or difficult to manage (i.e. whether enforcement would be easy or difficult to implement): system #1 would fail that I suppose (leading to quote unquote "a jumbled mess" as experience has proven).
  • Similarly, without delving too much into "how" confusion can be reduced to acceptable proportions (e.g. by diligent use of banners that explain the sorting in categories), it seems like system #3 would score worst on confusion (and that was probably one of the reasons why it was abandoned in 2016).
So for me #2 and #4 are the eligible contenders, i.e. leading implementation-wise and confusion-wise most likely to a more or less manageable situation. I wouldn't even be completely averse to having in Thailand people categories a
(5) system that only permits sorting by actual article title
(what would most people visiting English-language Wikipedia know whether Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro needs to be sorted "Sodh Candasaro, Luang Pu" while the other Luang Pu needs to be sorted "Luang Pu Thuat"? – categories are to a large extent for easy navigation from one article to another, i.e. without needing to solve a linguistic riddle in between). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Although I have not read up on the whole history of this inquiry, and am not well versed in the technical issues at hand, here is my opinion. Lists of people are in Thailand invariably sorted by given name. It would be good practice to follow that in WP as well. Also foreigners are normally only addressed by their given names and sorted as such. So my preference would be to follow option 3 or at the very least option 2. −Woodstone (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
(E/C) I think #1 and #2 (and also #5) are equally complicated, implementation-wise. Both would require a bot to periodically add overriding category sort keys when editors fail to do so (which they most often do, especially when using HotCat). Both #3 and #4 will require no active maintenance once the current situation is sorted. (This would still probably require a bot, given the number of articles involved.) This is why at the top of this discussion I suggested modifying the guideline, since I wasn't expecting bot availability. However, since TheSandDoctor's offered to help with the bot, I'm not seeing it as such a huge barrier anymore. (There are downsides, of course, such as what happens if TheSandDoctor becomes unavailable, but I don't think they're a deal-breaker.) So, assuming a bot is available, I'd still prefer #1, but given your arguments, I wouldn't oppose #2, if the larger community is shown to approve. If not relying on bots in the future is a concern, I would prefer #3, per my previous arguments. (For the record, the 2016 edit which changed the guideline away from #3 was made so that it would agree with Icelandic categories, as well as with WP:MOSTHAI, a project style guide drafted and discussed in 2010, but which hadn't been widely implemented.) --Paul_012 (talk) 17:51, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
I see. The Icelandic adjustment, which I followed a bit, was done in order to avoid confusion. Also, if I remember correctly, #1 would yield exactly the same result when applied to Icelandic categories as #2 would when applied to these categories (in other words: there is no #1/#2 distinction for Icelandic categories). The idea was to have Icelandic categories sort the Icelandic way, and have Icelanders in other categories sort the standard way. But for Thai names #1 does not equal #2. However, the principle to have Thailand categories sort the Thai way (which was the principle of what was implemented for the Icelandic names) is in fact more cleanly expressed by #2 than the current guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:48, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Tests

System #1 tests

Proposed system explained at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fixing sort keys for biographies of Thai people

  • Test template for articles: {{Thai name sort}} (as of writing no test implementations of this template yet)

--Francis Schonken (talk) 07:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

System #2 tests

Proposed system explained above

  • Test template for categories: {{Thai people category}}, and template documentation {{Thai people category/doc}}, which contains the "escape list" mentioned in the suggestions above
  • Test implementations of the template: the template has been implemented for test purposes in the seven subcategories of Category:Academics by university in Thailand
  • The test maintenance category that goes with the template is Category:Thai people categories, currently containing the seven categories mentioned in the previous point.
  • I'm abandoning the "hidden category" for the test: the transclusions in category namespace of the template can be found here

--Francis Schonken (talk) 07:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC); updated 09:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Academics_of_Chulalongkorn_University, this does not implement option #2, since foreigners are still sorted by family name. I do not see one of the options listed having this effect. For clarity of discussion it should perhaps be added as additional option. −Woodstone (talk) 08:20, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
System #1 (the current system) keeps Western names sorted by last name in these categories, so "I do not see one of the options listed having this effect" is incorrect: option #1 has this effect (note though, that the current system, i.e. #1, has not been implemented flawlessly, and that's why System #1 tests above exists);
In the test I didn't update the sorting yet: I have done so now, manually, for Category:Academics of Chulalongkorn University. The test was primarily intended to make an assessment of whether the system can easily be enforced by bot (doing the edits manually kind of thwarts that purpose, but at least for Category:Academics of Chulalongkorn University it can be seen what it would look like now). For that category, containing 39 pages in all, I updated 14 sort keys ([5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]), all quite straightforward, and I suppose such task can be pretty easily performed by bot. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
The category seems fine, I think. (Though Luang Wichitwathakan should be Wichitwathakan, Luang, as Luang is a noble title.) Should we start an RfC, or would you rather wait a few more days first? --Paul_012 (talk) 11:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Re. Luang: indeed, I am no computer, this person is on the escape list at Template:Thai people category/doc#Sort keys of biographical articles added to categories with this template → sorted
Re. RfC: I don't see the need for it, at least not yet. We've had three participants here, and there is at least one solution all three can live with. Compare to the previous time it went to BotReq: 50% support with two participants, and now an apparent consensus compromise with three. Let's see whether anyone else walks by in the next week or so, and whether that changes anything. Maybe more interesting as a first next step would be to see if technically what I proposed as an implementation for #2 would work (#1 already having been technically vetted if I understand correctly): TheSandDoctor? --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Here's a sort of flow chart as I imagine it for the bot operation:
  1. Select a category from this list
  2. Is the category empty?
    • no: in the category selected in the previous step, select an article, then go to step 3
    • yes: go to step 7
  3. Is that article listed in the escape list at Template:Thai people category/doc#Sort keys of biographical articles added to categories with this template?
    • no: go to step 4
    • yes: go to step 6
  4. Does the article have a {{DEFAULTSORT}} parameter that is different from the exact article title?
    • no: if the category call for the category selected since step 2 has a sort key different from the exact article title, then remove that sort key from that category call, next go to step 6
    • yes: go to step 5
  5. Does the category call (i.e. for the category selected since step 2) in that article have a sort key that is exactly the same as the article title?
    • no: add the "|<exact article title>" sort key to that category call, replacing whatever sort key, if any, may be present for that category call, then go to step 6
    • yes: go to step 6
  6. Are there any other articles in the category selected since step 2 that have not yet passed through step 3?
    • no: go to step 7
    • yes: select such article and go to step 3
  7. Are there any other categories in the list mentioned in step 1, that have not yet passed through step 2?
    • no: end
    • yes: select another category from that list and continue with step 2.
Is that more or less realistic? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:03, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for pinging me Francis Schonken as this page was not on my watchlist and when I had moved the template to the template namespace, I was heading out, so moved it and left (didn't see the rest). You are correct, test #1 was indeed technically vetted as feasible (albeit, the {{DEFAULTSORT}} change was all that I had implemented. I have yet to create a solution with your test #2 way, but it does seem technically feasible. (I also appreciate the addition of a categories list)
Thanks for the flow chart as well, two quick questions though:
  1. When you say "escape list" do you mean titles that shouldn't be changed? Might just be choice of wording (or my understanding), but "escape" list seems to imply that to me (so confirming).
  2. In 4 (false), wouldn't that leave the article without a sort key?
--TheSandDoctor (talk) 15:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
The categories list creates a one-on-one overlap between "all categories having the sorted by surname banner" and "all categories processed by the bot". Regarding your questions:
  1. Yes. A bot might be programmed to handle the sorting of the articles in the escape list, but for these exceptions such programming would require so many exceptions-upon-exceptions for a limited set of articles that it seems easier to handle them manually as Paul 012 recently did (see their 10:26, 11 March 2018 comment at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Mass editing {{DEFAULTSORT}} values): seems a fairly light job to maintain that manually, and occasionally update the "escape" list if needed.
  2. Not necessarily: I rephrased a bit (see underlined addition) to make clear that the sort key should only be removed from the category call of the considered category: what goes on in other category calls is left untouched in this cycle of going through the algorithm.
Thanks for your input. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Note: I've advertised this discussion at WT:Categorization and WT:WikiProject Biography. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

It's been over a week, which should be enough time for those interested to have voiced additional views. I believe we have consensus for option #2 (sorting all articles in categories mainly about Thai people by first name, right?

Regarding the implementation, I wonder if automatically populating the list of categories would be feasible as a less maintenance-dependent alternative to population by template. I'll look a bit more into this, but it'll have to wait a few days. --Paul_012 (talk) 15:45, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

  • Re. "... automatically populating the list of categories would be feasible as a less maintenance-dependent alternative to population by template" – false dichotomy:
    1. All categories in the list should have the template
    2. All categories that have the template are "automatically" in the list, that is: the list as defined in my proposal
The question would rather be whether the template can be added to a group of categories by bot (which is then exactly the same as "automatically populating the list of categories"). Yes, it would be possible I suppose, that is, if the group of categories to which the template would be added can be defined clear enough to make sense for programming. See however this comment which rather suggests that a list of categories that can be fed to a bot... should be composed manually (actually, you volunteered to make that list...). Well, instead of composing a list by manually checking categories one-by-one, then program a bot to go through these categories one-by-one to add the template, wouldn't it be just much easier to go through these categories once, manually, and paste {{Thai people category}} on each one where it is needed? Also, seems easier to manage over a longer period of time: new Thai people categories may be started (we don't want the {{Thai people category}} removed from them by bot while someone forgot to add it to the manual list), other categories which were initially defined as sorting the Thai way may lose their template if they would over time start to include far more non-Thai names than Thai names (and should not be forced back by bot)... etc
The first step now should however be to update the WP:SUR guidance: otherwise a bot would operate in contravention of actual guidance. I'll try to formulate a rephrasing of the guideline ASAP: once it is operationally included in the guideline we're all set to start the bot (testing) tasks. I'd test the bot with the current seven categories in the list though, and only add more categories to the list (by adding the template) if that testing shows no problems. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:33, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Follow-up:
@Francis Schonken: Thanks for the ping. I assure you that I have not forgotten about this, I just have been quite busy lately. I will work on polishing up the bot to work based on your flow chart asap. I did however manage the other day to implement a way for the bot to gather the "do not touch" names off of that table (to compare article names to, if they are on it, will move to next page).
As for the BOTREQ, I think that this discussion would suffice but, of course, feel free to. --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:44, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Regarding the categories list, yes those are some good points. I've poked around and this PetScan query could probably work as a starting point. Implementation would wait until after trial run, of course. --Paul_012 (talk) 03:48, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Looking at this list I noticed that many of them contain only one member, making them meaningless. Is it possible to check that? It would be a good opportunity to weed them out. Perhaps a minimum of 3 members should be set for any utility of the category. −Woodstone (talk) 05:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

RfC

An RfC concerning the categorization of biracial people has been opened at [Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#RfC on categorizing biracial people]. StAnselm (talk) 04:30, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Categorization by place

Further to [[19]] which suggests that "we usually categorise by the current district unless that would be completely anachronistic (usually where the county boundaries have changed)". On the strength of this guidance I have attempted to place Pedro Menéndez Márquez in category Category:People from Parris Island, South Carolina but have had the change reverted twice. Any thoughts ? GrahamHardy (talk) 23:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

As I said at Talk:Pedro Menéndez Márquez, I think this would be anachronistic. Menéndez Márquez was governor of the Spanish presidio of Santa Elena (Spanish Florida), which was located on the island now known as Parris Island, and part of la Florida (Spanish Florida). Santa Elena was established in 1566, and abandoned in 1587, 75 years before the Province of Carolina was established. There has been no continuity of settlement on what is now known as Parris Island, and the national boundary moved. A category of "People from Santa Elena, la Florida", or 'People from "Santa Elena, Spanish Florida", would be more appropriate for Menéndez Márquez. It would also be appropriate for Juan Pardo (explorer), who led several expeditions from Santa Elena into the interior of what is now the southeastern U.S., and Sebastián Montero, a priest who accompanied Pardo. - Donald Albury 05:59, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Agreed. Might be worth cross-referencing the categories in some cases like this; probably depends on overlap.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:40, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Hernando de Miranda and Gutierre de Miranda would also fit in that category. That's at least five people who could go into "People from Santa Elena, Spanish Florida". - Donald Albury 06:45, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Which century?

If somebody (for example, an American photographer) was born in the 1800s and died in the 1900s, do you put them in Category:19th-century American photographers or Category:20th-century American photographers? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:11, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Which century/ies did they do the notable photography? DexDor (talk) 20:56, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

A point needs clarification into guidance instead of non-guiding observation (and tacit approval) of conflict

This isn't cutting it:

** American, Australian, Canadian, and English names generally sort on the prefix, regardless of capitalization. However, there are discrepancies between different sources on whether to sort on the prefix or not.

We don't care whether other publishers conflict with each other. The sole purpose of this page is to provide a consistent sorting system for use on Wikipedia, not to write a descriptive article about how others out in the world do sorting. We need to provide a single instruction here, not throw up our hands and suggest that people do whatever the heck they feel like.

It's unhelpful for another reason: providing a falsely exclusive-looking country list that doesn't have any logical structure.

Proposed revision:

** English names and those used in the anglosphere more broadly (including but not limited to Australia, Canada, Caribbean anglophone countries, New Zealand, and the United States) are to be sorted by prefix, regardless of capitalization or linguistic origin of the surname.

I left out South Africa and India for now, pending some further research. I'm not sure if naming varies widely by linguistic group in India, nor is it clear what impact the heavy Dutch/Afrikaans presence in SA may have had on this question there.

The MoS regulars have taken a renewed interest in this page, because it can be dual-purposed for how to sort by surname in lists of people. So, we'll be alert to any vagaries in the wording that are apt to lead to tedious editorial conflicts. The kind that surround MoS disputes are not always the kind that arise at WP:CFD, because of CfD's fairly strong reliance on both precedent and pattern consistency. That is, the wording needs to be tighter if MoS treats this page as incorporated by reference into MoS advice, because people will wikilawyer over its application to mainspace text in ways that the CfD regulars don't usually have to deal with. (MoS deferring to this sorting system is desirable, so we have a single by-surname sort key, not a conflicting pair of them, nor duplicate advice in two places which could later WP:POLICYFORK even if it started out the same.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Seems to be a reasonable edit (though I, too, am not sure about India and SA), and I agree the second sentence about "discrepancies between different sources" should be struck regardless. -- Black Falcon (talk) 02:28, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
I am too inexperienced to have any comment on that. But I am curious, would sorting on prefix treat bin, ibn, bint, as all identical, or as different? Fog89 (talk) 07:07, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Different, since "ibn" starts with "i" not "b". For non-American, non-British, etc., Arabic names sorted in "Fodlan, bin" or "Fodlan, ibn" style they'd sort under under "F", but still be sorted further, under that, by "b" or "i".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:13, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Sort by surname - why is Icelandic separated from the other patronymics?

In the Sort by surname sections, why is Icelandic not handled as the other patronymic systems (Ethiopian, etc)? Fog89 (talk) 06:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Appears to be an artifact of piecemeal editing. The Icelandic practice is current, so it doesn't belong in "Historical patronymic names". However, so are "Malaysian, Eritrean, and Ethiopian names". The problem here is that they've been grouped when they are not related. These should be split up. I've already done so, since I can't imagine it being controversial.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:24, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Why are Ethiopian names sorted as written, because they use patronymics instead of surnames, but Icelandic names are not, which also use patronymics instead of surnames? Why don't Iceland names get sorted in the proper Icelandic way, as happens in Iceland in whatever language is used? I assume that is why Ethiopian names get sorted in the proper Ethopian way? Fog89 (talk) 04:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Beyond my African language and names knowledge. My guess would be that it's because the name order is different. I don't think we're advising to not sort Icelandic names the Icelandic way or not sort Habesha names the Habesha way; otherwise we wouldn't be citing rather tedious academic sources on how academics sort these names, full of lots and lots of details about local naming patterns and sorting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:33, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

MC Hammer sorting

I was surprised to find MC Hammer had {{DEFAULTSORT:Mc Hammer}}, I was expecting to find {{DEFAULTSORT:Hammer, Mc}} which it has in the French and German wikipedias, just wondering why we include MC at the beginning of such sorts, especially as according to the article he is sometimes known as Hammer...GrahamHardy (talk) 22:06, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

I think the same will apply to articles beginning DJ as well as MC...GrahamHardy (talk) 16:43, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Further to DJ it appears they are dispersed, so will look to do the same to MC...GrahamHardy (talk) 11:33, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
These should sort by the important part of the name. "MC" and "DJ" are occupational titles, in origin and generally in effect and meaning, like "Rev." and "Dr[.]"  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:30, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Political views

Is there any policy as to what categories are appropriate on BLP articles in regards to political belief? Specifically, should categories only be added if they are uncontroversial. It is certainly the case that certain political beliefs and positions would be seen generally as suggesting a poor reputaion (e.g. extremist political positions such as Neo-Nazism). Or is it simply the case that if a given BLP is a matter of interest to a given political position, regardless of how they identify or the controversiality of their categorisation with that position, the category should be added to the article. If there is policy on this it may be helpful to add it here. Thanks for any help. Alduin2000 (talk) 00:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Alduin2000: This is generally handled on a case-by-case basis at each article's talk page. What might be a "controversial" term in one case (e.g. due to weak/primary and biased/activistic sourcing) might be iron-clad in another (due to overwhelming frequency in reputable, secondary, independent sources). And even "neo-Nazi" isn't universally negative [in the minds of the so-labeled]; there are neo-Nazis who call themselves that and are huge fans of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Even if they use some alternative term, if most sources agree they're neo-Nazis, it's okay for us to note that they say so. See MOS:WTW for some more related guideline material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:37, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: thanks, this is pretty helpful. Alduin2000 (talk) 19:06, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
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