Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 13

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Content in the category namespace/format

I've updated Category:Canadian musical groups to follow the guidlines in Wikipedia:Categorization. I plan on going through the 300ish Category:Canadian music cats and giving them this consistent format. I've tried looking at other music portals, but there isn't a lot of consistency. There is no "best practice" section in the article Wikipedia:Categorization. Someone please help! Semi-related question below: Argolin (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

When the introduction is longer then the contents, there is a problem. Categories should be able to stand on their own with a simple introduction. Any thing related should be listed in the parent categories and not in the introduction. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:27, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

User pages in Categories

I have noticed some user pages appearing on important categories, e.g. User:Cr2pr/cybrarian on Category:India (now removed). One only needs to edit their own user page for this to happen. There needs to be a way to prevent such listing of user pages on categories of articles. Geeteshgadkari (talk) 13:40, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I have considered asking for a cleanup bot for these. The only other choice is to edit the page and add a ":" before the word category. If a template is inserting the category then you need to use {{tl}}. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This happens all the time, when users copy articles to their user pages. I have disliked that for the longest time, but see no real solution. Removing categories from user pages with a bot is likely to be a very arguable idea. Debresser (talk) 20:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Why would that be an arguable idea? Is there any good reason why a user page should be in a category that is not subcategory of Category:Wikipedians? As for the templates: such template shouldn't be adding the category to user pages in the first place and the template should be changed. Svick (talk) 22:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

It could be objectionable to some because you'd be removing the categories for draft articles someone might be writing in their userspace—I can see how that might tick people off. I think a compromise might be in order. Vegaswikian had the best idea, IMO. Ideally, if we could get a bot to add a ":" before the word "Category", then the text could remain on the page but the page wouldn't show up in the category any longer. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been doing this for a while as a minor change. I probably have had a complaint over that time, but also some questions about why and then the editors had no objections when they understood what was happening. My guess is that most of this is from copying an encyclopedia page to a user page. Maybe a suggestion against this some place in the new user welcome? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:10, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I've long thought that the solution ought to be at the technical level, that articles in user-space should simply never appear in the category list in main space. It may be very simple to do this, or very hard. This would be a little confusing for anybody drafting an article who checks categories, but no more so than the already occurring situation where, when there's no DEFAULTSORT or category sort key, the user sub-page article is sorted first by the user's name. Studerby (talk) 23:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

There are several templates to assist in doing this. Now if I could only remember the names. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Remembered one, {{cat handler}}. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:10, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:List of Asian capitals by region needs that added to it; it has added a number of user pages to Category:Capitals in Asia. postdlf (talk) 23:10, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories is a list generated on Tuesdays and Saturdays which compiles the first 250 entries. A bot should be tasked with cleaning these up. In the meantime, I have been occasionally cleaning them up manually using <nowiki> per Wikipedia:USER#Categories.2C_templates.2C_and_redirects. A way to prevent such cleanup even being needed is to have the article creation wizard include the ":" automagically. — MrDolomite • Talk 14:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

• Hm, this should be fairly simple to do. I'll mull it over and maybe file a botreq in a few days. –xeno^talk 19:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The <nowiki> solution is quite ugly and relatively invasive. Adding a colon in front of the category is definitely more elegant. That is what I propose a bot should do. Debresser (talk) 18:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Remember also that many templates automatically include articles into categories. So using the <nowiki> option is faster by hand, and may be easier for a bot to implement. — MrDolomite • Talk 22:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

A bot can't easily recognize whether a template adds a category or not. But adding a colon to category is pretty straightforward. Svick (talk) 23:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

What happened to the article count function within categories?

Previously when I've browsed a category (use Category:Films by director as an example), all the sub-cats had numbers by them showing how many categories and how many articles were in the sub-cats. Now they don't. What happened?! Lugnuts (talk) 18:52, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm getting the same problem. Hope this can be fixed as I find this feature very useful. --Jameboy (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps this is linked to the recent (and equally annoying) disabling of the categorytree function. The devs who live off the donations our work generates seem happy to disable stuff because it's imperfectly efficient, but a lot less happy to actually do their job and develop the code to make it efficient </moan> --Kotniski (talk) 05:46, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

But enough about Windows 7... postdlf (talk) 19:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now. It's working for me right now at least. --Jameboy (talk) 14:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, confirm it's fixed. Thanks whoever did that! Lugnuts (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Cities and towns

Note, this was moved from Archive 12 since that is not the place for a new discussion. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:03, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• I think "Cities and towns in Foo" categories (not just "Cities, towns, and villages in Foo") should be/ have been part of these changes. ^{şṗøʀĸɕäɾłäů∂ɛ:τᴀʟĸ} 01:18, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the consensus here would very clearly apply to them as well, even if they weren't explicitly mentioned. Why don't you go ahead and nominate some, citing this discussion (and the other CfR that resulted) as justification. - htonl (talk) 02:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• This should not be done any more than 'cities in foo' or 'towns in foo' categories should be renamed or merged to 'populated places in foo'. These should remain at subcats of 'populated places in foo' which was meant to be the overarching category, not the replacement for every more detailed category. We should always attempt to achieve as much category precision as possible while matching the local legal status of each type of populated place in each government area. Hmains (talk) 04:32, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Why? Are there any jurisdictions where "cities and towns" are distinguished from other types of place more than "cities" are distinguished from "towns"? Obviously we should have "cities in X" and "towns in X", but if "cities and towns in X" then why not "towns and villages in X", "cities and villages in X", "towns and hamlets in X" and so on for all the possible permutations? "Cities" and "towns" are well-defined concepts (at least in some countries) but grouping them together to the exclusion of other places seems arbitrary to me. - htonl (talk) 05:22, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

• This is why I asked folks whether people thought this was part of the consensus decision. I didn't have any opinion on that specific group of categories when I supported "populated places". That said, there are a lot of people who sure don't cotton to these being included. The argument turns on "city" and "town" apparently being the same word in several languages (Russian, Polish, Hindi, and others). So I'm thinking that many of them should become "municipalities," but that's just an untested opinion. But it will be a contentious discussion regardless. I expect we'll be going small group by small group with those.--Mike Selinker (talk) 05:50, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
• It seems to me that "Cities and towns in Foo" is an attempt to list all types of populated places; and that there's no reason to group cities together with towns but not other types of populated places. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:57, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
• It is funny for me to watch how are people shortsighted, how they do not see that in most languages there is no distinction between city and town, and that "Cities and towns in XYZ" categories reflect official legal status of these places. Wiki-veterans like me, who were involved in the process, remember very well the discussions about this in 2005-2006 and even sooner. Where there was no distinction between between those two, it was decided to merge "Cities in XYZ" and "Towns in XYZ" categories, which were separate at that time. That's how "Cities and towns in XYZ" categories were created. It was a logical step, which helped to clean up existing mess at that time and brought more professionality into Wikipedia. As Hmains mentioned above in the discussion: "We should always attempt to achieve as much category precision as possible while matching the local legal status of each type of populated place in each government area." "Populated places in XYZ" is a good idea as a overarching category, but not as a replacement category for country categorization systems, which are already perfectly working. Many users, including myself, spent long months properly categorizing e.g. Czech or Polish settlements according to official legal status. Categories should be precise, not "all inclusive". - Darwinek (talk) 09:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
• If "cities and towns" translates to a single type of thing in the country in question, like Mike's examples above, then I agree it should definitely remain a category. I notice that a lot of the categories in question do seem to be either Indian or Slavic, which seems to match up with those languages. - htonl (talk) 13:43, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
  • I do think, however, that the "Cities and towns" scheme needs to change, though. In the places like Russia where one word means both "City" and "Town," the category Category:Cities and towns in Russia essentially translates to Category:CIties and cities in Russia. That just seems wrong. I'll propose the word "Municipalities" and see if it gains some traction.--Mike Selinker (talk) 01:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't know about Russia, but in Poland (and other countries I've worked on) "municipalities" certainly does not mean the same as "cities and towns". I don't see any problem with having a category called "cities and towns..." - it acknowledges that some of them would be referred to in English as cities, some as towns, but there's no clear demarcation between the two sets. --Kotniski (talk) 07:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

You are completely right. In the Czech Republic municipality means village, the lower level on the administrative scale, under cities and towns. As for Russia, try to ask User:Ezhiki, who was developing the categorization system for Russia for long years, but I suppose also in Russia these are completely two different terms. - Darwinek (talk) 08:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

• In some governmental entities, cities and towns are a legal grouping called 'municipalities'. See Category:Municipalities in Massachusetts, which I worked on recently, as an example. This is properly a subset of Category:Populated places in Massachusetts, which itself includes many more subcats than just the municipalicity cities and towns one. Force upmerging Category:Municipalities in Massachusetts to its Category:Populated places in Massachusetts parent would destroy a structure that reflects the legal facts in Massachusetts. Such may also be the case with at least some Category:Cities and towns in foo categories. Each such catgegory must be checked against the legal structure of the local government and changed, if any change is needed, to match the local legal structure. This can be done through normal WP editing and not done by a mass change which is bound to create error. Note that I am not pushing Municipality as a 'solution'. Its WP article shows that has varied legal meanings in different countries or within single countries, such as from state to state in the United States. Hmains (talk) 05:17, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Just chiming in to mention that in the Philippines, Cities are legally distinct from Municipalities, though both are recognized types of political subdivisions (a municipality, once it meets certain criteria, may choose to apply for cityhood, or may choose not to -- the choice has political and financial implications for the local government). See [1] Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Municipality is an interesting example since it covers both specific types of places and broader groupings of places. So in some uses it is rather ambiguous. But your point is valid since in some cases, it makes total sense to keep this as a category while in others it should be up merged. That's why the top level merges were easy. The lower level changes need specific research. Category:Towns in Nevada is a good example. My understanding is that there are some sources that say there are no towns, but yet parts of the NRS refer to towns. So are there towns in Nevada or not? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:21, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Not in the sense of there being a municipal class of "town"; instead, as best as I understand, there are unincorporated communities that have "town boards" that liaison with county government, but do not have municipal powers, and Nevada law refers to these as "unincorporated towns." I'm skeptical that this is an important enough distinction to merit separate categorization from other unincorporated communities, but I've for now urged a rename and cleanup in the pending CFD for that category. postdlf (talk) 21:49, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
      • I'm not so sure. There are appointed town advisory boards and an unincorporated town can have an elected town board from my reading of the NRS. An interesting read is this article, originally published in the RJ that explains how this affects Beatty. Clearly a murky area. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:58, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

On a related note, I've long been thinking about nominating parent-level U.S. categories like Category:Towns in the United States or Category:Villages in the United States for deletion. Because what constitutes a town or village depends entirely upon local legal definitions, these groupings are categorization merely by shared name, such that the "towns" that are second-tier municipalities in some states are categorized not with the "villages" that are the second-tier municipalities in other states, but rather the "towns" that are the third-tier municipalities in those that have three different classes. The other content in Category:Towns in the United States, such as ghost town and company town categories, show that the terms at that level are just being used generically. The only substantive groupings are those by state (e.g., Category:Villages in Ohio), which are already structured within appropriate parent categories that group the same kind of populated places together at the national level, such as Category:Municipalities in the United States or Category:Unincorporated communities in the United States. I'm more forgiving of Category:Cities in the United States, because in every state a "city" is the highest-level municipality (most population, greatest lawmaking abilities, whatever) or the only municipality in states that don't have multiple classes. But the "town" and "village" super-parents should be deleted. Any disagreement? postdlf (talk) 22:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Planned, proposed, future, upcoming, in development, concept, pipe dreams and other potential stuff category names

We have been discussing renames on these for a while and as I recall the results have varied over time. I think that the recent decisions have tended towards planned or proposed. Are either of those terms preferred? If so in what cases? If something is proposed it may remain that way and never progress to planned and then construction and existence. I think current consensus is that we don't need categories for each step along the way. But once a project finishes, it should be removed from the planning category and placed in a different category. Also there have been mentions of WP:CRYSTAL, but I don't see that as a concern in these categories since that applies to the articles. If they fail that test then the article does not exist and there is no categorization problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

categorization compliance with V & RS

How stringently does categorization need to adhere to an article's compliance with the Verifiability policy? Bearcat (talk · contribs) has moved two articles (Nathalie Paulding and Joe Torres) out of "Category:* actors" and into "Category:American * actors" (diff and diff), yet neither articles has any reliable sources for their subjects' US nationality. As such, the categorization is saying they are of a particular nationality, yet the article neither asserts nor proves such a claim.

Full disclosure, Bearcat and I have twice discussed this (or related) in the past, both of which are archived here and here. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 10:15, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I largely agree with Bearcat on this issue; nationality is typically not a controversial issue, at least in this context. I don't think it's necessarily OR to assume that someone is a citizen of the country where they live and work. Absent a reason to believe it's more complicated, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Nathalie Paulding's article mentions no other country but the U.S., where she grew up (at the very least; IMDB claims she was born in FL) and has exclusively worked. Joe Torres is scant on any detail, but just lists two credits for him, both for American productions. It's possible they're both Icelandic, but none of the available information would support any other conclusion but American for them. postdlf (talk) 13:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

are there any tools to get all pages that are under a category?

e.g. a way to get a listing of all pages that are in Category:Cocktails and any subcategories below it as well? I realize that categories are not a tree, nor even a directed acyclic graph, so the depth would have to be limited at some point. --Rajah (talk) 02:18, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

No, but there should be. It's absurd to make readers compile data themselves. —Codrdan (talk) 04:23, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, CatScan can do this. The result of your example is [2]. Svick (talk) 12:34, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There is another version of CatScan, also linked in WP:CatScan, that has some different options. Negative categories is handy. The results are here Tassedethe (talk) 13:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:AWB can do this too. –xeno^talk 13:11, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

thanks for both of the pointers. CatScan looks great and I'll look into AWB, although I'm not under Windows usually. --Rajah (talk) 03:01, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Dib492, 14 June 2010

{{editsemiprotected}}

(Double underlining and bold added below so as to identify the relevant/discrepant/replacement text.)

Problem

Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys claims (second paragraph) that

"Because the software uses ASCII rather than true alphabetical ordering, it is important that sort keys be capitalized consistently."

but Help:Category#Sort_order states (first paragraph) that

"The system uses pseudo-alphabetical order, or more precisely Unicode order, for pages in categories."

Proposed solution

Replace ASCII by Unicode. I also think it's worth adding a link to the help page.

So, please change the first sentence of the second paragraph of Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys to something like:

"Because the software uses Unicode rather than true alphabetical ordering (see details), it is important that sort keys be capitalized consistently."

(I'd fix it myself, but since I've only recently registered I'd first have to wait a couple more days and maybe make a few more edits until I become 'autoconfirmed'.)

dib492 (talk) 18:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Done Favonian (talk) 22:51, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Category discussion

I would like to seek wide input on a currently disputed category, but there seem to be few users who watch its talk page and former discussions have been limited to only a small group of users. Where is the best place for it? Exploding Boy (talk) 01:35, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

If the discussion is about deleting, merging or renaming them, then there's Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. If it's something else, the talk page of related WikiProject is probably the best place. And of course, if you want to do something that you think isn't controversial and nobody objects, then just do it. Svick (talk) 18:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Category:North American desert flora

Can someone look at the parents of Category:North American desert flora? I think most of those are really subcategories and not parent categories. I'm not positive though. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:36, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

• I think this is ok. Each of the parent 'U.S. state' categories are for states that are not all desert country. And the North American desert is not a single contiguous area, but several different areas. On the other hand, the flora is not the same for each desert and the flora is different in the different states, I suppose, so Category:North American desert flora perhaps should have no connection to the US state categories at all. Hmains (talk) 19:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Jewish issue

Quick question Category:Rabbis parents are

• Category:Jewish clergy
• Category:Jewish education
• Category:Jewish religious occupations
• Category:Jewish religious leaders

Should these be DAB'd some how either changed to category:Judaism clergy or maybe Category:Jewish (religion) clergy

• Category:Jews by occupation, should this be removed, just because someone is a Rabbis doesn't mean they are ethnically Jewish. Gnevin (talk) 14:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand these questions. What is wrong with these as parent cats? Also, to be a rabbi you must be a Jew. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_June_21#Category:Jewish_clergy . You must be a Jewish (Religion) not Jewish (Ethnoreligious group) Gnevin (talk) 07:58, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• I think that changing these four categories from "Jewish" to "Judaism" is very sensible, even without the (rather deplorable) example of a non-Jewish rabbi. Debresser (talk) 11:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

• "Judaism clergy" isn't grammatically correct. Clergy is the noun, and Jewish is the adjective. To do it right, you'd have to call it something like "Clergy of Judaism". But I think "Jewish clergy" is good, and it is in line with the categories from all the other religions. -shirulashem^(talk) 17:09, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

It is horribly muddled and it's not in line with the other. When you say Jewish do you mean Jewish (Religion) or Jewish (Ethnoreligious group) Gnevin (talk) 09:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I knew someone who was born Irish, raised Catholic, converted to Judaism, and was ordained a rabbi. I am quite sure he considered himself a Jewish rabbi (as well as an Irish-American rabbi). In this context the religious meaning of the word "Jewish" is clear. I would also assert that many Jews by choice are accepted as ethnoreligiously Jewish by many born Jews - ethnoreligious is not the same as racial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ricardianman (talk • contribs) 18:06, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Punctuation in sort keys

What is the "proper" way to treat punctuation in article titles with regard to sorting? WP:SORTKEY doesn't spell it out, but my guess would be that punctuation is stripped in sort keys, e.g. for UFC Fight Night: Diaz vs. Guillard the proper sort key would be Ufc Fight Night Diaz vs Guillard. Comments? GregorB (talk) 18:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'd have thought so (though technically it should probably be "Vs" rather than "vs", unless "vs" is used in other corresponding sort keys - the most important thing is to be consistent within categories). Although there are times when punctuation is used in sort keys - I'm thinking of the commas we put in sort keys for people (e.g. "Washington, George").--Kotniski (talk) 09:11, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's "Vs", my mistake - no exception intended here. Apart from the "Washington, George" example, where punctuation is introduced rather than retained, surely there are examples where original punctuation should be (partially) retained, but I can't think of any at the moment, and I'd say stripping is OK as a general rule. GregorB (talk) 09:19, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Race

Continued from Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality/Archive_1#Race (original text by User:Radiant! or User:Samuel Wantman).

This mainly appears for categories of African-Americans, sometimes called Blacks instead (and, of course, a uniform naming may be preferable). This issue seems mostly centered on America - indeed, you hardly hear about "Indian-Europeans" or "African-Asians".

You do however hear about "British asians", "French morroccans", etc. Europe isn't a country.

"African-Americans, sometimes called Blacks instead" Some people do mix up black people and African-Sowewhere people, but that is an erroneous point of view WP shouldn't adhere to. There are actually three of four types of "black" and/or "African" people:

• people who have a black skin (who don't necessarily have any direct or indirect link with Africa)
• people who are labelled "black" but arenot black (e.g. Obama)
• people who are African or whose an ancestor was an African (these people are not necessarily black, nor necessarily labelled "black")
• I don't know to which extent people called "African-American" or "African-elsewhere people" are included in the previous category.

If we have an article about an association devoted to black people, we should categorize it in a category about "black people", not in a category about "African-Somewhere people", unless we have a proof that this association is actually interested only in African-Somewhere people. Apokrif (talk) 10:54, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia should use the terminology used by reliable secondary sources. Johnuniq (talk) 03:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Eponymous categories - useful or not?

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_August_12#Category:Eponymous_categories for an interesting discussion. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:41, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Topics and eponymous categories: confusion due to poor explanation

The misguided calls to delete eponymous categories suggest that they're not adequately explained on this guideline page. The first source of confusion is the terms "topic category" and "set category". Categories are sets by definition, so "set category" is redundant. Topic categories, on the other hand, are really topics, or sets of articles about topics, so they're either misnamed or misclassified. If we wanted to be totally literal, either topic categories should be called "topics" rather than "categories", or each topic category X should really be called "things related to X" instead of just "X". I know this is obvious to people who either watch this page or take some time to think about the subject, but obviously some other people are confused. "things related to X" seems pedantic to me, so my inclination would be to either create a class of "topic" pages in the WP software, or, since that may be too difficult, at least explain the difference between topics and categories more clearly. Either way, they should be called "topics" and "categories", not "topic categories" and "set categories".

All eponymous categories are really topics, so that whole discussion about deleting them is stupid, but we could help dispel the confusion by improving our explanation in this guideline. The Eponymous categories section (WP:EPON) should say something like "Some subjects are notable enough that articles are written about things related to the subject as well as about the subject itself. In this case, an eponymous topic is created to hold all of those articles."
—Codrdan (talk) 20:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

As we've said before, we can't change the definition of "category" - it's in the software and everyone's used to it. We can perhaps improve the definitions of the various types of category, though I can't really see how we can make it much clearer than it already is.--Kotniski (talk) 06:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

But aren't all categories with subcategories in fact "subjects notable enough that articles are written about things related to the subject as well as about the subject itself."? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 14:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The sentence I suggested is about articles, not categories. I guess a lot of people use words like "topic" and "category" differently. By "topic" I meant "category" or "topic category". The point is to explain why the eponymous cat should be separate from the article's parent cat. I take back what I said about the terminology. I guess "topic category" and "set category" may be tolerable if many people use "category" to include both sets and topics. The naming convention is still confusing though, so I think we have to at least help people when they misinterpret them. —Codrdan (talk) 00:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

How do I indicate the parent category?

I created two categories, "Bibliographic databases in computer science" and "Bibliographic databases in engineering". These should be refactored as children of "Bibliographic databases", but I'm not sure how to do that. I looked briefly at Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization and Wikipedia:Categorization but got overwhelmed, sorry! Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Add "[[Category:Bibliographic databases]]" to the bottom of each page. The instructions are in Help:Category#Putting pages in categories. —Codrdan (talk) 20:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Strange, I just thought that was for articles, not for categories, too. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 10:17, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Category:Establishments by country

I have created a new hierarchy to accompany Category:Establishments by year. I believe this is a most useful hierarchy, and I have begun populating it, first setting up the deep infrastructure. I'd appreciate some categorians perusing my work so far to see if there are corrections to be made that can be easily implemented at this early stage. __meco (talk) 12:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

"Establishments" seems a somewhat ambiguous term to use and I'm not sure that many editors will understand it's purpose. I also don't see how this isn't category duplication in that there are plenty of better named, more specific categories that already cover this, for example, Category:Organizations established in 1977, which is a category clear in its purpose. --AussieLegend (talk) 10:59, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

If you peruse these hierarchies a little bit further you are likely to see clearly how this fits together very nicely with no overlap. Comparing Category:1977 establishments in the United States with Category:Organizations established in 1977 should reveal that one is centered on where the establishments occur, the other on what is being established. These are completely independent hierarchies intersecting only in their low-level parent Category:Events. Your assertion that "Establishments" is an ambiguous term fails to realize that before this hierarchy was refined we had the simple hierarchy Category:Establishments by year. In fact we've had the original hierarchy on Wikipedia for more than 5 years, and it has undergone several developments, so the community whould be well used to it and what it does by now.

That it has been around for 5 years is no indication of whether or not the community understands it. It's an ambiguous term. If it wasn't, you wouldn't see cases such as the current edit-war at Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, or speedy deletion tags being added to Category:1977 establishments in the United States. Rather can create another mammoth category heirachy as you have done, with a bit of thought, creating some specific categories such as Category:United States organizations established in 1977 (or something along those lines) would have achieved your aim without creating a million single article categories. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:58, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, the names are awkward and clearly there is no consensus to create these cats.--Terrillja _talk 16:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

As you may notice it has been more than three weeks since I notified this page about the creation of this hierarchy, and I can inform you that issue taken with it at Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is indeed the only place where anyone has failed to accept or understand it. Even your latest suggestion that I should have started off by creating an even more fine-grained intersection category reveals that you have critically failed to grasp the basic realities and properties of this matter. __meco (talk) 16:14, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The basic reality is that it is unnecessary and clearly isn't accepted. Continuing to try and force it in will only get you blocked on yet another wiki.--Terrillja _talk 16:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Category for a maintenance category

Should the Category:Articles containing non-English language text be in a category. I have been told by an administrator that its forbidden to use the {{uncat}} (here and here), so if it should be in a category - how to mark that? Christian75 (talk) 11:32, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes I don't think Bearcat was saying "Forbidden" just that the category was already in Category:Hidden categories, but I have also put it in Category:Wikipedia maintenance where people might find it. Rich Farmbrough, 06:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

{{verylarge}} and {{cleancat}}

FYI, Template:Verylarge (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Template:Cleancat (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) have been nominated for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:01, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Do I use the category redirect template or something else?

I created Category: Restaurant chains in the Philippines and wish to move all contents in Category: Restaurants in the Philippines into it since they are all chains. What tools are available to help me do this? Can I just use the template {{Category redirect}}, is there a better tool, or do I have to do it manually one-by-one? Lambanog (talk) 15:49, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

{{Category redirect}} is definitely not for parent cats, and I've never heard of any special tools for changing them. —Coder Dan (talk) 19:11, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

There are three ways to accomplish what you described by yourself:

1. You could manually edit each article to change the category, perhaps with the use of a tool such as HotCat, which allows faster addition, removal and replacement of categories.
2. You could use the AutoWikiBrowser software (must be downloaded), which has a function for semi-automated category removal and replacement.
3. You could nominate the category for merging and, if there is consensus in the discussion to merge, a bot will automatically implement the result once it is posted here. After the category is merged and deleted, you could simply recreate it as a parent category.

Of course, as Wikipedia is a collaborative project, you can also always ask someone to do it. I moved the articles using HotCat, except Triple V (a corporation which owns restaurant chains) and Food in the Philippines (probably should be redirected to Philippine cuisine). Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:45, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information and your help Black Falcon! Lambanog (talk) 03:19, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Happy to help! Happy editing, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Soft and hard redirected categories

This guideline clearly indicates redirecting one category page to another must be achieved using the {{category redirect}} template and not via a standard (hard) redirect. What happens, from a technical standpoint, when {{category redirect}} is used in conjunction with a hard redirect, and what is the proper course of action when one encounters such a situation? For an example, see Category:Germany navigation templates. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:29, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Ping. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 03:15, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

African American category

Continuing the discussion from here but dealing directly with the issue of African Americans. If it is established that the person is American and the accompanying image is of a "Black American" is this sufficient for establishing that an African American category is justified? For an example see the Kevin Durant article, is he an African American basketball player even though there is no source in the article making that specific claim (that I'm aware of)? It's rather difficult to find sources that trace a Black person's ancestry to Africa. Many sources take it as given that someone like Durant (who grew up in a county that is 97% African American) is African American but without supplying evidence for that claim those sources are not useful in this context. I guess what I'm asking is there any room for common sense here? SQGibbon (talk) 19:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

In short, no. Maybe Kevin Durant is of Hispanic descent; maybe he is of Scandanavian descent. How do we really know anything on here? Sources. If something cannot be sourced, I don't think it has a place on Wikipedia. Kevin Durant is probably African American, but probably isn't good enough, especially with BLPs. Some editors added categories based on last names, some using pictures and some just their perceptions. In my opinion, all of these are original research; this is why I have been removing uncited ethnicity categories from articles for at least a year.--TM 19:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Just a sidenote, but it is not neccesary to trace one's ancestry back to Africa to be an African American. It is a matter of self identification. Does the person call themselves African American? Do reliable sources? In my opinion, that is enough.--TM 19:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Kevin Durant was born in America (according to the sources in the article) and is African American. This is not based on his name or "just" a perception. He is African American, not probably an African American, is an African American. This is clearly an issue of common sense. If there were even the slightest chance that he (and the other African American basketball players whom you removed from that category) is not African American then we wouldn't be having this discussion. In fact it's so plainly clear that he is African American that the only way to even make your argument you would need to come up with a reliable source that casts doubt on that claim. SQGibbon (talk) 20:44, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

That's not how it works here. He was born in the US and we have sources for that. We have no proof of his heritage. Therefore, we should not include assertions, categories or anything else in articles which cannot be confirmed by sources. There is no assumption of truth on Wikipedia. The only way to include something when challenged is to prove it.--TM 20:52, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Are you challenging that he's African American? Do you think it likely that anyone will ever seriously challenge that he's African American? Not every single trivial and clearly obvious fact about a person needs to have a source. If I couldn't find a reliable source claiming that Durant is male would that mean we couldn't make that claim? Anyway, you and I are getting nowhere on this, let's see what anyone else has to say. SQGibbon (talk) 21:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll give another example: What if I said Kevin Durant is of Puerto Rican heritage. Now, I can say it is simply common sense and everyone knows it, but you don't think so, so you challenge me to prove it. Should I include the Puerto Rican category in the article? The onus isn't on the editor removing uncited content, it is on the editor trying to include the content to prove it.--TM 20:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that you both raise interesting points, but I do believe that a source is necessary. While it is completely true that "not every single trivial and clearly obvious fact" in an article needs to be attributed to a source, such facts still should be attributable.

"All material in Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source to show that it is not original research, but in practice not everything need actually be attributed."

–Wikipedia:Verifiability (version)

For living people, in particular, the requirement for justifying categorization with reliable sources is more explicit.

"Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources."

–Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, section 'Categories, lists and navigation templates' (version)

So, then, is ethnic or racial descent a "clearly obvious fact"? Some cases may appear more obvious than others (Kevin Durant being a case in point), but I do believe that we cannot reliably infer, from physical appearance alone, racial or ethnic descent, affiliation or self-identification. For example, judging Alex Rodriguez or Halle Berry by physical appearance only would not give a reliable clue as to whether they are of Hispanic, African, Middle Eastern, South Asian, or dark-skinned non-Hispanic White descent. The fact that the same person can have a different appearance depending on lighting conditions, make-up, sun tanning or tanning lotion, and other factors, further complicates the exercise (see, e.g., the following images of Halle Berry, which appear to show a progression of skin tones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 21:51, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I started checking for a source for the Kevin Durant article, and it is in fact difficult to find a source which identifies Durant as African American, perhaps because it does appear to be such an obvious fact. This article from the Bleacher Report was the best one I've found so far, insofar as it identifies his race, but it isn't ideal. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 22:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

African Americans are more than just skin color; not all Brown people are of African descent and not lighter skinned people are of European descent. We just don't know. I'd rather play it safe and not list him (and thousands of others) as an African American than potentially end up with a BLP problem because we just assumed it was common sense. It is really a matter of self identification. Most people in countries such as the United States have multiple racial and ethnic groups in their family heritage. Take for example Malcolm X. It is common sense that he was African American and he identified as such, but he also had significant amounts of Hispanic and European ancestry.--TM 22:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The question is not if ethnic or racial descent is a clearly obvious fact, it's whether in the particular cases of well-known African American athletes (in this case basketball players) like Kevin Durant if we need a source to attest to the fact that he is African American. This is not a slippery-slope case of wanting to expand this to all ethnicities for all people but only when dealing with the obvious cases like Kevin Durant. Common sense has to have a place in Wikipedia. And yes, if there were even a hint of a whiff that he might not be African American like with A-Rod or Halle Berry then that too would be a different situation. But here (and with other African American basketball players TM removed from that category) surely we can use common sense. Sources show that he is American. He was born in and grew up in an area that is 97% African American. He is often associated with various organizations that support/work with African Americans. Given that he looks African American and that I have not been able to find a single source that even hints that he is not African American I think it is trivially safe to say he African American (oddly I have not been able to find any reliable sources that state specifically he is African American). This does not have to become Wikipedia policy, we can make these judgements on case-by-case basis. SQGibbon (talk) 22:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I see what you're saying. All of the available information points to him being African American but, frustratingly, falls just short of explicitly confirming it, and I agree that exceptions may be appropriate in a limited number of cases (decided on a case-by-case basis). That being said, I also can understand TM's point about not acting on the basis of commonly-held, but unverified, assumptions. In light of your clarification that the issue does not concern all biographical articles but instead only the article Kevin Durant and some others, I posted a link to this discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons and requested additional opinions on the best way to proceed (perhaps it would be useful to also notify WikiProject Basketball...). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:06, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Here's the thing: if Kevin Durant weren't black, then there would be ample sources attesting to that fact. The NBA constantly tries to portray itself as ethnically diverse (see here, for example - a gallery of all the Latino players). Plus, journalists are always looking for interesting stories about players' backgrounds (see this article about Nate Robinson's single Filipino great-grandfather). Zagalejo^^^ 05:57, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I thought the general rule was that we didn't categorize any article by any fact not even mentioned in the article (at a minimum). I don't see a reason to deviate from that. postdlf (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be trivial to add "African American" to the lede and such an obvious edit would unlikely fall under any serious challenge. SQGibbon (talk) 12:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

What do you think this is? Not a serious challenge? WP:PROVEIT or keep it out of the article and all other articles. It is really simple: if you can't prove it, it isn't necessary.--TM 16:20, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I apologize, I was under the impression that you were challenging whether the African American basketball player category should be applied to the Kevin Durant (and others) article. I had no idea that you were putting forth a serious challenge to the fact that Durant is African American. SQGibbon (talk) 18:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

We aren't discussing what Durant IS but what we can PROVE. We aren't saying he is African American or any other ethnicity because we have no proof. Pictures are not proof. "Common sense" is not proof. Anything without proof (i.e. reliable sources saying so) must be removed from BLPs. This is all basic policy written elsewhere.--TM 18:54, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

This just isn't true, let me quote from WP:BLP "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." Meaning if something is not likely to be challenged it's potentially OK for it to be included in an article (there can be other reasons for not including it). Notice that WP:PROVEIT uses the exact same text. Since there is plenty of evidence that Durant (and the others) is African American, and there is not even a hint of evidence that he's not, and there's nothing at all even slightly controversial about asserting the fact that he is African American then including this claim in his article is not in violation of WP policy. Unless, perhaps, you are putting forth a serious challenge to the claim that he is African American. SQGibbon (talk) 19:08, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you should read further down. As quoted from BlackFalcon above, "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources." --TM 19:25, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah crap, that was for me? Your formatting was off by a level (fixed now). (I didn't think your statement here made sense as a response to what postdlf wrote). Anyway, this is my first foray into The Category Wars and I admit there are things about categories about which I was unfamiliar. That said, from the point of view of just the article, I believe adding African American is entirely in line with WP policy. Do you agree? Your position, as I understand it, is that even with the article making the claim that Durant (and the others) is African American is not sufficient for categorizing him as an African American basketball player unless there is a reliable source supporting that claim. Correct? Did you read the source that Black Falcon supplied above (link to the source)? That is a reliable source (I think), is that sufficient for establishing Durant as African American? If not, and assuming that is a reliable source, then what would it take?

Finally, having looked deeper into categories it appears questionable that the African American basketball player category should even exist. Subjects should be categorized by the terminal sub-category, correct? So someone like Wilt Chamberlain would be African American basketball player but not in the American basketball player category? Which means he won't be in the same category as, say, Larry Bird which further appears to me to be a bad thing. And then also reading here seems to indicate that the African American basketball player category should not exist. I know I've introduced a new topic so feel free to separate this into a new section if desired. SQGibbon (talk) 21:59, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

TM - are you familiar with WP:POINT? Do you actually think that Durant is not African-American, or are you simply arguing that he might not be in order to make a point about sourcing? john k (talk) 00:29, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

John K, I'll quote what I wrote above to answer your question "Kevin Durant is probably African American, but probably isn't good enough, especially with BLPs. Some editors added categories based on last names, some using pictures and some just their perceptions. In my opinion, all of these are original research; this is why I have been removing uncited ethnicity categories from articles for at least a year".--TM 02:21, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

To SQ Gibbon, I didn't look at that source until now. Black and African American in the case of the US are interchangable terms. Given this new information, I am fine with including Category:African American basketball players to Kevin Durant with a sentence stating he is so with this citation. I am still going to continue removing uncited, unmentioned ethnicity categories and I invite all other editors to do the same.--TM 02:25, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Why do we need another African American category? --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE _{GOOD WORKS} 18:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Link to Islands of Maine as well as Islands of Waldo County, or only Islands of Waldo County?

A question has come up as to whether articles about Maine islands, like Sears Island should link only to the county-by-county category, in this case the sub-category Category:Islands of Waldo County, Maine, or link in addition to the more general category Category:Islands of Maine?

Pro: A couple of editors feel that this ought to be one of those "exceptions to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory." They feel readers would balk at island finding one county at a time. People think of the Maine Islands as a group. Carl Little's book is called Art of the Maine Islands; the Island Institute in Rockland deals with "island communities off the Maine coast", likewise the Maine Seacoat Mission in Bar Harbor deals with "coastal and island communities;" there is the Maine Island trail "a 375-mile chain of over 180 coastal islands" for kayaks, and so forth. People don't think of the islands county by county. And it might seem a daunting task to figure out which county to look in to find the right one, or to get a list of them all (180? county by county?). Not that the more specific county category is without its uses; just that it ought not to be an either/or situation, but rather--both. ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 21:07, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Con: Including all islands of Maine in the one category, which would be in the hundreds if all of them were created, is simply counter-productive to the categorization process. A list is a much more useful tool for those looking for all of the Islands. It can include much more information than a category can. Such lists have been created already for towns and other places.--TM 06:26, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Comments?

Hmm. Nobody seems interested. Well, Namiba maybe you can persuade me. Tell me what a category is for? My sense is a category is a third way to find information on Wikipedia, a kind of generic word search. The primary two ways seek specific information: 1) word searching Google or Wiki's search engine; 2) clicking on a link within an article. Word searches and link clicking are how people normally get to a page. Once there, they may decide they want information not just on this specific thing, this one island, say, but all the islands. If the page links to both the category and subcategory, they have a choice: Islands by County (and maybe they do want all the islands just in one area) or all Maine Islands. As to lists, there are these shortcomings: currently there is no list of Maine Islands. I will be the first to award a barnstar for the hard work of creating one. But nobody has done so, understandably: would a List of Maine Islands include every named rock that pokes its nose out of a harbor, every flooded hummock of trees in every river? A category, unlike a list, is useful even if incomplete. Also lists are hard to find and update. An editor working on one island page at a time, as I did with a minor update to Sears, would need to click away from the page he is working on to search for an appropriate list (is it List:Islands of Maine? or List: Islands of the New England Coast?, or maybe List: US Islands?). Once he has found the right list, or one of them, he checks the long list to see if that island is on it, and finding it missing, opens up the edit page, then updates the list. And then gnaws his nails worried that he has not updated all the other lists the island should be on. A category is much easier. An editor would simply use Hotcat to add Category:Islands of Maine, and since categories are seldom exhaustive, not worry about the fact that he is working incrementally one island at a time. Perhaps I misunderstand the function of a category, but isn't it an easy way for editors to group information to assemble an (incomplete) collection of similar things?ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 13:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

There are several reasons why including all islands in Maine in one category should not be: 1, it is a long established principle that diffusing large categories (as we surely agree a category with all of the islands of Maine would be) is common and useful. Lists are more useful because they can include links to articles not yet written. There are dozens if not hundreds of Maine islands without articles, as I am sure you know. Frankly, it is just common usage not to include a subcategory e.g. Category:Islands of Waldo County, Maine and a higher category Category:Islands of Maine together on the same page. See for yourself at Category:Islands of Florida or Category:Schools in Rhode Island by county.--TM 17:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your post. As noted above, common usage or at least common parlance would group the Maine Islands as "Maine Islands" rather than Islands by County (the Florida Islands do not have their own separate "persona": nobody writes art books called Art of the Florida Islands). Here's the practicality of it for a Wikipedia user: I just tried going from the Peaks Island page and clicking on the "Islands by County" category looking for islands which seceded from the mainland and became their own separate jurisdiction, as Peaks tried to do and failed. I cannot recall the names of all of the islands that seceded but would recognize them if I saw them. It didn't work. No idea what county they are all in, and so no idea where to look. Frye Island on Sebago Lake I know is one of them, but which county is it in? Now, if Peaks and Frye both were listed in a category Maine Islands, one click would have got me where I needed to go. As opposed to the multiple clicks of culling through lists: there is a general List of islands--including all islands, everywhere, impossibly over-broad and under-detailed, then the List of islands of the United States then within that the List of islands of the Northeast United States --and I still have to scroll down through Connecticut to get to Maine. So to reiterate, for practicality's sake, for the sake of the ordinary Wikipedia user who just wants to get where he's going with one click, and for the editor who wants to get stuff done with one Hotcat click, I still think this is one of the "exceptions to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory." I do wish some other editors would weigh in as I fear neither of us has succeeded in persuading the other. ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 21:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Are we talking about a limited subset of all islands off Maine, i.e. the 180 or so mentioned in the book Maine Island trail? Or are we simply talking about all islands currently placed in sub-categories of Category:Islands of Maine? If we are talking about a subset of the absolute total islands, then only would I support additional categorization into such a category, e.g. Category:Maine Island trail. Otherwise I do not see the current lack of the standard List of islands of Maine to be a valid argument for making an exception to the quoted general rule for categorizing only into the most detailed sub-category. Actually I would encourage the creation of this list page immediately as well as an article on the Islands of Maine. With the literature you list in your initial post sufficient sources would be ample to start writing such an article. Also, I would think that creating navigational templates to be placed in all island articles would be a todo item in this process. __meco (talk) 22:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Meco for a thoughtful and insightful comment. Category:Maine Island Trail is a good idea.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 12:26, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

List of islands of Maine was started by myself and greatly expanded by Jlm. Adding to it (and creating the red linked islands) is the next step. I'm glad this has been resulted in an addition to Wikipedia.--TM 17:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Ordering categories

Currently there is no rule or recommendation for ordering categories at the bottom of a page. In my opinion, alphabetical order is the easiest and most unbiased way of sorting them. What are other people's thoughts? McLerristarr / Mclay1 16:26, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with alpha order. I put then in what I think is order of priority, but that is subjective of course. The category that is subject of the article, which is often the eponymous category, should be first. The birth year, death year and living people cats should be last IMHO. They are of very little use to readers. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. When it comes to biographical articles, I put the most important ones first; the ones that are basically guarantees of notability in that they have no non-notable members (presidents of the U.S., etc.). Then after that comes more general career categories, education, place of origin, and last the vital statistics of birth/death year. Alphabetical is just arbitrary and unhelpful for sorting, because category names aren't organized around the best name for alpha sorting, but rather the most clear name. Compare Category:United States Senators and Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives, for example. So I sort them by general importance and by topical groups in articles I create, and occasionally in articles I just edit. I think that's more helpful for readers, particularly given the flood of category tags some articles have. postdlf (talk) 21:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Many users prefer alphabetical ordering and will change the order of categories if they are not alphabetised. Perhaps we need rules on how or how not to order to prevent re-arrangements. McLerristarr / Mclay1 00:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

"Many users prefer alphabetical ordering" ^{[citation needed]}. By user do you mean editor or reader? It is what readers want it what is important. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:20, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetical only if there's no better way. Normally logical. I.e. start with the eponymous category (if there is one), then the most "essentially" defining characteristics, then the more obscure properties. Stub categories (which I would prefer to be hidden anyway) last. Generally speaking readers won't know exactly what categories are called, so won't be able to look for them alphabetically anyway. However, alphabetical can be used to order very similar categories that have no other distinguishing criterion (e.g. if a river flows through Albania, Bosnia and Croatia, put the corresponding categories in that order).--Kotniski (talk) 07:37, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

By users I mean people with user pages, so editors. I don't need a citation, I've observed it. Some people (including myself) re-arrange the categories into alphabetical order if they are in no logical order. McLerristarr / Mclay1 11:28, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

We know that people do it. But why they do it, and whether readers generally would prefer it that way, is still unexplained. It doesn't accomplish anything helpful in my view. It often doesn't even group related categories together. postdlf (talk) 13:36, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I have come across pages that have had the cats placed in alpha order. I recall changing the order to place the more important at the top of the list. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

The Winston Churchill article is an interesting example since it has a large number of categories. It almost follows an alpha order. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

We should do an RFC on a guideline. My suggestion is:

"If the article is about an eponymous category then that category should be the first one listed. Any other categories should follow in order of importance. If all the categories are of equal importance then an alphabetical order should be used."

That seems to address the points raised in the discussion above. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

One side note. The MoS calls for the stub templates to be located following the categories. This will place the stub categories at the end of the list automatically. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:13, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This does not affect the order of the categories that we are discussing here. Stub categories should of course be at the end. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Alan, I'd further state that categories should be grouped thematically, and those groups in turn should be ordered by importance. On Winston Churchill, for example, he has two death-related categories: Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in England and Category:Deaths from stroke. Currently those are separated by six unrelated categories; those should be grouped together and placed at the end of the category tags, next to birth/death years. I would also group together those relating to his military service, those relating to his MP years...and so forth. postdlf (talk) 21:17, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the order should be priority, thematically and then alphabetically. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

We should not forget the advantages of listing categories alphabetically. When one is seeking a category for a particular intersection or topic, it is much easier to find the desired category when categories are ordered alphabetically. In addition, different people will have different opinions about the relative importance or relevance of various categories, and choosing to order alphabetically avoids that problem. I do think that exceptions should be made when there is a need (e.g. in the case of eponymous categories); however, in general, I consider alphabetical ordering to be more intuitive than trying to guess the priority rating criteria used by another editor. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 22:00, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

From what I have seen the vast majority of WP articles have only one to five categories. The Winston Churchill example I gave above is an exception rather than a rule. Therefore, category order is not a big issue really. Up to five categories only need a glance to be checked. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't buy that alphabetizing helps anyone find categories, because the naming varies too widely even within the same topic, and the tags can't be piped within articles like articles can within categories. Category:Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, but Category:United States Supreme Court justices. Category:United States Senators, but Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives. Category:Ohio politicians, but Category:Writers from Ohio. The starting letter is meaningless and does not even group like categories together.

The concern about differing opinions on what categories are more important is really a red herring. It really doesn't matter whether Category:Presidents of the United States or Category:Chief Justices of the United States goes first on William Howard Taft, so long as they both go before Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Washington, D.C. I'm more concerned with grouping categories meaningfully rather than some kind of strict ordering of importance: all education categories together, all military service categories together...something that actually makes sense of the jumble of tags rather than the randomness of whether a federal judge category starts with a J or a U. postdlf (talk) 02:40, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The naming of the categories should also be standardised then to avoid differences between, for example, Category:XXX deaths and Category:Deaths from XXX. McLerristarr / Mclay1 05:15, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

In fact, these long lists of categories we get on some articles just say to me that the category system is overloaded and being used for things it was never originally intended to be used for - and that there ought to be developed a properly functional and useful tool for making use of all this structured data.--Kotniski (talk) 05:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Eponymous categories of people

In an attempt to sort out categories requesting photographs of people (see User:People-n-photo-bot) I have come across a difficulty related to categorization. On running a program down from Category:American politicians I was getting a list of people who are or were not American politicians; for example military personnel and terrorists. This has been traced to categories such as Category:George W. Bush. Am I correct in saying that Category:21st-century presidents of the United States should only contain articles of presidents an not the Eponymous categories? --Traveler100 (talk) 08:50, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

This has been the subject of many discussions. The current situation means you are correct in what you are saying. McLerristarr / Mclay1 01:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

On a similar subject, what about the sub-categories of Category:Presidents of the United States, most of these are not presidents? --Traveler100 (talk) 06:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to categorise things like that. Category:Children of Presidents of the United States are not Presidents of the United States but there is no other way of categorising them. They are related to the subject so I would say it is fair enough to keep it a sub-category. McLerristarr / Mclay1 08:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Category:Children of Presidents of the United States should instead be a subcategory of Category:Presidency of the United States in my opinion, the same as Category:First Ladies of the United States. Epbr123 (talk) 09:35, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

The only reason these things are hard to categorize is that we have this stupid system where sets and topics are co-mingled in the "Category" namespace and it's not always convenient to follow the naming convention that plural names represent sets and singular names represent topics. There should be some kind of more explicit way of distinguishing between sets and topics. —Coder Dan (talk) 10:07, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realise there was a Category:Presidency of the United States. In that case, I agree. We need indeed need to make sure we have distinguish between topic categories and list categories. I will fix the US presidents categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:57, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree entirely that Category:Presidents of the United States should include George W Bush and not Category:George W Bush (which contains a multitude of non-presidents). Occuli (talk) 19:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

categories - real and fictional

Is there any convention on sub-categories of people (and other subjects)? I have been scanning down from Category:People by occupation to create lists of people by groups but have been getting unexpected results. For example film actors under the category Criminals. Reason turns out to be fictional people sub-categories being in the sub-categories of real people. Is this an accepted practice or should this be corrected?--Traveler100 (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:Categorization of people. But how exactly is Category:Film actors nested within Category:Criminals? I don't see it. postdlf (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

thanks for the link. How it can occur: going down from criminal via assassins you will eventually get to Ninja which includes Ninja in Fiction. Similar for serial killers and a number of other types of criminals.--Traveler100 (talk) 16:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Right, so Category:Fictional Foo is included in Category:Foo, but how does that nest Category:Film actors within Category:Criminals? postdlf (talk) 16:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not sure which category situation you refer to. Is "Criminals" directly claimed on actors in existing categories or is the problem a result of you scanning different categories and combining the results into lists? Can you give a specific example with category and actor names? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking at it more closely what I am getting is films and characters in those films (so not real people). For example under serial killer or ninja. Have checked a few of the actors in the list they are actually also convicted criminals. I have not however check all individual entries.--Traveler100 (talk) 16:53, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The category system isn't a strict hierarchy because its subjects often aren't just one type of thing. Category:Foos may contain both individual Foos and articles that are about Foo as a topic. postdlf (talk) 17:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem Traveler100 has noticed might be linked to the tendency of editors to confuse articles and categories (see presidents topic above). I have always thought that Category:Foos should include Category:Fictional foos (and this has been the convention in most cases). Some actors will be criminals ... not quite sure how the 'fictional' question comes into this. Occuli (talk) 19:38, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Category:Ninja should not be a people category at all (as it contains non-people) and so its parents are incorrect. Occuli (talk) 19:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Douglas Sarine is at present in 'Criminals' via subcats. However this is because he is in a host of incorrect categories: eg he is not a 'fictional ninja', or a film, or a series, etc. Occuli (talk) 20:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Category cycles

I have created a list of all category cycles. If anyone is interested in fixing them, see Wikipedia:Dump reports/Category cycles. Svick (talk) 16:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposing new weak security categories.

I welcome input and assistance with my proposals: [3]. --Elvey (talk) 21:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Sortkey

Currently, WP:SORTKEY states "By convention, the first letter of each word in a sort key is capitalized, and other letters are lower case." This has led to the addition of such defaultsorts by bots and other AWB edits. I would like to question this rule. I can imagine that in some cases, having a defaultsort or other sortkey with this formula may be beneficial. However, I don't see why it has to be the rule.

• Disadvantages compared to having no enforced/automatically added/prescribed defaultsort:

1. Page moves will check the new page title for sorting, instead of the defaultsort which is based on the previous name. Looking at the recent move log, I see that e.g. Dhanwar language was moved to Dhanwar Rai language. If an automated defaultsort had been added, this page would still be sorted at Dhanwar Language. Because it has no defautltsort, it is correctly sorted at Dhanwar Rai language. Ouachita people stood for over a year at Ouachita poeple. Actual example: in this edit, AWB added the defaultsort Selce E Poshtme to the article Selcë e Poshtme. However, the article is now at Lower Selcë, with the old defaultsort kept. No auto-added defaultsort would have prevented this (or at least made it a less common problem).
2. As long as not all pages have the prescribed defaultsort, sorting in cats is incorrect. E.g. on Category:Employment law terms, "Employment testing" is given before "Employment contract", because the first was given a defaultsort by Yobot, and the second is not so blessed yet. Similarly, List of logic systems sorts before List of first-order theories because the former has been edited by Smackbot. However, as soon as all the pages have this kind of defaultsort, if ever, these pages will again have the sorting order they had without defaultsorts.

I would like a discussion about which advantages are so strong that they outweigh these disadvantages in such a way that these problems and errors are acceptable collateral damage. I currently don't see them, and would like to change this guideline (and all related ones, and AWB) so that this unnecessary and in many cases harmful rule disappears completely. Fram (talk) 18:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that the rule is wrong, though it should perhaps be pointed out that there's no point in applying the rule to just a few pages in a category - if you do that, and leave the others as they are, then it will indeed (at least for a limited time) make things worse rather than better.--Kotniski (talk) 18:33, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

But if you do it to some pages in a category, you are doing it to other categories as well (since the defaultsort works for every cat of a page, and page 1 in a cat will have different other cats than page 2, and so on). Not really a workable solution. And it doesn't answer the question: assuming it worked like this anyway, how would it even make things better? Fram (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The case sensitivity of sorting means the rule is valid to me. A bot can readily add the missing DEFAULTSORTs (they're already being done gradually), and I don't think established pages are moved often at all (though a bot could also do those ones). Rjwilmsi 19:02, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Could you give examples where it is actually better? Your response is purely theoretical, while I have taken the time to show how it works in reality. Fram (talk) 19:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Better than what? Clearly having a rule is better than having no rule (or rather: in any given category, a rule is better than no rule; and it makes things much simpler if we have the same rule for practically all categories). Are you suggesting a different rule? It could perhaps be refined (to make it more compatible with a larger number of pages for which no sort key has been defined), but at the cost of increased complication.--Kotniski (talk) 19:34, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

"Clearly"? "Clearly it is much better to look at each page individually? "Clearly" it is much better to keep the page title as the default sortkey? It seems to me to be the simplest if the rule was: leave things as they are, only add a defaultsort when you actually have a reason for it, not just adding a defaultsort because a rule is better than no rule? My "rule" decreases complication, instead of increasing it. Fram (talk) 19:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

As for "established pages aren't moved often at all": my examples at the start were from the latest hour at that time. Looking at the current move log, the defaultsorts would be incorrect at this move, this one, and this, and a fourth and a fifth in just over one hour time. Let's say that this is a typical hour (no idea actually), then this is 100 pages a day that need a bot edit to correct a previous bot edit (of unproven use), while without the first bot edit no second edit would be needed. Fram (talk) 19:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The benefit of the sortkey is that it keeps pages like Rabbit Hole and rabbit hole grouped together in the hypothetical category of pages beginning with "Rabbit". This is because all lowercase letters in ASCII have a higher value than all uppercase letters. Without a capitalized sortkey, the category would be sorted "Rabbit...Rabbit Creek...Rabbit Hole...Rabbit Transit...Rabbit breed...Rabbit hole..." . Without changing the way categories sort, both approaches lead to items in unexpected positions. If pages really are to be sorted as if their names are capitalized, having a case-/accented-insensitive sort would be the ideal solution; unless that is implemented, capitalizing DEFAULTSORTs works to force the behavior, with the downsides of necessary cleanup and flawed sorts due to incomprehensive use. —Ost (talk) 20:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no opposition to people adding a single sort (piped after the cat) on pages and cats where this "really" is a problem. Considering that e.g. Rabbit Hole and rabbit hole have at first glance no cats in common, the defaultsort would have no positive effect here. I know the theoretical reason for this, but have yet to see one actual example, never mind the whole series of them that would really make such a rule to be implemented everywhere worthwhile, instead of occasional, single)cat on single-page added sorts. For the moment, we have actual downsides and theoretical upsides, so that is not really a good reason for a rule that imposes this. To have a rule, there has to be a sufficiently large group that would profit from this, to counter all the work it actually produces. Fram (talk) 21:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Some perspective here: Everyone else in my house uses Wikipedia as a reader, but none of them even knew what categories are, without confusing them with references. Admittedly I've used categories as an editor to find other articles that need a similar edit, but in that case the sort order doesn't matter. If someone besides editors does use categories, the "Rabbit hole" example would only matter if the list was long enough to include all those entries, perhaps hundreds of thousands. In that case, why would someone read the whole list one at a time, or am I missing something? Art LaPella (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I disagree. The "theoretical" downside is trivially obvious because of ASCII; just because I'm not as invested in the debate and I didn't take the time to find a category with the example does not mean that one does not exist. In fact, it should be harder to find examples of this instance particularly because many pages already have DEFAULTSORTs and I wouldn't want to change them to prove a point. Additionally, my example was more specific than it needed to be as any pages with categorized with mixed case would have conflated sorting; "Rabbit Transit" being sorted before "Rabbit breed" is also out of order. In short, both systems have downsides and adding DEFAULTSORTS is at least attempting to fix the problem, though it may never finish; I think the approach attempting to remedy the problem is better, though changing the sort function to meet user expectations is ideal. —Ost (talk) 22:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I really can't understand why the developers haven't fixed this major software bug after all these years (you'd think getting alphabetical order right would be fairly fundamental for a reference work site, but apparently they have better things to do). But as long as the software behaves as it does, we have to work round it, and I really don't see what improvement can be suggested to the present "rule". Having no system at all would mean that pages get sorted unalphabetically. Admittedly it's quite hard, clicking at random, to find examples in practice where this would happen, but the sort of thing we mean is here, where if it wasn't for the rule, Tom and Jerry: The Movie would come after Tom Sweep.--Kotniski (talk) 05:33, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, finally we have one example. I don't doubt that there are some more examples of this, but I debate whether we should impose a rule on 'all articles and categories, to solve a problem which only exists on a very limited number of articles, in a very limited number of categories (i.e. not all categories of these pages, but just one). Tye fact that it is easy to find examples of where the current situation creates problems, and that it is hard to find situations wheer it has solved any, indicates to me that the cure is worse than the problem. You are all trying to "fix a problem" or even to "fix a major software bug", but no one has been willing or able to demonstrate that there actually is a major problem. Why is it better to change all articles to help a few, when these few could be dealt with on a case by case basis? When someone actually notices that in that category, those two movies should be in another order, go to one of the articles, and add a sortkey after the category. Isn't that much, much, much simpler than the current situation? Note that due to the defautlsort on the Tom and Jerry Movie, Category:Animated comedy films is now incorrectly sorted. So adding a defautlsort to that one article, means that it should also be added to all these other ones, and so on, and so on. We are creating a bigger problem in trying to fix a smaller one. Fram (talk) 06:55, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Fram I admire your drive to sort out this inconsistency. I am willing to help progress a bot request to complete missing DEFAULTSORTs (Yobot would probably be the best candidate to extend existing tasks), and if nobody else is willing I can make a request myself to deal with incorrect DEFAULTSORTs following page moves (monitor Page Moves log, check if DEFAULTSORT corresponds to that generated by old page name, if yes, set DEFAULTSORT to that generated from new page name). Depending on how the API works for the page log I could run that bot every few days or weeks. Rjwilmsi 08:14, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Still, that would mean thousands and thousands of edits (probably millions, most pages don't have a defaultsort yet) for what? So much effort for so little benefit? Why are people trying everything to keep this rule, instead of arguing why this rule is so desperately needed? There are a few cases where it is beneficial, yes, but nothing that warrants such zeal (including it in AWB, proposing to write a bot, ...). Would dropping this rule (and dropping it from AWB a a result) make Wikipedia any worse? No. The current situation as a net result makes Wikipedia worse (some sorts would be better, more are worse, and moves are a problem). Creating a bot would improve this, but at the cost of many, many, many edits. Removing the rule and the AWB edits would prevent the problems as well, and the few cases that then aren't automatically helped by the proposed bot can be done manually, when someone comes across it and has a problem with it. Can someone explain why this isn't acceptable? Fram (talk) 08:30, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I see your point - there seems to be a conflict here between the ideal situation we'd like to see and what produces the best results in the short term. As an ideal, every page would be sorted right in every category, and every time a page was moved its sort keys would be updated. In practice, many pages are categorized without any thought for sort keys, and people (including me, I admit) don't generally check the sort keys when they rename a page. I don't think we're ever going to get this entirely right, but having some kind of automated process to check for missorts (perhaps more intelligent than the AWB algorithm) seems like the best way of minimizing error.--Kotniski (talk) 09:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

A bot that checks the page move log, and changes instances where the defaultsort (if any) matches the old name to the new name, seems to me as such a useful bot. Fram (talk) 09:54, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Would you like me to investigate further and request approval for my bot? Rjwilmsi 10:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Depends on what you are discussing. A bot to add defaultsorts? Please no, don't. A bot as outlined by Kotniski and supported by me, to change defaultsorts which are incorrect after a page move? Fine, absolutely. Having this bot makes some of the most acute problems of the current situation obsolete, but that doesn't mean that there suddenly is a good reason for mass- or default additions of defaultsorts through AWB or bots, or for the mandatory format of them as expressed in this guideline. A bot that solves problems is not a reason to continue the creation of said problems in the first place, barring a convincing display of a serious problem that is solved by said creation at the same time. Fram (talk) 10:52, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

If I were to create a bot it would get the list of moved pages since last run, ignore pages without a DEFAULTSORT then if the DEFAULTSORT matched the AWB-generated DEFAULTSORT of the old page title, change it to be the AWB-generated DEFAULTSORT of the new page title. That would mean editor-chosen DEFAULTSORTs would be left alone. For biography articles I'd log them and manually review the bot's proposed change prior to doing it, since DEFAULTSORT generation rules struggle to meet all the subltleties of WP:NAMESORT. That means DEFAULTSORTs would be in Title Case, per current rule and my opinion of the correct rule. If you don't agree then the deal's off I suppose. Rjwilmsi 11:24, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I agree, with the caveat that if the current rule would change, the bot may have to adapt as well (if e.g. the rule would change to "only add defaultsorts in cases where they are necessary to correctly sort multiple categories, then in the case of the above mentioned move of Selcë e Poshtme to Lower Selcë, the bot wouldn't change the defaultsort, but would remove it as unnecesary). Fram (talk) 11:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

← I agree that it seems silly to have to add and maintain DEFAULTSORT when a software tweak could fix most of the pages at once. Is there a bugzilla on this I can vote for? If the software treated uppercase and lowercase equally, and treated letters with accents as their non-accented counterparts, DEFAULTSORT would only be needed for people (to sort by lastname first) and a few other limited cases. –xeno^talk 13:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a very old bug on bugzilla with lots and lots of votes (particularly from non-English users, as the current system totally messes up their alphabetical orderings) - last I heard some devs were thinking about possibly thinking about starting to solve it.--Kotniski (talk) 14:55, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Very old is an understatement! T2164 voted for. –xeno^talk 14:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I have a collapsed thread on my talk page which is about sorting out out of orders on a category by category basis. This would only make needed changes. it would have been done by now but I have been rather busy. Rich Farmbrough, 15:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

800k pages are about persons and another large number has special characters. So, maybe adding DEFAULTSORT to the remaining pages (excluding those that are only one word without any internal capitalisation) isn't a big task afterall. I can fill a BRFA if we conclude here. Rjw, maybe you can give us some statistics of how big this task would be. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

No real statistics, but some 50,000 or so "List of" articles, thousands and thousands of plants (e.g. nearly two thousand articles in Category:Plant pathogens and diseases, plus 23 subcategories, but also 135 in things like Category:Anthurium), numerous articles in anatomy (e.g. 130 solely in Category:Arteries of the head and neck. We have seven articles starting with "intraocular". None of them have a capitalized second word. Some of them (at least Intraocular pressure) has an auto-added defaultsort, putting it out of order in categories. "Correcting" the other six is a pointless method of solving a problem: when one is wrong, the other ones shouldn't confirm to it, the wrong one should be corrected. People seem to be running towards a bot to tag them all, without even thinking why. Fram (talk) 07:47, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

My summary so far:

• The best solution is making sorting case insensitive, but this has been requested a long time ago, and it will probably not happen in the near future.
• The most obvious problem with the current system, incorrect defaultsorts after page moves, can possible be solved by a bot that Rjwilmsi has kindly offered to create and run (under certain conditions).
• Apart from this, we have categories where an added defautlsort (according to the current sort rule) solves sorting problems, and we have categories where it created such problems. Solutions (apart from my first point) are either to add a defaultsort to all pages (which would mean many thousands of edits, most of them not needed at all), or no longer adding defaultsorts by default and as a rule, but only manually in categories where they are needed (i.e. either as a defaultsort, or as a category-targeted sort). The auto-adding is the easiest but also in many cases the most pointless: the second requires more thinking and manual work, but will reduce the number of unnecessary edits (and make AWB and bots with the same functionality a bit lighter, as one rule/task less has to be done!).

If people consider this a fair summary, how do we proceed? Fram (talk) 07:33, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statistics: I gave the figures elsewhere for the number of correctly DEFAULTSORTED items, according to the capitalisation rules only (about 1.8 million I think?). I don't have the figures for the number that naively need or do not need a DEFAULTSORT, according to the capitalisation rules, but I think the first is hundreds of thousands only. The number that have an incorrect DEFAULTSORT, again according to capitalisation rules only is the low tens of thousands. Rich Farmbrough, 19:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Category:Works by date as introductions

It seems to me that this category hierarchy should be connected to the Category:Introductions by year hierarchy. I just suggested this at Category talk:Works by date, but I guess the chances of getting any feedback on that thought is considerably greater here. __meco (talk) 11:54, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Xrayburst1/Stellar Explosion

Can someone help me with User:Xrayburst1/Stellar Explosion ? I tried to decategorize it, per WP:USERNOCAT, but I was cited for vandalism when I did that. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 07:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

 Done Thanks Fram. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 07:57, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Village pump: "Is an unsourced catagarisation of a person as belonging to a particular ethnic group violation of WP:BLP policy?"

Discussion in progress here. postdlf (talk) 18:03, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Category:Actors by religion

I think that, since we have the Category:Jewish actors, it's only fair we create (or re-create) categories for actors of other specific religions:

• Category:Christian actors
  • Category:Roman Catholic actors
• Category:Atheistic actors
• Category:Hindu actors
• Category:Muslim actors

Also Category:Comedians by religion:

• Category:Christian comedians
  • Category:Roman Catholic comedians
• Category:Atheistic comedians
• Category:Jewish comedians (Already have that one)

...Not sure if there are enough Hindu or Muslim comedians out there to qualify...

If Jews are specified by their occupations, why can't other religious people? Carol Anne Freeling (talk) 01:26, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Because Jews see themselves as a race rather than just a religion. We could also have Buddhist and Scientologist but I think Roman Catholic is getting a bit too specific. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

However, the creation of these categories must meet WP:Overcategorization#Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:39, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Please read the deletion discussions before recreating deleted pages. Category:Christian actors should be deleted as it's pointless and Category:Christian comedians should only be kept for comedians whose religion has something to do with their comedy, but I can't think of an example (anti-religion comedy is much more common). McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:44, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 12#Subcategories of Actors by religion and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 14#Category:Jews by occupation. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

These categories should all be deleted as completely unnecessary invitations to breaking BLP, and certainly none should be recreated per WP:OTHERSTUFF. Hans Adler 08:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I must concur. Actors' religion is an extremely non-defining characteristic for being an actor. __meco (talk) 08:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

• As for the Jewish categories, the correct reason is given above. But as to Chrisians and other, I don't think we should have them. Then again, since we have "Christian films", why shouldn't we have "Christian actors" as well? :) Debresser (talk) 10:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
  • It would have to be Category:Actors in Christian films for it to be related, but I certainly do not think that category is necessary. McLerristarr | Mclay1 11:28, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

That's what I meant. :) Just joking. Debresser (talk) 11:38, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the above reasons for deleting these; was there no reason for recreating them other than "Jews have their own categories"? That argument was well countered. I've speedy deleted those that were recreations of previously deleted categories, and just listed (the improperly named) Category:Atheistic actors for deletion. The comedian by religion categories should also all be listed (none of those were recreations, right?). postdlf (talk) 19:19, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Categories applying to musical works

Two weeks ago I created various sonata categories and applied them to dozens of pages that detailed relevant sonatas. This morning, most of my changes were wholesale reverted (see edits on the 18 November here—most with an edit comment similar to "cat is for a specific musical work, not for its composer)"). Some background to this issue:
I believe there to be three levels of musical work pages:

• Level-1: works listed on a composers' page (e.g. Stanley Hollingsworth)
• Level-2: works listed on a dedicated "list of composer's works" page (e.g. List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach)
• Level-3: specific pages devoted to individual works by a composer (e.g. Oboe sonata in C minor (HWV 366)—a page I created for a work by Handel)

In my experience, the more "notable" a composer, the more likely they are to have level-2 and certainly level-3 pages. For the rest of this discussion, I'll stick to the example of "oboe sonata" (and Category:Oboe sonatas), but the underlying principle at stake here applies to other instruments (recorder, violin, and flute in the above reversions), and indeed other genres (e.g. symphonies). I believe that it is okay to apply the Category:Oboe sonatas tag to the lowest level available for a composer. For example, in the case of Hollingsworth above, it would have to go at his level-1 page (where "Sonata for oboe and piano (1949)" is mentioned in a list) because there just isn't a level-2 or level-3 page. In the case of CPE Bach above, the category would have to go at the level-2 page (where, for example, "H 549 \ Oboe Sonata in G minor (Wq 135)") is mentioned because there isn't a level-3 page available for the work. In the case of Handel above, the category can go at the level-3 page.
The reasons I believe it okay to put the Category:Oboe sonatas at all three levels (on a case-by-case basis) include:

1. As they stand, pages such as Stanley Hollingsworth are not just a composer page: they are a composer plus list-of-works page.
2. Listing (say) the "Stanley Hollingsworth" page on the Category:Oboe sonatas page helps to drive readers towards the location of an oboe sonata (something which the readers who have found their way to the category page are obviously interested). No matter what state articles are in, we have to focus on improving the experience for the only people who matter: our readers.
3. It is obviously desirable that we have level-3 pages for all the oboe sonata works, however I think we all have to be realistic and assume that that isn't going to happen (either ever, or for a very long time for the less notable composers). In addition, I'm certain that there would be "notability" issues if level-3 stub pages such as Sonata for oboe and piano (Hollingsworth) were created (which is the only avenue possible for applying the Category:Oboe sonatas according to the above reverter).
4. There is no time limit at WP. By that I mean that it is fine to apply the categories to level-1 and level-2 pages now as they can be removed when appropriate later. When all the level-3 oboe sonata pages are created for a composer, then the aim would be to remove the category from the level-2 page. Similarly, if a level-2 page were to be created for a composer, then it would be appropriate to remove the Oboe sonatas category from the level-1 page. What's the hurry?
5. Having the categories on the level-1 and level-2 pages means it is more likely to attract the attention of editors—who might then create the level-3 pages.
6. Categorization is never going to be an exact science. I maintain that it is better to include level-1 and level-2 pages in categories than it is to not categorize musical works (without the categorisations I created, the oboe sonatas would be much harder to find). In other words, it doesn't have to be neat—just functional.
7. Having the Category:Oboe sonatas page at the bottom of the Stanley Hollingsworth page is not a distraction (to the readers of the "Stanley Hollingsworth" page).
8. In the two weeks since I applied the categories, there has been no complaints (save the sudden reversions—without discussion—this morning). Note that the lack of complaint or reversion by any other editor on any of the dozens of pages I edited includes notable pages such as List of compositions by Antonio Vivaldi and List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
9. If someone arrives at Category:Oboe sonatas and sees a link to Stanley Hollingsworth are they going to be put off by thinking that a mistake has happened, or are they likely to assume that there is a mention of an oboe sonata at the destination page? What's the real harm? Remember that there is no other mention of his oboe sonata anywhere else on WP.
10. There are no guidelines (that I can find) that say that something like Category:Oboe sonatas can't be placed on pages such as Stanley Hollingsworth or List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I'll be guided by whatever consensus arises.  GFHandel.   02:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• If you want to achieve the objective (1) you stated, you should create a list of oboe sonatas, a la Oboe concerto. You may then list them according to style or composer, and include that page in Category:Oboe sonatas. I feel using the category on Stanley Hollingsworth would definitely be a misuse of the categorisation system. By the same token, Michael Jackson should not be tagged with Category:Pop music, even though he may have been known as 'the King of Pop', however, including him in the sub-category Category:Pop musicians is acceptable. Thus, fewer would object if you were to create Category:Sonata composers or somesuch, and included Mr Hollingsworth. Tagging per (2) is still not terribly proper use of categories because only part of the list is ever likely to belong to the category, but I think fewer are likely to object. The absence of specific guidelines only means we don't mean to be overly bureaucratic; it doesn't absolve us from using our common sense. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

---

As an example of what I did, here is the state of the Category:Oboe sonatas page after I put the "Oboe sonatas" category on the List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach page:

Sub-category:

• Oboe sonatas by George Frideric Handel (2 P)

Pages:

• Oboe Sonata (Poulenc)
• Oboe Sonata (Saint-Saëns)
• List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Isn't that completely obvious that CPE Bach wrote oboe sonatas, and as a bonus gives our readers a one-click mechanism to go and find them? Obviously I added other pages (including composer pages where they contained a list of works), but the principle is the same. Surely that is a useful service for our readers, and an encouragement for our editors that there is work to be done in creating individual sonata pages?
 GFHandel.   04:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

---

If Stanley Hollingsworth's Oboe Sonata is so obscure and non-notable that it's never going to merit its own article, or not for a very long time, then why is it so important that readers be alerted to its existence at all, particularly through unorthodox methods? If you're unwilling to create a stub, then you can take OhConfucius's suggestion and create a List of oboe sonatas and include it there. You're obviously up to speed on your oboe sonatas, so you have enough knowledge to start it off, and others will undoubtedly contribute as well. That List can be categorised with Category:Oboe sonatas, and then you've get your result. Readers will know about Hollingsworth and all the other composers of oboe sonatas. That's the big picture outcome that's sadly lacking at the moment. You could make it a sub-list of List of sonatas. Same deal for flute sonatas, xylophone sonatas, hecklophone sonatas or whatever. Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:15, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

"then why is it so important that readers be alerted to its existence at all"—please don't presume to judge what is important for the readers who do want to research oboe sonatas. I don't see the point of compounding the problem with an article called "List of oboe sonatas" when we have a category to handle just such information (just one more list that will suffer from problems with maintenance). Please also don't presume that I have time for the oboe sonata work—I have my own interests (and do a significant amount of research and work for WP in those areas), and just happened to stumble into the sonatas area while doing other work. My solution (detailed above) provides immediate benefit to readers and editors and stimulates the linkages between articles. I'm now worried that responses that don't address my points above are falling into the category of I just don't like it. I'm still waiting for someone to point out the guidelines that indicate that "List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach" (which contains oboe sonata information) can't be placed in Category:Oboe sonatas. I've seen much stranger entries on Category pages than this (something that genuinely can benefit our readers).  GFHandel.   06:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with compounding the problem. The "problem" was of your making, and for the most part I've undone those edits of yours. I stopped when you objected. There are many lists on Wikipedia; by being not limited to entries that have their own articles, they can contain far more information than their corresponding categories can contain. For example, the majority of entries in List of sonatas do not have their own separate articles - but that doesn't stop us from listing them all. There is exactly the same opportunity with a List of oboe sonatas. It can be categorised in Category:Oboe sonatas; readers will find the list there, click on it, and hey presto they've got the full information on every major composer and many minor ones who wrote oboe sonatas, all in one place. That's far better than having to click on dozens of different articles to find out the details. You seem intent on fighting tooth and nail for your uniquely inappropriate solution when a far more elegant and effective one is available right now. ALL articles on Wikipedia have the potential issue that they won't be maintained properly. That's ALL articles. Why would list articles have a particular issue in this regard? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 08:45, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the suggestion of List of oboe sonatas being created (based on the principles of the List of sonatas article), I can do no better than quote someone at the Talk:List of sonatas page when he wrote in response to criticism of the page:

The article is quite incomplete and it seems too broadly scoped to try and complete it. What's the goal of the list? Every sonata ever written?

I'm a little mystified too. We list 11 of Haydn's piano sonatas, but he wrote 62! We list only a selection of Mozart's. What point is it making with these selected sonatas?

and who wrote that response? Why it was you JackofOz! So you are promoting the use of such a list in this case, but previously have stated "What point is it making with these selected sonatas"? Based on other examples, you must realise that List of oboe sonatas is always going to be incomplete, so by your own observation, it would be a bad idea.

Come on Jack, my solution is a very good one with the limited resources we have at the moment. As stated, my solution will adapt into the neatness you want over time, but in the meantime it offers a great service to our editors, but more importantly to our readers. To create more artificial constructs that will simply contain more incompleteness is not the answer (and I will support your observation above to the death to prove that).

As a compromise, how about I undertake not to use level-1 articles? For example, I undertake to first create an article List of compostions of Stanley Hollingsworth (a level-2 article) and then put the Category:Oboe sonatas on that? Obviously the aim would be to remove the category to level-3 articles (when they become available).

 GFHandel.  

OK, that was a bad example. It just shows that I have fingers in too many pies around here and my memory does have its limits. But the fact that a particular list is in a poor state right now does not mean we should abandon all lists on Wikipedia. The very point of raising the issue on that talk page was to bring it to the attention of other readers to see if it could be improved. It hasn't had much reaction to date, but I live in hope. There's still nothing preventing you or anyone from creating a list of oboe sonatas. You could take your cue from the following: Bassoon sonata, Cello sonata, Clarinet sonata, Flute sonata, Piano sonata, Viola sonata, List of violin sonatas. Not all of these are comprehensive at present but they provide at least the core repertory. I have no particular problem with you categorising level-2 articles in the way you propose (as long as you don't spell compositions as "compostions" :). -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks (and I give the undertaking to check my spelling more thoroughly). We should wait a while to see what others might say in this neck of the woods. Cheers.  GFHandel.   19:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Can someone please explain why what GFHandel is trying to do is not better for our readership? It seems more convenient to me. What am I missing? Greg L (talk) 20:24, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

My basic objection was, and remains, that GFH was categorising a composer as an oboe sonata. But a human being is not any kind of sonata. Or any other kind of musical work. A novelist is not a novel. A sculptor is not a statue. Etc. This started out at User talk:JackofOz#Removal of sonata categories, which you may wish to read. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I do agree with JackofOz that "a human being is not any kind of sonata" (and I probably did push the boundaries there—hence my compromise proposal above), however note that I did attempt to do something sensible (given the state of a large number of our composer articles) by slapping the category on a page that was not just about a human being, but instead about a human being plus a list of that human being's works (e.g. the level-1 article Stanley Hollingsworth). The problem here has arisen because of a difference in belief about what should appear on a page like Category:Oboe sonatas. If I may, JackofOz and Ohconfucius believe that entries on that page should only point to articles specifically about individual oboe sonatas, whereas I believe that an extension should permit links to be placed on the category page that direct our editors and readers to other articles that contain information about oboe sonatas (but only when more specific articles don't exist, e.g. the level-2 article List of compositions by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach which mentions "oboe sonata", but for which there is no level-3 article). In a perfect wiki-world, JackofOz is quite correct (but could someone please give me a yell in about 2050 when we arrive at that perfect world?).  GFHandel.   21:05, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I support GFHandel's points, since they appear to be more useful for readers. Tony (talk) 06:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Not alphabetized correctly

Anyone know why Puma (AFV) is alphabetized as an "I" word on Category:Infantry_fighting_vehicles. I thought maybe a non-printing character got inserted in the title when it was created but it's alphabetized correctly at Category:Armoured fighting vehicles of Italy. Marcus Qwertyus 02:31, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

It's fixed now. It had the wrong sort key. —Coder Dan (talk) 04:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:DIFFUSE

I've taken the liberty of creating the shortcut WP:DIFFUSE. The diffusion of very large categories -- and in particular, the difficulty new users have in understanding the purpose of our category trees -- is a constant issue here and I felt this shortcut would help point users to the appropriate section more easily. I feel this is a fairly non-controversial addition to this page, however, if others object and wish to discuss first, please feel free to undo or rollback my edit. best, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

• Sure enough, I see that an editor has chosen to undo my edit. Can I ask this editor, and others, to discuss this suggestion here? I'd like to see if there is consensus to re-add this, as a useful shortcut. Thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

"Diffuse" is both a misleading term to describe the subdivision of categories and an ambiguous name for something related to categories. The shortcut should at least be called something like "WP:CAT DIFFUSE", and my preference would be to get rid of the word "diffuse" entirely. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:38, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Why is it misleading? It's the term Wikipedia uses, and I don't know of any other use of "DIFFUSE" on Wikipedia, so the shorter shortcut seems entirely reasonable. Do you have a better term you'd like to try and bring into use?--Kotniski (talk) 09:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

> Why is it misleading?

Diffusion is the process of distributing multiple objects over some area. That has nothing to with creating subcategories.

> I don't know of any other use of "DIFFUSE" on Wikipedia

Not now maybe, but who knows what use might arise in the future. It's harder to change bad names later than to select good names in the first place. "It seems OK now" is short-sighted thinking. Shortcut names exist in one global namespace, so they should be chosen carefully.

> Do you have a better term

"Subdivide". I would replace this text:

• a large category will often be broken down ("diffused") into smaller, more specific subcategories

with this:

• a large category will often be subdivided into smaller, more specific subcategories.

The shortcut could be called something like "WP:CATDIVIDE".

—Coder Dan (talk) 16:29, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that either term is better or worse, for a concept that doesn't quite fit either of them (it kind of is "distributing multiple objects over some area" - the objects being the pages, and the area being the space of subcategories), but then, I don't see why both shortcuts can't co-exist.--Kotniski (talk) 18:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

> "distributing multiple objects over some area" - the objects being the pages, and the area being the space of subcategories

That's not what the section says. It says "A category may be diffused", not "the articles may be diffused". It also says "some members are placed in subcategories, while others remain in the main category". All members of each subcategory are also members of their ancestor categories, but "others remain in the main category" implies that articles in subcategories are not members of the main category, which is incorrect.

The whole concept of diffusion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the category hierarchy represents. The idea of diffusing articles treats subcategories as being completely separate from their ancestors, as though members of subcategories are no longer members of the parents. But of course they are, so nothing really gets diffused in the sense of being moved out of the parent. The articles may not be listed in the parent, but delisting articles doesn't mean they're not members of the parent. Articles can be listed in multiple category pages, so listings aren't really objects that can be diffused. —Coder Dan (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, technically they are not members of the parent (and indeed in some cases - though not in the "diffusing" case - members of subcategories don't even logically belong to the parent), so that view is not so much a misunderstanding as an alternative understanding. I don't have a problem with changing the language to use "subdivide" instead of "diffuse", but just to help Wikipedians understand each other, we should note that when people talk about diffusion of categories (as they sometimes do) this is what they mean.--Kotniski (talk) 10:25, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

> technically they are not members of the parent

Kotniski, you really need to learn something about categories before trying to contribute to this page. You apparently know nothing about them at all. A category is a set, and a subcategory is a subset. Technically speaking, all members of all subcategories are also members of their parent and other ancestor categories. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Please be civil. Words can have more than one meaning, particularly on Wikipedia - here, a category is a particular type of software object, which doesn't necessarily have the same properties as the "categories" you know of from the outside world. And here, members of subcategories are not automatically members of their parents, either technically or (necessarily) logically. --Kotniski (talk) 19:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

> Please be civil.

I am being civil. If I were being uncivil, I would refer to you and your comments with words like "idiot", "troll", and "bullshit".

> Words can have more than one meaning.

This is English Wikipedia, so any words used in it need to be either common English or clearly and explicitly defined. There's no language in this guideline to suggest that your nonstandard definitions of "category" and "subcategory" apply here.

> here, a category is a particular type of software object

A category is a category, and a category page is a web page. There's nothing in the guideline about software objects, and it would be stupid to define a user-oriented navigation system in terms of them.

> members of subcategories are not automatically members of their parents

As usual, you don't have a shred of reasoning to back up your comments. All you do is repeat and reword the same nonsense and gibberish. The guideline doesn't exactly contradict you, but it strongly suggest the opposite, and it has no other text to suggest otherwise:

• If logical membership of one category implies logical membership of a second, then the first category should be made a subcategory (directly or indirectly) of the second.

Anyway, I seem to be in the minority here, so I'll just repeat my comments from last year: There's not a single word of support in the guideline for Kotniski's bizarre definitions, so even if there really is some kind of consensus in favor of them, then WP:Categorization#The category system is yet another example of the confusing, incompetent writing on this page, and User:Kotniski has relentlessly resisted my attempts to fix it.

—Coder Dan (talk) 19:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's you who's talking nonsense. The Mediawiki software developers have provided a certain type of functionality using a set of objects that they, the software and everyone else refers to as "categories". The functionality is not particularly great, and the way Wikipedians have come to use it is a bit weird in places, but this is the reality that this page attempts to describe. If you can improve the wording, then go ahead, but what you write must reflect what actually happens and (preferably) the terminology that is actually used.--Kotniski (talk) 08:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

> Sorry, but it's you who's talking nonsense.

No, it only seems that way because you're just as confused as everyone else. The software objects represent nodes in the category hierarchy, not entire categories of articles. What actually happens in practice is exactly what I've described: Generally speaking, articles in subcategories are also members of their ancestor categories in the normal English sense of the word. For example, romance novels are novels, and romance novels are romantic fiction, even though they're listed in Category:Romance novels and not Category:Novels or Category:Romantic fiction. The word "diffuse" incorrectly suggests that listing articles in subcategories somehow moves them "out" of the parent. There's nothing "hyper-technical" about using normal English, and there's no reason a more sane guideline couldn't work for all wikipedians. Anyway, I'm sick of arguing with you and Good Ol’factory about this, so I've already removed this page from my watchlist. I'll respond on this thread as long as you keep making absurd arguments, but other than that I've given up on trying to talk sense with you. —Coder Dan (talk) 18:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I've no strong opinion about diffuse vs. subdivide, but Coder Dan's opinion represents only one side of a longstanding ambiguity in the actual use of categories that Kotniski alludes to. Some categories represent typological qualities -- the members are all of the same type as identified by the category. Other categories represent relatedness -- the members are all related in some way to the topic of the category. Category:Paris is a member of Category:Capitals in Europe and contains as a sub-category Category:People from Paris. Quite obviously, the members of Category:People from Paris are not also members Category:Capitals in Europe, which is what is implied by what you write. older ≠ wiser 18:34, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

> People from Paris are not Capitals in Europe

The ambiguity is in the category naming system. I've suggested a couple times in the past that it would be nice to have separate Topic and Set namespaces for topic categories and set categories. Category:Capitals in Europe is named like a set (plural), but it's really a topic. A more descriptive name would be "Things related to capitals in Europe", and people from Paris do fit that description. —Coder Dan (talk) 21:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

That was surely not its original intention though (are all people and all events supposed to be members of the Category:Geography just because they were born in some place or occurred in some place)? A more fundamental ambiguity is what we mean by "member" - do we mean it in the technical sense (a page that has been assigned to a given Mediawiki category) or in the logical sense (a topic that logically belongs to the class that the category is intended to represent)? (Similarly "subcategory" - do we mean a category whose page has been placed in a given category, or do we mean a category that represents a subclass of the class represented by a given category?) The software rather imposes the technical definitions on us, though I believe we can and do talk about "logical members" and "true subcategories" if we want to refer to the logical versions of the concepts. (As usual, suggestions on how to improve the terminology are welcome - but I would think that any attempt to redefine the basic term "category" to mean anything other than the objects listed at Special:Categories is probably a non-starter.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:06, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

> That was surely not its original intention
Nonsense. The category system is explicitly referred to as a hierarchy.
> are all people and all events members of Category:Geography
Sure, why not? Topics are broadly defined, so they include a lot of articles. Even if that is a tenuous relationship, the intention is obviously for the category system to approximate a hierarchy of subsets and supersets. There's a long string of categories between Category:Geography and individual people, so it's not surprising that those would be exceptions to the rule.
> what we mean by "member"
All words used in English Wikipedia should be either (a) standard English or (b) clearly defined in Wikipedia documentation. If "member" is standard English, which is obviously the case, then you're doing Wikipedia a disservice by arguing about the definition. If it's used in some other bizarre sense, which is true only in your imagination, then you've already done Wikipedia a disservice by defending such a poorly written guideline.
> The software imposes the technical definitions on us
Rubbish. The only thing the software describes is where articles are listed and which categories are related to each other. It has absolutely nothing to say about the nature of those relationships. Only a troll or an incompetent software developer would confuse those two things. Everything you've said here about software objects is sheer fantasy.
> to redefine the basic term "category" to mean anything other than the objects listed at Special:Categories is probably a non-starter
More nonsense. WP:FAQ/Categories#How_are_categories_organized? already defines parent categories as "more general groups of articles". The only non-starter on this page is trying to talk sensibly with User:Kotniski.
—Coder Dan (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

You're so aggressive and unpleasant that it's pretty much impossible to engage in any constructive discourse with you. You have some valid insights, but...well, as I say. --Kotniski (talk) 16:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Engaging in constructive discourse with me is trivially easy. All you have to do is communicate sensibly and substantively. The only reason I'm aggressive and unpleasant is because you're stupid and trollish. The structure of the Wikipedia category software says nothing about what inter-category links actually mean, and all of the existing documentation clearly indicates that the Wikipedia category system is intended to approximate a hierarchy of categories in the ordinary, everyday English sense of the word. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Did anyone say it isn't? Apart from a few word-choices, I don't think we actually disagree about anything substantial. But you must watch your language (and probably your blood pressure) - calling other editors stupid and trollish is generally not looked on kindly around here.--Kotniski (talk) 17:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

> I don't think we actually disagree

You said "members of subcategories are not members of the parent" and "a category is a particular type of software object", which directly contradict the existing documentation and what I've been posting. As I've said before, even if your absurd comments are just some kind of strange misunderstanding, then your communication skills are so bad that you have no business contributing to Wikipedia guidelines. As for Wikipedia's civility guidelines, it's too bad that they make it easier to be a troll than to fight them. —Coder Dan (talk) 18:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• I support the continued use of "diffuse" to refer to what it has always meant with respect to categories and think a shortcut as proposed by ShawninMontreal would be useful. It's possible to worry too much about the possible meanings of how things are worded, but I think we need to avoid the hyper-technical. Not everyone reads the same information in the same way and generally we just need to go with what works for the majority of users. For years users have been misusing the word "deprecated", but it's not that big of a deal. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:21, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

{{Container category}} & {{Wikipedia container category}} & {{Wikipedia category}} proposed to be merged together

FYI {{Container category}} & {{Wikipedia container category}} have been proposed to be merged into {{Wikipedia category}} ... see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 November 30 . -- 76.66.202.72 (talk) 05:05, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

categorizing category pages

I was looking at Category:Chaldeans and note that it is in several categories, is this correct? Dougweller (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Categories can be in any category they fit in to. However, everything in a category must also fit into its parent categories. For example, Category:The Beatles cannot be in Category:1960s music groups because most of the articles in Category:The Beatles are not 1960s music groups. So Category:Chaldeans is categorised incorrectly but so are a lot of categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I can imagine. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 06:58, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that not everyone agrees with the position above that every article in a subcategory must be a member of the parent category as well, as evidenced by the discussion above. There are basically two opinions, the strict "tree" one (cf. McLerristarr above) and the looser "cloud", where subcategory articles are like a cloud of articles related to the parent category, and more loosely to the grandparent category, and so on. Both approaches are being used and being defended and opposed, since both have advantages and disadvantages. The strict one is an utopic situation, you have all the "by nationality" and "by country" categories which can just be thrown away when you take a strict approach (Fasolada is not a "Cuisine by nationality", nor is it a symbol, but if you go up the tree, you will find it in both these categories. Almost every article will be a part of an "incorrect" category when you use the strict approach. Fram (talk) 21:57, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. That's why I think we need to have some more consistency in the categorisation system. We need to have better guidelines on the whole topic vs set category thing. We can make exceptions to rule, such as Category:Topics by X, to make categorisation easier. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

What are categories not appropriate for?

There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology#Categorization by discovery date which presents some discussion points that some people here probably would be interested in ascertaining and possibly even comment on. __meco (talk) 10:52, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Category:Eponymous categories

Please check it out. I am used to the weirdness of Wikipedia, but the stupidity of this boggles the mind. Never mind the dubious use of the word "eponymous", this appears to be some sort of "meta" or "shadow" category system: since every category is necessarily named after something, hey, we can categorize each category as a category named after something. Category:Religious texts? .... Category:Categories named after religious texts. And so on. Wait, once we have duplicated our category system, why not introduce categories that categorize categories created to categorize categories? "Category:Categories categorizing categories named after religious text". Neat, isn't it?

I am not sure who is the genius we have to thank for this ... novelty, but the, ahem, general approach reminds me of the "outlines" crew. Basically, "the encyclopedia is written, and all our finished articles are so perfect we are now bored, so now let's duplicate it into a mirror-encyclopedia", again and again. --dab (𒁳) 08:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can see the full ramifications of what you suggest, but I must admit I have not personally been able to see any actual utility in having this category scheme. __meco (talk) 09:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there any actual problem or proposal here? (Confusion sometimes results from the fact that we're not allowed to make a category a "member" of another category - they have to go in as "subcategories", even if that's not logically what we mean - but this is a problem with the software, and I think the developers long ago gave up on making any improvements to the categorization function in MediaWiki.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:40, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I would suppose that the problem is "creation of unnecessary, internal categories without any noticeable benefit" and that the proposal is "get rid of them". If the problem is correctly identified (and I have seen no indication that it isn't), then the proposal is logical and good. Fram (talk) 10:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The benefits of eponymous categories were discussed at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_August_12#Category:Eponymous_categories. Epbr123 (talk) 11:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Basically I think they're just containers, on the basis that everything ought to be categorizable somewhere (except the category at the absolutely highest level, which is called Category:Contents or something). They hardly get in the way, and might occasionally be used by someone (like if you're wondering how to organize an eponymous category for a religious text, you might want to see how it's been done for other such entities).--Kotniski (talk) 11:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec)All I see there are a number of people having trouble grasping the concept that a category can be a subcat of another category, instead of an article being in that category. That the category Kylie Minogue is a subcat of the category Australian singers seems perfectly logical to me, and thus I see no reason to have these eponymous categories, and would support their deletion. If I want to see articles related to Belgian people, I go the the cat Belgian people, where I expect to find all articles on Belgian people and all categories with articles directly reating to Belgian people, like Category:Georges Simenon. However, that cat is only placed in the Category:Categories named after writers... Fram (talk) 11:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If we want to have a hierarchical category system, then that's perfectly logical (it isn't logical to make Category:Georges Simenon a subcategory of Belgian people, since not everything connected with Simenon will be a Belgian person). If we base categories always on things being related to other things (and not being a certain type of thing), then we would end up with a vague cloud (since everything is related to everything else via a few steps).--Kotniski (talk) 11:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

> That Category:Kylie Minogue is a subcat of the Category:Australian singers seems perfectly logical to me

That's because you're not distinguishing between topics and sets. Category:Australian singers is a set, so it's supposed to include only articles about singers. Category:Kylie Minogue is a topic, so it can contain anything significantly related to the singer it's named after. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm indeed not making that distinction, as I am not interested in such distinctions. Categories are intended to be an easy and logical search and classification system, where are related articles can be found starting from an obvious top. Category:Australian singers should contain all articles about and directly relating to Australian singers, so Kylie Minogue but also Kylies discography, tours, and individual records of her (as they are music by Australian singers, Tours by ustralian singers, ...: all logical children of the parent cat). On the other hand, het tours are not directly related to the topic "1960 births" (or whicheber year she's from): I expect the article on Kylie to be in a birthyear category, but not the category on Kylie: I do expect the category Kylie to be in the Australian singers cat though, as all articles in that cat are direct, on topic descendants of that category. Fram (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well those distinctions exist in the Wikipedia category system, so please don't accuse other editors of "having trouble grasping the concept" of subcategories just because they get their definitions from dictionaries and you get yours from TV game shows. As I said in another post, there should be a two-tier hierarchy that includes both inclusive (topic/TV) and exclusive (set/dictionary) categories. —Coder Dan (talk) 21:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

the point is that these categories should have been deleted on sight as obvious nonsense. Instead this was turned into a wikidrama, with emotional defenses of their utility that frankly are too surreal for me to follow. Please delete them.

Category:Georges Simenon can be a subcategory of Category:Belgian people, plus any number of relevant categories. There is no rationale for a Category:Categories named after writers unless we decide that categories are not just for the categorization of articles, but also for the categorization of categories, and that the categorization of categories for some reason should be a system entirely distinct from the categorization of articles. At this time my mind breaks down over the tangible thickness of this. As Fram points out, all this seems to be about is that some people fail to grasp the concept of "hierarchical". --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean now - if you think it makes sense to make Category:Georges Simenon a subcategory of Category:Belgian people, then we sacrifice any kind of sensible logical hierarchy (this does happen, of course, with countries for example, and it leads to all articles on people being part of the hierarchies for Geography and Chronology, since all people were born at some time and some place; if we do the same thing with eponymous categories for people I suppose it just leads to more absuridities of the same type - all paintings would be under Geography because they were painted by someone who was born in some place - except they wouldn't all be, because not all painters have eponymous categories containing their paintings... do you see what I mean?)--Kotniski (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

A practical advantage of keeping eponymous categories and categories such as Category:Belgian people seperate is that it allows bots and AWB users to compile lists of people articles, enabling reports such as Wikipedia:Database reports/Potential biographies of living people (4) to be created without without a large number of false positives. If you want to make it easier for readers to find Category:Georges Simenon, a "see also" link could be added to Category:Belgian writers. Epbr123 (talk) 15:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I've never been a fan of "Category:Categories named after FOO" or "Category:Eponymous categories", or anything of the sort. No-one has been able to convince me that these are needed. --Kbdank71 16:43, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I was surprised to see Category:Wood and Category:Oil palm in Category:Eponymous categories but they were added very deliberately by an admin who removed all other categories.[4][5] Is this within the intended use of the category? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:04, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That just completely screws up navigation. You shouldn't have to jump back and forth arbitrarily between articles and categories to find other categories or articles. The only practical reason I can see for the different treatment of "eponymous categories" (aka topical categories) is the automated list generation cited above by Epbr123. But there are much less convoluted and navigation-hindering ways to do that. Make Category:Eponymous categories (or as I'd prefer it named, Category:Topical categories) a hidden category and have any search exclude subcategory entries with that tag. postdlf (talk) 17:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

> I'd prefer it named, Category:Topical categories

I would just call it Category:Contents. Topics naturally include sets as subcategories, so Category:Topical categories effectively includes all articles on Wikipedia. —Coder Dan (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the logical argument for eponymous categories is actually illogical. If "Category:John Smith" was a sub-category of "Category:English people", then the article "John Smith's pet gorilla" in "Category:John Smith" would be, by extension, in "Category:English people", which is wrong. But similarly, if "Category:John Smith" was in "Category:Categories named after people", then "John Smith's pet gorilla" would be, by extension, in "Category:Categories named after people", which is equally wrong. So really, neither system works. All articles are also in, by extension, Category:Main topic classifications. So either we ignore the whole "categorised by extension" problem and do away with eponymous categories or we need to think up a new system. McLerristarr | Mclay1 17:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Good points. That whole way of analyzing category nesting has always struck me as wrong-headed and strangely ideological, based on some view of classification purity at the expense of every pragmatic consideration. You've pointed out well how that "purity" breaks down even under the supposed solution. postdlf (talk) 17:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The stupidity is in the naming system, not the categories themselves. Eponymous categories are just topic categories that happen to have eponymous articles. Category:Georges Simenon can't be a subcategory of Category:Belgian people, because Category:Georges Simenon contains everything that has any notable connection with a particular person, while Category:Belgian people contains only articles about the people themselves. If Category:Georges Simenon and Category:Belgian people were called Topic:Georges Simenon and Set:Belgian people, we wouldn't have to waste so much time with these stupid arguments every few months. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The division isn't so clear: Category:Belgian people also (logically) includes List of Belgian people, which is itself not a person article. And it also (logically) contains Category:Belgian diaspora, which in turn contains Belgian Brazilian, Luxembourg Brazilian... Categories are just groups of articles that pertain to the category's name. The problem instead is in the completely unjustified expectation that Category:Wolves only contain types of wolves, rather than also articles about wolves such as wolf-baiting, History of wolves in Yellowstone, Category:Deaths due to wolf attacks, etc. Articles about Georges Simenon are articles about a Belgian person. Once again, to do it your way only accomplishes the artificial separation of related articles, with nothing gained. You're not the only editor to have your view obviously, but other than the automated listing issue (which can be solved in other ways), I have seen no concrete problem described, just some kind of intellectual distaste. No reader will ever say "the inclusion of Category:Georges Simenon in Category:Belgian people irrevocably confused me" or "I wrote a report on wolves and got an F because I said "wolf-baiting" was a type of wolf." postdlf (talk) 17:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

> The division isn't so clear

Nothing is perfectly clear in the real world, but that doesn't mean we should abandon the hierarchical model altogether. Some readers want to read everything about some particular topic, others only want to read about the members of a set. The distinction between things and lists of things is fairly trivial.

> Categories are just groups of articles that pertain to the category's name

No they're not. Categories are classes of things that share some property. Category members don't just pertain to the category's name, they're defined by it. Categories as general associations is a misconception that's fostered by television game shows.

> No reader will say "inclusion of Category:Georges Simenon in Category:Belgian people confused me"

The problem isn't confusion, it's noise. Some readers don't want to wade though a heap of tangentially related articles just to read about a group of individuals.

—Coder Dan (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: pertaining vs. defining, I'm not talking about putting agriculture in Category:Kansas here. This is semantics. Wolf-baiting is defined by being about wolves, the contents of Category:Georges Simenon are defined by being about a particular Belgian person. I would expect to find both by navigating through those respective category systems.

Re: noise, subcategories are already visibly separated from articles in the category page. Pipe sorting of subcategories can separate those that are further subcontainers (i.e., see how Category:European countries is sorted) from those that are subtopics. Also, as with any category's members, the Belgian people who have their own subcategories are likely to be the more important ones, given that they have multiple articles about them and their works, so arguably those should stand out. If I'm trying to find the article on Georges Simenon in Category:Belgian writers in French (because I can't remember how to spell his name, just that it starts with an S) not only would I see that there is an article on him, but a whole category of articles about him if Category:Georges Simenon were actually categorized as the article is. If I'm trying to find Jean d'Osta in Category:Belgian writers in French, if Category:Georges Simenon were also placed in that category how would it hinder that search? postdlf (talk) 18:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

> This is semantics.

This entire conversation is about semantics, and my Merriam-Webster's seems to agree with my definition of "category", so you should stop throwing the word around as if anyone who disagrees with you is automatically wrong.

> I would expect to find both by navigating through those respective category systems.

I know what you expect. As Epbr123 pointed out earlier, this was already discussed ad nauseum on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_August_12#Category:Eponymous_categories. I would expect to find sets of things without having to wade through piles of tangentially related articles, so there should really be a two-tier hierarchy, with a Topic namespace that includes eponymous categories and a Set namespace that excludes them. —Coder Dan (talk) 21:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Playing with an example

I'm looking at Category:Horses. Now it belongs, through a long-winded chain of subcategories, to Category:Nature, Category:Life, Category:Agriculture, and Category:Science, all of which are fundamentals. Why science? Because it's in Category:Animals, which traces through zoology and so forth. When one moves up a level, the descendants split out quite a bit further: there are categories for types of horses and breeds of horses, which I suppose could fit within the nature and life and generally agriculture supercategories, and then there categories like Category:Horse tack which descend into Category:Technology ultimately, and then there is Category:Famous horses. So we have one subcategory tree of horses and another of horse-related things.

The "eponymous" rule implies that any category with a parent article about a specific thing or class thereof should not have any parent categories; therefore (for instance) there should be no category tree of sciences, but there might be a subcategory of Category:Science which contains all the articles on specific fields. Likewise, Category:Horses would have no parent, but there could be categories under it, all of which would be intersections with other category trees or diffusion categories which grouped the intersections together. And therefore the horse breed category structure would also descend from some Category:Breeds, and Category:Famous horses would descend from some Category:Famous individuals somehow.

I think we could do this, but I think people would find it very confusing, because to trace backwards one would constantly be switching back and forth between categories and articles. It would mean that everything except "X by Y" categories and their children would be a category root. Mangoe (talk) 18:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I see people arguing against categorizing the cat "The Beatles" in the cat "British Pop Bands", because that would mean that "Revolver" would become indirectly a British Pop Band... Using that logic, and putting "The Beatles" in "Eponymous band categories", doesn't that mean that "Revolver" is also an "eponymous band category"? It is just as much a grandchild of that cat as it was of British Pop Bands. Using this argument, we shouldn't have topical categories, only set categories, which would npot only exclude the eponymous cats, but also all cats inside them... Fram (talk) 20:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be a Category:Revolver (album), and the songs on it (e.g. Yellow Submarine) are all in either property or property intersection categories, but none of them is categorized as being on that album. However, Category:The_Beatles is in Category:1960s music groups, which strictly speaking is wrong according to the strict version of this theory: the only "valid" parent is Category:Categories named after musical groups, which is a direct child of eponymy. Mangoe (talk) 21:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Category:The Beatles being in Category:1960s music groups is my fault. I added it a while ago before I properly thought about the eponymous categories thing. I have fixed it now. Category:Horses fits perfectly well where it is. There may be some problems but that's due to miscategorisation. Categories such as Category:The Beatles could also have parent categories such as Category:Rock music. I have no idea why this is not already the case. McLerristarr | Mclay1 09:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

By the way, Fram was talking about the article Revolver (album), not a category. McLerristarr | Mclay1 09:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

> doesn't that mean that "Revolver" is also an "eponymous band category"?

Yes, which is why it's stupid to put "categories" in the names of categories. Eponymous categories are really just a way for naïve editors to create a topic hierarchy on top of the existing set hierarchy. —Coder Dan (talk) 21:39, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

No, Revolver (album) can in no way be interpreted as an eponymous band category. McLerristarr | Mclay1 09:18, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, maybe the people who create those categories really are so clueless that they believe the presence of an eponymous article is important. But they also have a legitimate purpose: All of those categories are topics, so maybe it would be good to organize them separately from set categories. —Coder Dan (talk) 11:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to change the eponymous category system

To reiterate my earlier point with a real example, the current situation is this: Category:The Beatles, for example, is in Category:Categories named after musical groups rather than in categories like Category:1960s music groups. The argument for is that a topic category cannot be a subcategory of a list category because if Category:The Beatles were a subcategory of Category:1960s music groups, then Paul is dead would be, by extension, in Category:1960s music groups despite not being an English pop band. However, under the current scheme, Paul is dead is, by extension, in Category:Categories named after musical groups despite not being a category at all. Neither system works. I propose that we get rid of Category:Eponymous categories and its related subcategories and use a new categorisation system that still keeps topic categories out of list categories. The eponymous topic categories can be categorised into other topic categories. For example, Category:The Beatles could be categorised in categories such Category:1960s in music and Category:Rock music.

...Which still puts articles like Paul McCartney 2004 Summer Tour in Category:1960s in music. People's attempts to get a perfectly logical categorization system are a wild dream that can not be achieved on Wikipedia, and isn't necessary either. Fram (talk) 08:24, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, Category:Paul McCartney shouldn't be a subcategory of The Beatles really. It should be the other way around. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I've swapped the categories around so that Category:The Beatles is a subcategory of The Beatles' categories and not the other way around. Categories of musicians seems to be only categorised under Category:Categories named after musicians. Under my proposal, this would be changed to relevant genre categories. Musicians and groups spanning multiple decades probably shouldn't be categorised in decade categories to avoid problems such as Paul McCartney 2004 Summer Tour being categorised in Category:1960s in music. McLerristarr | Mclay1 09:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

There may always be some small things in the categorisation system that don't quite fit, but the current system is worse. Most problems with categorisation are more to do with miscategorisation rather than problems with the system itself. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Putting Category:The Beatles in Category:1960s in music doesn't really solve the problem. What we really need is something like Topic:1960s music groups or Category:1960s music groups (topic). Then you can put anything you want into it without interfering with Category:1960s music groups. We need an entire hierarchy of topic categories that sits on top of the existing set-oriented hierarchy. —Coder Dan (talk) 11:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

One thing that is really needed is a way to include a category as a member of another category, rather than a sub-category. But the main thing that is needed is understanding and attention. For example "Paris Metro" was a sub-category of "French railway stations" (I may not have the names exactly right) effectively making certain items of rolling stock into stations. It takes a only a few minutes to correct this sort of thing. Similarly with eponymous town categories, which end putting their entire contents in "Populated places in..." worse still, if they include the eponymous categories of their "notable inhabitants" then a place in India can be in a sub cat of "populated places in New York". The basic options are:

1. Dump eponymous categories (such as Category:The Beatles) altogether
2. Fix up on an on-going basis incorrect sub-cats by moving them into the correct parent categories, possibly using explicit titles (such as Category:Articles related to the Beatles).
3. Dump the enormous benefits of having subcategories that actually contain what the parent category implies they will

Rich Farmbrough, 12:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC).

Yes, I think the second option would be the most helpful, though it has to be admitted it would be quite a task, since there are very many cases of categories being made subcategories on the basis of "but it's named after a member of the category" (and many editors who don't understand - or don't accept - why that might be considered an invalid reason). For me, though, the most unhelpful practice is when people take articles out of a category on the grounds that their eponymous categories are already there - this leads to incomplete alphabetical lists within the category, and (often randomly) incomplete lists of categories on the article pages. --Kotniski (talk) 12:46, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

As one of the editors who doesn't "accept" this approach, I will agree with you on the last point: articles should never only be placed in an eponymous category for just the reasons you have given. postdlf (talk) 13:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

> include a category as a member of another category

That's not really necessary. If you're looking for someplace to put Category:Articles related to the Beatles, all you need is Category:Articles related to 1960s music groups. The whole point of putting "Articles related to" in a category name is to label the category as a topic. Category:The Beatles is already a topic category, so all your second option does is rename it. The only thing that's really missing is a larger topic category to contain it as a subcategory. There's no need to make the category itself a member. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:40, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

In reply to Coder Dan, I don't see why putting Category:The Beatles in Category:1960s in music doesn't solve the problem. Category:1960s in music basically is a Topic:1960s music groups.

Category:1960s in music is a broader topic than Topic:1960s music groups. Category:1960s in music contains everything connected with music and the 1960s, while Topic:1960s music groups has the additional restriction of being related to groups. It's a legitimate move to make, but it doesn't solve the problem that some people will still want to put Category:The Beatles in Category:1960s music groups. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:51, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

In reply to Rich, dumping all the eponymous categories would make the categorisation system far worse than it already is. Category:The Beatles neatly groups all the relevant Beatles articles and I see no other way of grouping them.

I still haven't really heard any reasons why people disagree with just putting the topic categories into other topic categories. Most categories are already like this e.g. Category:Horses. Beatles → Rock → Music → Arts. Seems simple to me. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Most categories are not like that. Countries and animal species are exceptions to the rule. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, well, I didn't really count them and I'm assuming that neither did you. Country and animal categories are quite a lot in number but that's beside the point. My point is most categories can and should be categorised like that. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

> I'm assuming that neither did you

You can assume anything you want, but it won't make you any smarter. The guideline explicitly designates plural-named categories as sets, and crowding those categories with extraneous material would be very annoying to people who only want to read articles about the things themselves. My point is that there should be two sets of categories, one categorized your way (as topics) and one categorized the current way (as sets). —Coder Dan (talk) 16:11, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you! I'm not suggesting we mix the two together. We only differ in opinion in that what you are suggesting is to make an entirely new namespace for topics. Perhaps it may be best to get rid of the eponymous category system first, then think about such a monumental move as you are suggesting. But the hard fact is nothing will ever stop people wanting to cagorise Category:The Beatles in Category:1960s music groups. But that's a problem with editors, not the system. Luckily, very few inexperienced editors edit categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 16:28, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

You said "most categories can and should be categorised [as topics]." When you say "Most categories should be topics", it sounds to me like you want to replace sets with topics, whereas I want to add the topics. As far as I can tell, that's our main disagreement. I want to retain a full hierarchy of set categories, including exclusive categories for current exceptions, such as countries and biological species. My main points are that (a) sets and topics should co-exist in some logical way and (b) they should be clearly labeled to avoid the confusion typified by this discussion. Namespaces are a way of making my point, but they're not likely to happen in the short run. I don't think many people will insist on putting Category:The Beatles in Category:1960s music groups if it's already in Category:Articles related to 1960s music groups or Category:1960s music groups (topic) or whatever. —Coder Dan (talk) 17:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

No, that's not what I meant. Set categories should be kept as is. I meant most topic categories can be categorised as subcategories of other topic categories rather than in an eponymous category category. I understand your point about wanting to make a Category:1960s music groups (topic). If every large set category had a corresponding topic category, it would be problem solved. Category:Presidents of the United States has Category:Presidency of the United States. At the moment, the closest topic category to Category:1960s music groups is Category:1960s in music. I really think that if we can just get rid of the eponymous category categories first, then we can start trying to create more topic categories. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

> get rid of eponymous category categories first, then create topic categories

Why not do both together? Each "Categories named after Xs" category should be renamed to something like "Articles related to Xs" or "Xs (topic)" and moved to some reasonable place. —Coder Dan (talk) 10:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, well until we can think of a better way of doing it, I guess we could do that. But some of these could easily be incorporated into existing categories. For example, Category:Disney's Aladdin, could be put in Category:Disney. Admittedly, it would make some topic categories, such as Category:Disney, a lot bigger but that's not too much of a problem, is it? However, quite a few set categories contain articles and subcategories. For example, Category:European countries contains United Kingdom and Category:United Kingdom. Is this a better way of doing it? Either way, all categories should be consistent, we need to keep them all following the same guidelines. McLerristarr | Mclay1 13:28, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
I think what we to do is rename or delete categories with "category" or "categories" in the name (with obvious exceptions). "Categories by X" can become "Topics by X". McLerristarr | Mclay1 13:51, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, in saying we could just arbitrarily decide to get rid of many categories that sort a substantial number of articles, just because we can. Let me know when you post those CFDs so I can see how those arguments proceed. postdlf (talk) 14:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

> Category:Disney's Aladdin, could be put in Category:Disney

Don't worry about that. We're not talking about Category:Disney's Aladdin, we're talking about Category:Categories named after films and its siblings.

> Category:European countries contains Category:United Kingdom

That needs to be fixed. One reason these arguments go on so long is because people who favor categories as topics can point to exceptions such as countries and animals as supportive examples.

> "Categories by X"

If you want to do that, then start a new section on categories of categories or "Categories by" categories. This section is about "Categories named after" categories.

—Coder Dan (talk) 15:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, perhaps my second comment was a little off-topic. My point about categories like Category:Disney's Aladdin is that if they were dispersed into relevant topic categories, categories like Category:Categories named after films would be empty and no longer needed, thus saving us from needing to redefine or rename them. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:18, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

> if [subcategories] were dispersed ... [eponymous-category categories] would [not be] needed

That's not true. It's still useful to have collections of articles related to the topics defined by these categories. As I said earlier, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with these categories except the requirement of having an eponymous article. They just need to be renamed and recategorized, and that's easy to do if we can clear up the confusion about them. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:57, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that's a very good point and have no idea why I did not think of that. It is useful to group these categories together. OK, I think we should formulate a CFD proposal. McLerristarr | Mclay1 16:04, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

We should agree on some kind of (re)naming convention. So far we have "Articles related to Xs" and "Xs (topic)". —Coder Dan (talk) 17:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I think "related to" implies even looser inclusion criteria than my "pertaining" choice of words above that you didn't like. Rather than adding such self-referential and awkward phrases to category names, why not handle it through template tagging, as Mclay has suggested below? That way they could also be added to hidden categories, which would aid with the automated list generation issue. postdlf (talk) 18:03, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

> my "pertaining" choice of words above that you didn't like

That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You used the word in a definition, not a category name. Category:Articles related to music groups is a group of articles that are defined as being related to music groups. Category:Music groups is a group of articles that are defined as being about the music groups themselves. In both cases, category members don't just pertain to the category's name, they're defined by it. I don't know what you think is awkward or self-referential, but naming categories has nothing to do with templates or hidden categories. We just need a scheme for naming a set category and a topic category about the same kind of thing. —Coder Dan (talk) 19:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Category:Music group topics or Category:Topics by music group? I like the Category:Music groups (topic) disambiguation. We could rename Category:Music groups to Category:Music groups (set) if it would make things clearer. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:45, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

"Music group topics" is okay, but "By" has a special meaning in Wikipedia category lingo. Category:Xs by Y is a metacategory that divides the set Category:Xs according to property Y. I guess postdlf might like "Articles pertaining to Xs". "(set)" makes sense technically, but I think it would be enough to just strengthen the language in the guideline that defines Category:Xs as a set. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:41, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If the underlying "problem" is that "topic" subcategories are somehow getting in the way of "set" subcategories, then why not have a developer-based solution that would somehow separate those contents within a category? Any time a category and an article have the same name (as should be the case in most "eponymous" categories; for those that don't match, there would be some manual way of tagging them differently), those could display as "member categories" separate from "subcategories", and then automated listmaking could be set to ignore the "member category" contents. That would solve the problems identified above (to the extent they are concrete enough to make sense to me) and still preserve the unity of the category system for grouping and navigating related articles. postdlf (talk) 14:48, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if I understand what you just wrote. Would I be correct in saying that you mean keep topic categories and set categories listed separately in a category rather than keeping them all together in the subcategory section? McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Basically, though it wouldn't function on a "topic"/"set" dichotomy, except to the extent that "topic" = "subcategory defined by an article within the parent category". Thus, as France and United Kingdom are articles in Category:European countries, Category:France and Category:United Kingdom would display in the "member categories" section, while Category:Former countries in Europe would be displayed as a "subcategory". Unless I'm missing something, this should go a long way towards separating subcategories that just subdivide members of the parent category from subcategories that contain articles about a member of the parent category, to the extent that is a real dichotomy. postdlf (talk) 15:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. It solves the problem of whether topic categories should be subcategories of set categories and the problem of eponymous category categories. The only problem is there may be examples in which it's not clear-cut. Also, how difficult would this be to achieve? McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:31, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Playing games with eponymous articles is an overcomplicated way of solving a relatively simple problem. Topic categories should be explicitly declared as topics, that's all. It doesn't matter whether they're named after an article or not. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting starting point. Instead of being on separate pages, sets and topics could be in separate sections of the same page. The sections could be called something like "Content in category "Xs"" (set) and "Content related to category "Xs"" (topic). In the short run though, it's much easier to just agree on a better naming system and add topic or set pages as needed. —Coder Dan (talk) 15:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Chronologies categories. Proposal for a separate work group

All the many separate and entangled category hierarchies based on chronologies lie within the scope of both WikiProject Years and WikiProject Categories. I was wondering if some people would be interested in a structured effort at streamlining these structures, the way they interact with each other, discussing how year categories should be linked up to decades, centuries and millennia categories, general principles for timeline cutoffs, i.e. when moving back in time and items to categorize become more scattered we should have uniform rules and a guideline for setting (or adjusting) such cutoffs. Also the matter of templates that provide navigating features as well as do much of the categorizing would be of concern. My vision is to have a work group subordinate to both these WikiProjects that would be tasked with addressing and maintaining such chores. I propose discussing this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years. __meco (talk) 21:14, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

By decade categories

I questioned an editor who was moving subcategory category contents in Category:Works by type and year to by decade categories about the need for this. It was suggested that a wider discussion was called for.

The question is do we need to split every by year classification into by decade categories or can we retain the larger group? For many periods, splitting creates subcategories of exactly 10 categories that will not expand or decrease. If there is a need for navigation to surrounding year categories, the decade navigation templates can be used since they do not depend on the category structure, but rather the simple existence of the specific by year categories. There may be a question on how we should we deal with these on the century or millennium basis. Category:Years exists rather well without splitting the years out into smaller groupings. Whatever the outcome in this discussion, it would not prevent by decade or by century categories where the number of items is simply too small to justify creating by year categories for every year. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm unable to follow your discussion. __meco (talk) 20:46, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. I do think that in many cases the decade categories are unnecessary if all they do is hold subcategories for the years in that decade. They are useful when there isn't enough to break a decade down by year, but I'm not sure of their utility if all they do is sit there to complete a scheme. I've also noticed a proliferation of by-millennium categories, which also strikes me as a bit odd. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
• Often the creation of older works of art may not be assignable with more specificity than a decade or range of years. I think sometimes too art historians use a range to indicate when a painting was painted, not just when it was finished. Otherwise, no, there isn't much point in grouping -by year categories into -by decade categories, given that all of the years in a century can fit in one category display page and will be numerically sorted. Best practice would be to categorize years by decades and by centuries so that way everyone is happy and the decade categories can then accommodate the content that can't be categorized by precise year. postdlf (talk) 22:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I also have no idea what you're talking about. On a side note, that entire category is WP:Overcategorization. —Coder Dan (talk) 06:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• A problem I've noticed with all the year classifications is that the year 2000 is in the 2000s but the 2000s is then classified as being in the 21st century despite the year 2000 actually being part of the 20th century. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:04, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Yep. It's an issue with grouping years by the first 2 or 3 digits rather then by a real decade or century. But that is a good reason to avoid grouping by decade. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:11, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
• there are actually several easily resolved problems with it now because the transition/diffusion was challenged before it was complete, and i didn't see the point of continuing until the major question at hand was settled which is: 1) should all the years be dumped into one; or 2) should they be broken down by decade. imho, the category is too large to for one, and it would be easier to navigate by decade. --emerson7 19:08, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Are you opposed to keeping the categories in a by century group and providing a by decade navigation template? This seems to be a very viable alternative in my mind. This approach offers the ability to navigate to adjoining years and still not add an excessive number of subcategories which really to hinder navigation. In fact a navigation template that offered the choice of 5 years in either direction would probably be the best option. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I have added a navigation template to Category:Buildings and structures completed in 2008 and Category:Buildings and structures completed in 2009 to demonstrate how this would work for comments. If deemed useful, the template can be cleaned up and added to all of the categories. Personally I think this is better then the by decade templates since it always allows visibility and direct navigation to the surrounding years and avoids the issue of what years are or are not in a decade. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
      • that seems a reasonable solution and would do it for me. kudos. --emerson7 02:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
        • Should I place these in a by century category then? That would keep the parent categories at 100 entries plus any created for unknown years. The other choice is by millennium or 1,000 entries. I could see many users opposed to that as too large at this point. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:17, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm going to modify the template to include these in century categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:37, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Not altogether constructive

I find it symptomatical that the above discussion was initiated subsequent to the below section being created. It shows that our approach towards these chronologies hierarchies is piecemeal and myopic, discussing properties of one single sub-structure that are common to all the similarly structured hierarchies. Nobody has acknowledged the utility of discussing this in a centralized manner, yet a detailed layout for linking between years, decades and centuries is being attempted patched together with no thought being given to how this would impact the larger structure and other subordinate structures from the main years chronology hierarchy. I'm not asserting that the work will detrimentally impact other hierarchies should one model be chosen over another, but going forward in this isolationist fashion is not going to alleviate the impression that mere casual attention is being afforded this work, leaving the seams between the different structures patchy and accidental. And when the next little hierarchy comes along, this process is going to have to be repeated, and some will point to the above discussion and its conclusions as an obvious precedent for how future decisions should be made, and others will point out the different idiosyncrasies in the nature of the subjects being categorized by time, and some people will neglect to consider the finer details being presented and simply vote! to follow the old recipe, possibly leading to nonviable decisions being made that necessitate the entire process having to be redone in the future. __meco (talk) 15:07, 21 December 2010 (UTC)