Wikipedia talk:Categorization

See also: Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

Mis-corrected blank sort key: how much of a problem is this?

I'm not that much of a CAT-gnome, and I recently ran into a problem with a blank sort key that had been properly used in an article, until a well-meaning editor incorrectly "fixed" it by removing the blank, who I guess figured that a blank param is meaningless, so why not get rid of it. I undid their change, but I can understand why an editor might do that. I wonder how frequent a problem this is, because I've got an easy fix. The solution would be simply to create a template, maybe to be called {{Cat sort top}}, that resolves to a space. Nobody is going to remove a template call embedded in a Category item who doesn't understand precisely what it's doing there, so that will stop it from happening. But is it a problem that's frequent enough or annoying enough to bother with? Even if infrequent, it could be the kind of thing that would slip by without anyone noticing for quite a while. Mathglot (talk) 03:55, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

A template would work as a prevention mechanism. Unfortunately, nobody is going to use it because it's so long to type. I think it's better to use incorrect removals of space as sort keys to inform new editors about the guidelines at WP:SORTKEY. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:41, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Sort order not merging all diacritics

Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys says "In English Wikipedia, sort order merges (ignores) case and diacritics." I dearly wish this was true, but it appears it is untrue for macrons (a diacritic), and always has been. Am I missing something or is the statement inaccurate? Nurg (talk) 04:53, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Nurg, so you have an example? —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:37, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I can't find an example now and it appears that the statement is true after all. I am not sure when I did last see an example. Perhaps sorting of diacritics was fixed years ago and I was confusing English Wikipedia with Commons, where diacritics are not merged. Nurg (talk) 10:48, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Category:Archaeological organizations

Hello all, I'm going to be subdividing Category:Archaeological organizations down by country, i.e. Category:Archaeological organizations based in (country), similar to how Category:History organizations by country functions (as some have a wider scope than the nation they're based in).

There is currently only one subcat serving this purpose, the relatively new Category:British archaeological organisations, which does not seem to conform to category naming standards. Can this be safely moved to Category:Archaeological organizations based in the United Kingdom? – TCMemoire 14:22, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@TCMemoire, you can nominate the category for speedy renaming according to criteria WP:C2C. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:41, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Categorizing Colleges that are Closing this Summer

Our friends over at WikiProject Higher Education are having a conversation about when to add disestablishment categories to colleges that are closing this summer. Your input (pro/con/other) is always welcome right here. - RevelationDirect (talk) 01:53, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Solution is simple: per WP:CRYSTALBALL and WP:WIP – don't rush and add the corresponding category after the disestablishment has happened. —⁠andrybak (talk) 06:07, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Listing most common categories of articles in category

To help with stub sorting, I'd like to go through a large stub category (let's say ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Araneomorphae stubs for example - none of the pages in its subcategories) and see what the most common categories on those pages are, to check if there's any more subcategories that could be made. Is there any way to do this? I don't see it in Petscan. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 01:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Overcategorization

I just had this note connected with an edit reversion. "Undid revision 1231303175 by Johnpacklambert (talk) It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry. This is just plain wrong practice. If we cannot be bothered to mention something in the text of an article, it is too trivial to categorize by. Categories are supposed to lead people through somewhat similar articles. A minimum expectation is that the information be mentioned in the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:09, 9 July 2024 (UTC) I recently had 4 articles I had edited get revered. This is the general tone of the edit summaries. "Undid revision 1231303175 by Johnpacklambert (talk) It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry, this is just ludicrous. First off, external links are not always reliable sources, so just using them to push categories directly is problematic. Beyond this, categories are supposed to link something that means something. They need to be "defining". If playing for a team was so non-defining to a person that we do not even mention it anywhere in the text of the article, not even in a table, we should not categorize by it. This makes me think that at some level team played for becomes to close to performance by performer categories. I am sorry, but we should not be categorizing anyone by 18 different teams played, especially with the amount of other categories sports people are placed in. At least not when we do not even mention in any way all 18 teams in the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• To be fair the word "professional" above means any level of paid baseball, even in this case A level minors. We have never even agreed that all these levels of playing baseball are notable, even when we were our most generous in granting notability to sportspeople. 18 different teams is just ludicrous. It comes very close to performer by performance level of teams. I am thinking at some point this violates the rule against categorizing performer by performance.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• The Abbott article is 16 paragraphs plus tables and other things long. It still does not mention Winston-Salem Warthogs or several other teams that he is categorized by. I am not sure why all 18 teams cannot be expected to be mentioned in his article, but if we cannot expect them to be mentioned in the article, I am not sure at all why we should categorize by them.~~~~~
• I think we should limit categories to things that are mentioned in the article. If it is not defining enough to mention in the article I do not think it is defining enough to categorize by.~~~~

John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree. WP:CATDEF is a solid guideline. Perhaps people interested in exhaustively documenting this sort of thing could be directed to Wikidata. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:59, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Kurt Abbott looks to be one of the offenders. Another Jim Abbott is looking like he never actually played a game for the 4 minor league teams he was somehow a player for. This is a huge mess. for sure.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  • Before I address the rest of this argument, I'm not sure why you say it looks like Jim Abbott never played for those four minor league teams. As I wrote in my edit summaries, it's easily verifiable via his Baseball-Reference minor league page which is include among the External links in his article. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

    • Things need to be clearly stated and explained in the article to use for categories, not just buried in some external link. I looked at the baseball minor reference link, and it was a confusing chart of abbreviations that I could not make any sense of.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

      • OK, on further reading I now see where the minor league teams are mentioned. I have grave doubts that we should be placing someone in a category (categories must be defining) based on a source that is a database that throws out a lot of statistics but has no prose about the person's time in the minor leagues. We are not a stat website, and if all we have about the time someone was a player for a team is stats that does not seem to be enough to say something substantive, and I do not see how we can argue some part of someone's life is defining if we do not have even a substantive source on it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:CATV applies here. If there is a category for a sports team's players, that team must be mentioned in the article prose as one that the person played for. With source, of course. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• I see that the guideline says "Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories." So I am right in stating that the information needs to be in the article, not just present in a source.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• I am thinking that even if we could make soured mention of these minor league playing roles, we have to ask if they are defining. For example, I do not think it is reasonable to mention most minor league playing in the lead of an MLB player article, so I do not think it actually for most meets the definition of definingness, and so I think most MLB players should not be categorized by most of the minor league teams they played for.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Pinging Denniscabrams in here, as he is the editor whose edit summary was quoted above by John Pack Lambert. I disagree with Dennis's assertion that "18 professional teams...can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article." The Kurt Abbott article is aptly rated as Start class. It could be developed a whole bunch more. I just made some edits to it to include mention of his path through the minors from 1989 to 1993 toward his MLB debut. All of the minor league teams that Abbott played for can be easily verified at Baseball-reference.com, a highly reliable site; see https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=abbott001kur. I suspect one could find contemporary newspaper coverage to corroborate all of this and add more detail. John Pack Lambert, as for your claim that "we have never even agreed that all these levels of playing baseball are notable", we have stand-alone articles for all these minor league teams, like Southern Oregon Timberjacks and Tacoma Rainiers. What is the point of even having a category like Category:Southern Oregon A's players if it's not going to be populated with articles like the one for Kurt Abbott and similar players, most of whom ultimately became notable for their MLB careers? Jweiss11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• This has all been litigated before a consensus reached and confirmed. I'm not sure where but I guess I'll have to find it. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:23, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I really think that over 5 categories for teams played on is getting excessive. I think categorizing by Level A (4th tier) level of game played is even more excessive. This is not about "notable" this is about defining. No every thing that is verifiable is defining. When we get to a dozen or more categories this is excessive. The guidelines say that we should categorize by what is reasonable to include in a lead summary. We should not be categorizing based on newspaper reports as some moves through their career. This will often be primary and localized sources. Categories are supposed to be limited to defining characteristics. So for example we do not categorize people by every job they had, even if we can verify from reliable sources they had the job. We categorize them based on the careers they are regularly described as. If a women worked as a flight attendant for 6 months when she was 22, but went on to do other unrelated things the rest of her life, as a flight attendant. Yet if she had worked for years as a flight attendant we would. Categories on players should be limited to people who became well known for. A few weeks with a team is not defining. However it is definitely clear that no category should be placed on an aticle until it is mentioned in the article. Consensus can and does change, and local consensus that ignore the general principals should not be used, so we should not just say "this was discussed before, deal with it", we should discuss it now, because there is a huge problem with lots and lots and lots of article in categories not at all supported by the article text, a great many of which are biographies of living people where that is even worse. Also, Wikipedia is not a court, things are not litigated. Using that word to describe discussions of categorization is incorrect and inaccurate.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    • John Pack Lambert, Rich Hill played for 13 different MLB teams. Would it be "excessive" in your view to categorize that article under all 13 teams? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

      I would say yes… there was a period in his career when he was very injury prone, and as a result he only played a few games for some of those teams - being frequently either sent to minor league affiliates or traded. Blueboar (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

      • Blueboar, so you'd remove from of the 13 MLB team cats from the Rich Hill article? Which ones? Is there some minimum number of games played you could suggest to qualify for such categorization? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

        • I would certainly remove some as non-defining. I am not familiar enough with the details of his career to make definitive calls as to which, but JPL’s assessment (below) seems a good start. Blueboar (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

          • Blueboar, the principles here are not Rich Hill-specific. We need principles than can be applied consistently to tens of thousands of articles. Your suggestions thus far lack coherence. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

            • The principle to apply across tens of thousands of articles is: “Only categorize by what is defining”. In order to apply that at the Rich Hill article, you need to ask: “which of these team categories are defining for Rich Hill, specifically?” Blueboar (talk) 01:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

              • I would say that all 13 team categories are certainly defining. Appearing in MLB action for a specific team, e.g. (merely "donning the pinstripes") is very defining. What is the standard you propose to exclude for such MLB team categories. How much tenure is needed to qualify as defining? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:14, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• Well it looks to me like Rich Hill did not play any games with either the New York Mets or the Pittsburgh Pirates, at least the text does not mention any games with either, so those two both look like categories that are hard to justify. Actually the San Diego Padres too. So if he never played in a pro game with any of those three I think that is an easy call to say being a player for them is not defining. In general I think we can ask this question about any team he was not on the roster of for a full year. There might still be cases where it is defining, but not every time someone is on a team's roster is it defining. He may have played in games with those three teams, but the fact that there is no mention of it in the article seems to suggest these are not very defining postions.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  Rich Hill played 13 games with the Mets, 10 with Padres, and 22 with the Pirates. This is all very easy to find out: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hillri01.shtml. Remember he was also mostly a starting pitcher, and keep in mind that a full season for a starting pitcher is only about 30-ish games. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Overcategorization of burial

This is what the category guideline says about categorization of burial. "If it is relevant to identify the place of burial (either from the perspective of the person or the burial place), then someone buried in a less notable cemetery, or in a place with just a few notable burials, should be recorded in a list within the article about the burial place. However, if the burial place is notable in its own right and has too many other notable people to list, then such burials may be categorized." I take this to mean the following A-our default should be creating a list at the article on the cemetery, not making a category. B-articles should be placed only in categories for burial by cemetery or cemetery like place. higher level categories seem to only exist to group these categories by cemetery, not to directly place articles. So as I am reading this we would create a list for the specific cemetery in New York City someone is buried in. If that list gets big enough that it would reasonably support a category we would create a category. We then would group those categories by city. We actually have "Category:Burials in New York City by place" that makes this clear in the title. I am not sure why the next level up, Burials in New York state, does not make this clear in the title. It might help a lot if we made it clear in the title in more categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• At the same time I am also not understanding why the category "burial monuments and structures in New York (state)' is under "burials in New York (state)". I think the later is a sub-set of the category "burial in New York (state)" which is different than "burials in New York (state)". One is a topic article for articles about the thing, and the other is a set article for articles that are the thing. I think normally we link the other way around. So we have a category "chemistry" and we make "chemists" a sub-set of Chemistry, we do not make chemistry a sub-set of chemists. I am thinking we need to reverse the order of these categories. Or maybe create a parent category "burial in New York (state)" that is an overarching topic category, with sub-cats "burials in New York (state)" which we probably should rename to

burials by place in New York (state)" but I am not sure "place" is the right word, we do not mean "populated place", we mean "cemetery or place that functions like a cemetery". I also wonder if the parent category named "burials" should be renamed to "burial" or if maybe we should create a sepeate category "burial". I am also not sure why we need say "burials by castle". I understand some castles are defining places of burial. However I am not seeing why the fact that the place of burial was a castle is of any import. I do not think this aides navigation, esepcially since it has only 3 sub-cats. We are not going to create a category "burials in castles" and place in it everyone we have reliable sources showing they were buried in a castle, so I really do not see the point in sorting by so many things. The whole burials tree seems way more complex than it needs to be. In fact with the US I am thinking we should make burials in X state by cemetery the main category, everything else looks like needless clutter. New York state have 42 categories under burials in New York (state) by cemetery. It has a further 10 categories that subdivide basically the same context by an eclectic mix of city or county.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:47, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Revolutionaries v Rebels

I just came upon Indzhe Voyvoda who was in a revolutionary category. I added him to another for the state he actually lived in. However it seems odd. The article really seems to be saying he was an outlaw, a bandit, maybe a highwayman. I am not sure how he was a revolutionary. It seems the assumption is "every Bulgarian who violently resisted the rule of the Ottoman Empire was a revolutionary." This does not seem to be a good way to define the term. However I am starting to think in some cases one person's rebel is another person's revolutionary. At other times the terms get used fairly interchangeably. There are maybe 3 actual groups. 1-people who are often called "rebels", who seek to change the currently ruler, but who are content with the system as such. However I think some sources call those involved in the American Revolutionary War "rebels", and they do not fit in this group. 2-People who seek to change the system of government. Such as going for a monarchy to democracy. Or instituting a socialist revolution. 3-people who seek to end what they see as foreign control of a place. Sometimes this is obvious, such as those seeking to end British rule in India. Other times it is less clear. I knew someone who thought the Free Savoie types were a bit nutty, and did not think Savoy/Savoie was a distinct enough place for such a movement to make sense. My experience is both Revolutionary is used at times for all 3, group 3 is regularly called Revolutionary, and at times rebel. There are clearly not 3 widely used terms, which is why we do not have 3 categories. My sense is the split between rebels and revolutionaries is less than clear, especially since we have 3 terms covering 2 topics. The fact that some people seek both to overthrow outside colonial rule, and maybe institute a Communist or other drastically different form of government in the place where they are trying to end colonial rule means that 2 and 3 overlap. I am beginning to think the best solution might be to create a category called say French rebels and revolutionaries, or German rebels and revolutionaries or Rebels and revolutionaries from the Ottoman Empire, and group both. We have other compound named categories like Dramatists and playwrights. This would also avoid us having to parse out exactly what counter revolutionaries are. They are actually revolutionaries, but since sometimes "revolutionary" is used as code to mean "supports of the group that won in X revolution", it can come to be seen to have a narrow ideological meaning. A general rebels and revolutionaries category would allow for grouping people more by what they did than what they thought, especially since some people under our current system probably would count as both rebels and revolutionaries, since they were involved in multiple such movements, but we really do not need multiple such categories on the same article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Johnpacklambert#People in non-people by century categories

I asked a question on my talk page about people in by century categories that are not meant for people. I think that might be something that people here would be interested in. I do not want to engage in over posting or forum shopping, so I am just putting notice of it here.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

@Johnpacklambert Thanks for not opening a second copy of the discussion. Even more helpful is to include a link such as User talk:Johnpacklambert#People in non-people by century categories, to help other interested editors to get there quickly. (Especially when, as here, it isn't the most recent item on your talk page). Thanks. PamD 21:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)