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From wp:categorization# Subcategorization it isn't clear if all or just some the page members of a distinguished category are supposed to be a subset of the page members of the parent category. Which is it, all or some? Also, could I have a couple of content category examples of the "perfect" or "ideal" distinguished category? Maybe I can glean the answer from the examples and learn some other things about content categories in general. Pknkly ( talk) 05:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Where did speedy criterion #6 come from? Debresser ( talk) 11:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
The just-created Category:Pairs contains Crime and Punishment, Fire and Ice, Religion and politics, and more. Is this a helpful category? Is this the right place to ask, or am I supposed to make up my own mind and take it to WP:CFD? Johnuniq ( talk) 08:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing village pump discussion about this here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Inclusion criteria What are the criteria by which a category of the sort (e.g.) Category:People from Chicago, Illinois may be added to an article? That article reads "The following people were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with the city of Chicago and its surrounding metropolitan area." Is this normative for other such categories? Can someone point me to a policy/guideline/consensus about this matter? Thanks. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 02:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
An edit summary for paragraphs 2/3 and 3/3 of the Quick summary section:
The minor changes are suitable for correction without the need to revert the multi-paragraph copy edit. — Cpiral Cpiral 00:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
{{ CatDiffuse}} has been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 28
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_15#Template:This_is_a_redirect for a Tfd discussion related to this WikiProject. (related to the above notification)
Not positive I have the terminology correct, but believe this is whats called a 'meta-template', a template used to create other templates. The template: Template:This is a redirect was created by User:Lenoxus, a member of the Wiki_Redirect project. The template allows easily creating a specific template used to put TYPE redirects into a specific redirect category - "redirect of TYPE", e.g. "schools" and "hospitals", or "from alternative spelling" and "from alternative name". Categorizing redirects may also serve to facilitate disambiguation.
Template:This is a redirect directly supports intentionally entering the disambiguation categories indicated on the disambiguation guideline, which as a new editor here, I find straightforward. This approach both prevents overcategorization, but does not auto-categorize. - MornMore ( talk) 02:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Feedback wanted from anyone interested in template programming and categorization.
Some templates add categories to the pages they are used on. This unfortunately also means they usually add categories to pages where they are only tested or demonstrated. So we have a how-to guide about how to avoid this problem. And some templates also need to use different categories in different namespaces, which can be tricky to do. So now we have made a meta-template that will make it much easier to handle categorization in templates. Here's the relevant links:
Oh, and please don't start a discussion here, instead use the talk pages of the above pages.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 03:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
We really, really need to do something about the term "list category" in this guideline, as it causes endless confusion with the concept of "category of lists". In the discussions and RFC on eponymous categories this summer, this was very clear; I just noticed that there was a late answer at Talk:Saskatchewan#Category:Provinces and territories of Canada vs. Category:Saskatchewan, the discussion that initiated the RFC in the first place, which even more clearly shows the confusion. I also see here that Debresser commented on the same thing yesterday. The term needs to be changed to avoid further confusion. "Set category" would be most logical, but I doubt most people would think of a set as in mathematics; perhaps "collection category", "item category", "membership category"? I'm sure someone has a better suggestion, but "list category" must go. — JAO • T • C 10:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
What about "series"/"group" category, to indicate that it contains multiples of similar things—members of a series or group, as opposed to a "topic" category, which contains subtopics related to a singular thing. The distinction should be clear from the category's name: plural versus singular titling. Category:European countries is a group of countries; Category:Europe is a topic with subtopics. Subcategory members of a group category may in turn be further subgroupings, or topics in their own right; and subcategories of a topic category may also be subtopics that are singular topics or groups themselves. postdlf ( talk) 13:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Suggest Subject category - I was just looking at list categories where it seems to say that "list categories" are "subject categories". So, why not make them a "subject category". I liked the advise given above by one of the editors about using nouns. Stay away from verbs or words that may be interpreted as verbs (e.g., group, index, list), especially verbs that describe what a category already does. If we use "subject categories" it would compliment "topic categories". Pknkly ( talk) 17:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm curious: How can a graph contain "approximately" no cycles? I thought "The category system" is intended to describe the desired state of affairs, rather than the "impurities" due manual labor. Spill paint over the hood of a Ferrari, and you still have a Ferrari. BTW, finding cycles looks like a job for CatBot. Regards, Paradoctor ( talk) 20:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I finally found out what has been bugging me: "Acyclic directed graph" is too general, the category system has the same structure as a DAWG. Paradoctor ( talk) 13:20, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
For what the guideline used to say some time ago, see the old version of the guideline (the section "Cycles should usually be avoided"). When I rewrote the page I took the passage out because it seemed to be a lot of words saying nothing (it first says that we don't like cycles, but then goes on to say that some cycles - no particular clue as to which - are acceptable). I mentioned it at talk at the time and no-one commented, but if anyone wants to belatedly reinsert that passage now, so we can perhaps work on changing it to say something more useful, then that would be fine.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Seriously, let's declare cycles to be the epitomy of evil. Either the text will stand, or someone will come up with a cogent counter-example. Win-win. Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
edit conflicts are fun |-()Oy, I noticed two more: "form a hierarchical structure, consisting in effect of overlapping trees". In a hierarchy, all elements are comparable wrt level. Here's a subgraph, which can (and presumably does) exist in the category graph: A>B>C & A>D>E>C. Is B on the same "level" as D, E, both, or none? Furthermore, "overlapping trees" does not specify how the trees overlap, allowing the possibility of different roots.
I suggest we reformulate the intro thusly:
"Wikipedia's categories resemble a rooted tree, the difference being that subtrees may overlap.",
and drop the technical stuff about DAGs/DAWGs/CLs/whatever in the second sentence, or stuff it into a footnote. This is a guideline, not a course in graph theory. ;) Paradoctor ( talk) 15:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
And even if we were going to go down a "They resemble a tree except..." line, it would be must easier to understand if you phrased the exception as the logically equivalent "the difference being that categories may have more than one parent category". Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
There has been some edit-warring behaviour over the last month regarding the categorization of the List of Volkswagen Group factories article. One editor ( 78.32.143.113 ( talk)) is adamant that the article belongs in categories such as Category:Motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany, Category:Truck manufacturers, Category:Bus manufacturers and Category:Motor vehicle engine manufacturers and has reverted multiple attempts by myself and another editor to rationalize this article's categories, despite attempts to discuss the matter. My opinion, based on the existing membership of these categories and similar articles such as List of Ford factories, is that the appropriate article to include in these categories would be the one about the company itself (i.e. Volkswagen Group or Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles), and not this related "List of..." article. The only WP guideline regarding categories for "List of..." articles I can find is You can add a suitable subcategory of Category:Lists at the bottom of the page ( WP:LIST), which doesn't really provide much guidance. Anybody care to comment? Letdorf ( talk) 13:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC).
I added a terminology section. It was necessary in order to keep the "Quick summary" short, and in order to understand the terminology in "The category system" section. Happy editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 05:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
@Debresser "referent" is correct, check out the lede of reference. The problem with that "clarification" is that it attempts way too precise language, and fails at it. In a terminology section, I expect to see a list of terms and their definitions, discussions only when a term is difficult. E. g.
[[category:X]]
are members of category XParadoctor ( talk) 17:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I've had the impression before, but now it's official: The section is way to narrow in its description of applications of categories. Check out this section on on category headers. One thing that should be kept in mind is that categories are basically just sets, and seeing that almost all of mathematics can be expressed in terms of sets, it doesn't make sense to restrict categories to being navigational aids for the readers. Rather, rules for categories should be described in relation to a specific application. Paradoctor ( talk) 10:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
The issue of having templates as an entry in a category that is otherwise for articles is still an ongoing problem. There is no explicit guideline on it. Convention, which is occasionally ignored, is to place all templates in Category:Wikipedia templates and its subcats. Categorising templates is an administration task and they are not needed in content categories. For previous discussions see:
I would like to have this guideline added:
Or suchlike. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 19:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Images have their own category and the guideline is to not have them in article categories. That same should apply to templates. Wikipedia articles rarely make reference to the administration pages. There are exceptions - eg. hatnotes such as in image etc. The same should apply for content categories. As things currently stand the content categories do not have a clear separation from administration. For example:
It is not recommended that articles be placed in ordinary content categories by using templates. — Cpiral Cpiral 06:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
How do you add a new subcategory to a category? I thought this would be a simple thing, but I can't find any explanation on how to add a subcategory. Thanks. stmrlbs| talk 23:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
[[Category:Name]]
on the article/page/subcategory.
PrimeHunter (
talk)
23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)The difference between WP:categorization and Help:category determines the content and sizes. I'd like to discuss the intentions of the content of the two, and propose moving some things from here to there to get both articles to about 30kb in size. Categorization is 42kb, and category is only 24kb.
I think the namespaces are like this:
Help is hue-collar: task-oriented, how-to-ish, procedural.
WP is white-collar: managing, guiding, conceptualizing, planning, and engineering.
Categorization should be understood for the most part, and then the Help:category article shows the tools.
Indeed WP:categorization is linked more often than Help:category. I checked out what links here and what links there.
Here a section outline in this article that belongs there, and would shave off 9 kb.
3 Display of category pages 3.1 Form of entries 3.2 Sort order 3.2.1 Using sort keys 3.2.2 Typical sort keys 3.3 Split display 3.4 Category description
Both articles discuss sorting, and both articles discuss hiding categories.
Here is the outline for Help:Category, a 24kb sized article:
1 Summary 2 Putting pages in categories 3 Category pages 4 Hiding categories 5 Sort order 5.1 Default sort key 6 Categories and templates 7 Categorizing redirect pages 8 Moving and redirecting category pages 9 Applying "Related Changes" to a category 9.1 Detection of additions to a category 10 Comparison with "What links here" 11 Category considerations 12 Extended tools 12.1 List of all categories 12.2 Visualizing category trees 12.3 Dynamic page list 12.4 Category intersection, union, etc. 12.5 Category flattening 12.6 Count 12.7 Retrieving category information
There we should give-up 7, Categorizating redirect pages. There we should move 11, Category considerations to the lead section there telling them to come here first.
Here is our outline:
1 Quick summary 2 The category system 2.1 Categorizing pages 2.1.1 Eponymous categories 2.2 What categories should be created 2.3 Subcategorization 2.3.1 Duplicate categorization rule 3 Display of category pages 3.1 Form of entries 3.2 Sort order 3.2.1 Using sort keys 3.2.2 Typical sort keys 3.3 Split display 3.4 Category description 4 Project categories 4.1 User pages 4.2 Images 4.3 Hiding categories 5 Categorization using templates 6 Redirected categories 7 Interlanguage links to categories 8 Tips 8.1 Displaying category contents on pages 8.2 Retrieving category information 8.3 Linking to categories 8.4 Searching for articles in categories 9 See also
We should lose 5, Categorization using templates to Help. Sections 7 and 8 are also their territory. They are short, 2.7 kb.
That would make categorization 30 kb and help 35 kb, but... the redone-dancy will square, and all will be well.
Also, we should interact more with WP:classification. We could discuss WP:classification more here. We barely mention the name. The classification article is 7.8 kb, and has both theory and practice content.
— Cpiral Cpiral 01:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Debresser ( talk) 07:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Based on some recent discussions, I wonder if there should be some established criteria for inclusion in descendant categories. Currently inclusion is rather arbitrary since you can include anyone who has ancestors from a place. Let's ignore the issue of this characteristic being defining. Should someone who is 10 generations removed from a place still be included as a decedent? How about 2 generations. What percentage of blood, remembering that someone in the first generation could only be 25% by blood and at the second generation it drops down to 12.5%. If we go with something, we probably should create a template for these categories to explain this or link to the guideline. Vegaswikian ( talk) 22:46, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Is there a MOS that applies to linking to categories in the article text or infobox such as Template:Nationfilmlist if not can can users offer there opinions Gnevin ( talk) 11:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
For an article like Murder of Piotr Stańczak and similarly named titles, what should the sort key be? A survey of a few reveals no consistent scheme being used. After moving this article upon a requested move I changed the sort key to {{DEFAULTSORT:Stańczak, Piotr, Murder of}}. Is this best? Something else?-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 13:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I have seen category boxes covering the last post on the last discussion on talk pages. Us441 ( talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
There's a proposal on adding a new speedy rename criterion for categories at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion. Feel free to comment. Jafeluv ( talk) 08:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I have left a message at Template talk:Catmore#Change link. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 07:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Since this page gets more traffic than WT:CATP, be advised that I've fixed a number of annoying inclusions of project categories in content categories; see discussion at the wikiproject for details. I've also added a shortcut to the "Project categories" section, and mentioned it in Template:Wikipedia category. Pcap ping 23:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
In the category namespace category conveys the concept "a collection of pages". But according to the wording of the article,
a category is also a member page and a subcategory. I don't think category should be used as both the container and the contained, unless we say so in a terminology section. Rather, if we adopt Paradoctor's simple terminology for the term category —this subject is a branch off the previous subject [WT:categorization#Terminology section]]— we could then be consistent (to a reasonable extent, Debrresser) with that term in the article.
This article needs lucidity concerning the word category because it is an article about categorization, and because categorization is an important craft to teach and use. The new concept for first time readers of Categorization is category. Really and sincerely, in your opinion must category mean both container and contained, both category and subcategory?.
Appropriately for a talk-page I must say category currently has four referents: (1) the category namespace one "collection of pages", (2) the category namespace one "member page", and (3) the category namespace one "subcategory", (as in If the articles of one category logically also belong to another category, then the first category is made a subcategory or as in such eponymous categories are considered distinguished subcategories (in fact they are not true subcategories at all) (4) the main namespace one wikt:category. If two, three, and four are the same, we should explain that in a terminology section in a way I, posing as a newcomer, could understand.
The very first sentence: Wikipedia's categories form a hierarchical structure could be read incorrectly as "A collection of pages forms a structure." I'm sure you would agree that if you were struggling with a new concept, that it might just as easily be written "The set of category pages forms a ... structure." I predict this will all take some time, and I am in no hurry on this. I want to volunteer to help improve this article.
Peaceful editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 21:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Categorizing pages contains these two statements, which seem to be contradictory:
The first statement seems to say that articles should not be incuded in distinguished ancestor categories, while the second seems to suggest that they should. Duplicate categorization rule seems to agree that articles should be added to distinguished ancestor categories:
Also, User:PennySpender1983 mentioned in the Error in "Duplicate categorization rule" section discussion that some parent categories explicitly state whether or not articles should be added to them. Is there an established rule to include or exclude articles from distinguished ancestor categories? If so, can the rule be overridden for individual cases? — Codrdan ( talk) 23:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
You still haven't defined "distinguished; can you give an example of a distinguished ancestor? Personally, I don't believe they exist.
I would not support the removal of the duplicate categorization option. I think that when some basic/elementary users click on Category:Bridges in New York City they will have an expectation to see all of the bridges in New York City. This is not unreasonable as it is not an overly large category. - ¢Spender1983 ( talk) 02:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
User:Codrdan pointed here because of my deletion of the category:romantic comedy films from the article Get Over It. The category 2000s romantic comedy films was already present, which was why I deleted the parent category. The entire romantic comedy films category has been broken down systematically into decades. (In fact, all of the general genre film categories, drama, romance, westerns, etc. have been broken down into these decades subcategories.) All romantic comedy films fit into one of those decades subcategories, there's no way they can't. The romantic comedy category has been systematically broken down, therefore making each of those decades subcats non-distinguished. They fit into one or the other. WP:FILM, under categorization, includes as example that lists 2000s comedy films, not comedy films. These genre cats would be enormous had they not been broken down somehow. Something like category:comedy of remarriage films is a distinguished category; you can't categorize all films that don't fit into it as category:non-comedy of remarriage films. I would take the duplicate categorization rule to mean that if something is in the comedy of remarriage distinguished category, it would also be listed under the decade-appropriate romantic comedy films category. Wool Mintons ( talk) 08:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I am removing the {{contradict}} templates that have been placed on the guideline. The discussion so far shows that only one editor (Codrdan) does not understand the guideline. This discussion can continue and if others start to weigh in that there is a contradiction in the guideline, then we can either fix the text in the guideline or put the template back. - ¢Spender1983 ( talk) 23:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Could someone add from month year subcategories to Category:BLP articles lacking sources, thank you. Mattg82 ( talk) 16:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources}}to
{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources|from|{{{date|}}}}}
{{Monthly clean up category
| toc = toc
| type = BLP articles lacking sources
| cat = BLP articles lacking sources
| hidden = y
| message =
}}
There are no rules in Wikipedia. Guidelines don't exist to declare rules; they exist to inform newbs about current practice. I assert that it is current practice throughout Wikipedia to disperse articles into the most specific available categories; and that this guideline is therefore terribly inaccurate.
If the guideline said that is was occasionally okay to put an article into a category and its parent, that would be acceptable. But in fact it goes far beyond that, and as a result it appears that some people are now using this guideline to push the very opposite of current practice. There is a problem here that needs to be fixed.
Hesperian 23:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a "distinguished" subcategory is. (That's not a particularly good name, I know.) It's not true that the majority of subcategories are distinguished. In my experience, it's very hard to find an example of such a thing. The vast majority of subcategories are systematic (non-distinguished... someone come up with better terminology please) - breaking down the parent category by decade, by year by country, etc. - and therefore in practice you should hardly ever get a situation where an article is in both parent and sub category. Except in the notorious case of eponymous categories, which are dealt with in the section after the duplicate categorization rule. Perhaps we could think of some rewording along that line of thought.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I remain of the opinion that the guidance given here—to place articles in every category up the ancestral chain until you arrive at an intermediate or non-distinguished category—does not reflect current practice. And personally, I am glad of that. I think the thing to do is to ditch this particular point of guidance; and hopefully that would allow us to ditch all this "distinguished" silliness too.
Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? —
Codrdan (
talk)
13:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
(moved Q to new section. —
Codrdan (
talk)
14:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC))
It seems the above discussion has collapsed into attempts to figure out exactly what all that waffle means, and to rephrase it to make more sense. My point stands that the section describes a fictional practice. Why bother rephrasing something that is rubbish no matter how we phrase it? Does anyone here truly believe that the duplicate categorisation rule actually describes current practice? Nuke it from orbit! Hesperian 23:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
These are things that have been discussed before but, I think, without any answers being reached:
I would also have another general suggestion for this page, which seems too long at the moment: move all the technical help to Help:Category (it should be there already anyway), making this page just for guidance on proper use of categories (i.e. what to do, not how to do it), and then simplify it to make it more practical and less of an academic discourse. What do people think of this idea? (Make that question 3.)
Suggestions please.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
On reflection, I think that the criterion for including articles in categories further up the category tree is simply category tree population: if a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories. The reason we have gotten bogged down in complicated definitions is because the question naturally arises, "why should such an underpopulated category tree exist at all? It ought to be upmerged, right?" The answer, as you know, is that this situation legitimately arises whenever the subcategories were created not to diffuse the parent's articles, but because they are inherently interesting. But we don't need to say this! Our task is to identify situations where it is okay to include articles in not-the-most-specific categories, not to give a long-winded and hideously complicated explanation of how such situations come about! All that is required is to say "If a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories." And if we absolutely must go on to explain and defend the existence of such underpopulated category trees, then at least make it a secondary paragraph.
Re 2:That sounds a possible way to go, though we'd need some concept of "safely" (we've always been very vague about what an appropriate maximum size for a category should be, and I don't think we're likely to agree on one now).-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule (and your new rule if it's different from the DCR) if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? — Codrdan ( talk) 14:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for answering me, Kotniski. In that case, I'd like to suggest a few things:
— Codrdan ( talk) 15:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that Commons are calling "intermediate categories" meta categories. [1] 23:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Templates are categorised in Category:Wikipedia templates regardless of whether they are for main/admin or contain content links. Some editors that I have come across insist that templates containing content links (used for navigation with a topic) should be categorised in the related category. I disagree with this stance. Template pages are of no use to readers as a member of a content category. Editors are able to find useful templates in Category:Wikipedia templates or when pages relating to the template are viewed. I would like to see the Wikipedia:Categorization guideline modified as follows:
The rationale for this proposal is to ensure separation between content and maint/admin. Readers, who are the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia, have no interest in the existence of template pages. See also Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Templates_in_article_categories. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 08:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Support. There's no reason to throw things into inappropriate categories just because of a vague relation. Relevant templates can appear on the category page or be linked from there if really important, but we shouldn't be mixing up editing tools with encyclopedia articles in the same category - we ought to be categorizing like with like. -- Kotniski ( talk) 12:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, I propose replacing the text of this guideline with the version at Wikipedia:Categorization/Draft. Consequences:
I'm not claiming the new version is perfect, but I believe it's much clearer than the one we've got, so I propose making the substitution and then working on any proposed further improvements.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
If a group of subcategories collectively contain every member article of their parent exactly once, they can be called a "full", "complete", "exhaustive", "comprehensive", or "systematic" set of subcategories. Such a set of subcategories systematically subdivides the parent category according to some additional criterion. They may be placed in their own Wikipedia page, which is listed in the parent category's page in place of the individual subcategories. If this is done, the separated set of subcategories can be called a "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory".
Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list either all its member articles or any member articles that are not contained in at least one subcategory. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.
Is there some background personal issue here that I'm not aware of? Kotniski put a lot of effort into cleaning up a dreadfully over-complicated and waffly page. I'd say he's taken us 95% of the way to a good outcome. All that is required is the identification and repair of any objectionable sentences. I can't understand the hostile reception. Hesperian 23:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Re "it is not recommended that" versus "should not" - if we list ten good reasons not to do something, I think it's pretty clear that we mean that people shouldn't do it. But it really doesn't matter to me - put back the slightly longer wording if you think it makes a difference. (Good Ol'factory, I'm not sure, but I think you may be confusing two issues - what we were talking about before was putting templates into article categories; what's been raised now is putting articles into categories using templates. Two completely different things. Sorry if I misunderstood you though.)
Re Codrdan's first paragraph: the separated set (the "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory") is a category, right? (Of the Category:Foos by country type. So whatever we call it, I think it needs to be a "something category", otherwise we will really confuse people. (Again, sorry if I've misunderstood.)
Re Codrdan's second paragraph: it seems at first sight not to be saying anything. Obviously a category lists member articles that are not in any subcategory, otherwise they wouldn't be member articles. But if you mean "or only any member articles..." (which seems necessary to give the statement any substance), then we needlessly prohibit partially diffused categories from having ad hoc categories in addition to the diffusing ones. -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
> what's defective in my thinking when I call a category that's intermediate between two things an "intermediate category"?
What's defective is that you don't seem to realize that "intermediate categories" aren't categories at all, and you're simply ignoring my explanations instead of answering them seriously. I've already told you several times that an "intermediate category" is really just a list or set of categories, but you've insulted me by treating my comments as if they're not even worth responding to directly. —
Codrdan (
talk)
18:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list all of its member articles. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.
> you're ... proposing something [that] would mean ... changes to the category structure
Nope. The duplicate-categorization rule as I described it can be implemented manually by editors, so the software doesn't have to be changed, and it seems to be the current practice anyway, so the hierarchy doesn't have to change.
> exceptions would inevitably arise ... (as you seem to acknowledge with your "It could display only some of them if...").
I was suggesting an alternate guideline. It has nothing to do with exceptions.
> whether the draft wording (or some other wording) adequately describes the [current] way of doing things
The "Notable-feature subcategories" section doesn't describe anything adequately. In addition to being one of the most confusing attempts to define terminology I've ever seen in my life, its description of the duplicate-categorization rule isn't even what editors are currently using. At 05:45, 3 February 2010, Wool Mintons removed cat:romantic comedy films from
Get Over It (film) with the reason "already under non-distinguished subcat 2000s romantic comedy films", even though the film is also in the "distinguished" (ad-hoc) subcategory American romantic comedy films. This is exactly the rule I've been proposing: Whether or not an article is listed in a parent category page depends on whether or not the parent has a systematic set of subcats, not on whether or not the article is in an ad-hoc ("distinguished") subcat. So the current wording doesn't even reflect current practice.
—
Codrdan (
talk)
18:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Not all subcategories serve the "diffusion" function described above; some are simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest ... These are called notable-feature subcategories.
If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.
[notable-feature subcats] sometimes provide an exception to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory: there is no need to take pages out of the parent category purely because of their membership of a notable-feature subcategory.
> there is a rule that says ["pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory"] ... it's the part of the DCR that talks of non-distinguished subcategories
That's not the same thing. You said there's a general rule that all articles (with exceptions mentioned elsewhere) are excluded from parent category listing. DCR part 1 doesn't say that. It's really just an indirect way of saying what I've proposed: Pages are not listed in parent categories if the parent has one or more full sets of subcategories.
> The rule has two exceptions: the eponymous category case ... and the "distinguished/ad hoc/notable-feature" case
But the "distinguished" case isn't based on whether an article is in an ad-hoc subcat. Wool Mintons already showed that. She deleted an article's parent category declaration because the article is in a systematic set of subcats, even though it's also in an ad-hoc subcat. I don't know how you can have so much trouble understanding that. Membership in ad-hoc subcats has no effect on whether or not an article is listed in the parent category page.
> It's nothing to do with complete sets of subcats - try to expel that idea from your mind.
It's entirely about complete sets, and if no one else here can see that, I'll have to expel this entire guideline from my mind as an exercise in muddled thought and bad writing.
> the principle applies just the same when there aren't [complete sets]
You mean articles are normally not listed in the parent if there's no complete set of subcats? That doesn't sound right. Why wouldn't they be listed in that case, and if they're not, why would Wool Mintons cite membership in a full set as her reason for removing the article from the parent listing?
> "of interest": it has to be read in the context of ... "not serving the diffusion function" and the word "simply". I.e. there are subcats which are only "of interest", as opposed to being of interest AND serving the diffusion function.
Hold on a second. Why should we worry about the context if you've just agreed that both ad-hoc and "systematic" subcats are "of interest"? Your explanation isn't even self-consistent! Now it looks like your definition of ad-hoc subcats is the word "simply": You define ad-hoc subcats as being "simply" subsets, while "systematic" subcats also serve to subdivide the parent. Do you seriously expect readers to differentiate ad-hoc subcats from "systematic" subcats from the one word "simply"? I just don't understand how anyone could support such tortured logic. As far as I'm concerned, all categories are "of interest" in some way or other, and all subcategories serve to partially subdivide the parent, so there's no such thing as a subcategory that is "simply" a subset without at least partially serving to subdivide the parent.
The guideline confuses readers even more by not bothering to define "non-distinguished" in older versions and by not even mentioning "systematic" subcats in the draft. So it defines category lists (with a misleading name that calls them "categories"), and it defines some subset categories (ad-hoc/"distinguished"), but it completely ignores the remaining subset categories ("systematic") and provides no name for subset categories as a whole. The confusion and muddled thinking of the text is breathtaking. I can't support it under any circumstances at all.
> I'm sure it's possible to word this much better, and I invite you or anyone to try
All you have to do is read, Kotniski. My text is already in the current document.
> it has to be understood that not only complete sets can serve a diffusion function.
Exactly. Even ad-hoc subcats serve to partially subdivide the parent. Have a nice day, Kotniski :)
—
Codrdan (
talk)
20:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
So tell me, Kotniski, how do we determine whether a subcat is distinguished or systematic? — Codrdan ( talk) 08:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyway, let me see if I understand what you mean by "distinguished" and "systematic". We don't really have a way for users to determine whether a given subcat is distinguished or systematic. New York toll bridges is distinguished because it's interesting, and Former voivodeships of Poland is called "non-distinguished" because it's "not interesting". Your answers to my question about whether a subcat can be both distinguished and systematic seem to suggest that "distinguished" and "non-systematic" are synonymous, which would imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are also synonymous. But "Former voivodeships of Poland" doesn't sound very systematic to me, even though you clearly placed it in the "non-distinguished" category by saying its articles should not be listed in the parent page. So again your writing has confused me.
Meanwhile, the duplicate-categorization rule says "the non-distinguished (systematic) subcategory Category:Bridges in France", which also seems to imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are synonyms. Kotniski, don't you think you're insulting French people by calling their bridges "non-distinguished" if what you mean by that is "not interesting"? Some of the most breathtaking bridges in the world are in France. How is it appropriate for an encyclopedia to gratuitously play favorites by giving some articles duplicate categorization and hiding others based on the personal tastes of one or more editors, when the "interesting" articles are already listed in their "distinguished" subcategory? —
Codrdan (
talk)
20:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
If a person is x and y, but is only known and notable for y, should he be categorized under both or only under y? Maurreen ( talk) 11:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
How is Category:Bridges in France not a distinguished subcategory of Category:Bridges? — Codrdan ( talk) 20:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
If a page is contained logically in both a category and a subcategory of that category, it must be considered whether it should still be placed directly into the first (parent) category. The rule normally applied is as follows, based on the definition of distinguished category as given above:
For example, Angers Bridge is not placed directly into Category:Bridges, because it belongs to the non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategory Category:Bridges in France. This is because articles about individual bridges are systematically broken down into distinct geographical categories. Each bridge is placed into a category based on its location (although bridges that cross borders between countries might be placed into two geographical categories). (If all of the articles about individual bridges were placed in Category:Bridges, that category would be too large to be useful.)
On the other hand, articles are not excluded from Category:Bridges in New York City on the grounds that they also belong to Category:Toll bridges in New York City, since the latter is a distinguished subcategory. This is because there is not a Category:Non-toll bridges in New York City and because the Category:Bridges in New York City is not so-large as to need to be broken into non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategories.
Information to determine if a category is distinguished or non-distinguished is found in the category description, which should be found on the category page as noted above.
Thanks for that discussion! That was exactly what i was wondering about :) -- Lexischemen ( talk) 13:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
For anyone left who cares about making this guideline readable, the draft at WP:Categorization/Draft still stands. I've modified it to meet the objections raised before (restored "it is recommended that" in the bit about categorizing articles using templates; changed "intermediate categories" to "metacategories", changed "notable-feature" subcats to "non-diffusing" subcats since that's precisely what's meant, and clarified that being in a non-diffusing subcat doesn't preclude being in a diffusing one (and thus being diffused) as well). Are there any more objections about the wording before this goes live? I mean faults that don't already exist with the present wording of the guideline (I'm not saying the draft is perfect, only that it's a clear improvement over the present mess).-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
These are my current thoughts about the guideline.
These are some thoughts and suggestions for establishing better practices and describing them more clearly. —
Codrdan (
talk)
17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
When a category has no subcategories, all of its articles are displayed together on the category's page, with no redundancy. This is convenient for users who want to read all of the articles in the category or have some other use for a complete listing of the category's member articles. When subcategories are introduced, listing only some of the parent's articles makes it much harder for users to find all of the parent's member articles: They may be distributed into many different subcategories, and individual articles may be listed redundantly by being added to multiple subcategories. Minimizing this inconvenience to readers should be the top priority of any duplicate-categorization rule. The parent should either list its member articles on an all-or-nothing basis, so readers know where and how to find a convenient listing, or clearly label the list of articles as incomplete. If the parent is small enough, all of its articles should be listed so the parent still has the convenience of a full article list. The guiding principal behind listing a parent category's member articles should be to make it as easy as possible for readers to find or construct a complete, redundancy-free list of all the articles. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
If the parent category is too big to list all of its member articles, it should have at least one complete set of subcats that subdivide the parent according to some criterion and collectively contain all of the parent's member articles. Each such set should be clearly identified by either displaying the set in its own labeled section of the parent page or moving it to a separate "by" page (e.g. Films by genre). The guideline documentation should make it clear that each member article is expected to be listed at least once in each of these sets. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
— Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
As I currently understand it, the term "distinguished subcategory" has almost no objective definition at all. Other than not being part of a systematic subdivision (either partial or complete) of the parent category, the defining characteristic of a distinguished subcategory seems to be that some unspecified group or individual considers its subject matter to be especially interesting, notable, important, or otherwise worthy of special treatment. The purpose of the current duplicate-categorization rule seems to be to grant some kind of special " VIP" status to selected subcategories by listing their articles in the parent category's page. Subjectively selecting categories for special treatment is inherently biased. For example, there are many fascinating bridges in France, so why does the current document call Bridges in France "non-distinguished"? Subjective classification of categories by perceived importance should be abandoned in favor of objective classification based on membership in a comprehensive set of subcats. This will make it easier for users to find all of the parent's member articles. The subjectively defined terms "distinguished subcategory" and "systematic subcategory" should be eliminated in favor of "ad-hoc category" and "complete set of subcategories", which are defined objectively. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
What is the current practice in duplicate categorization? I don't see any documentation that clearly describes it. The two parts of the current duplicate-categorization rule conflict when an article is in two subcategories, one distinguished and the other non-distinguished. For example, Get Over It (film) is in both 2000s romantic comedy films (non-distinguished subcat of Romantic comedy films) and American romantic comedy films (distinguished subcat). Which part of the DCR applies to that case? The current draft that has been proposed says nothing definite at all about how to figure out whether or not articles in a distinguished category should be listed on the parent's page. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi Kotniski, thank you for answering me.
> "if otherwise appropriate" ... removed the contradiction
I see. Interesting choice of words :)
> improve the wording
We need to agree on what the current accepted practice of duplicate categorization is before we can discuss documentation. Here's a starting point for the rest:
In addition to metacategories, a category may contain subcategories that are not part of a metacategory. Subcategories that are not in a metacategory and are considered to be particularly interesting are called distinguished subcategories. These include Best Actor Academy Award winners as a subcategory of Film actors, Toll bridges in New York City as a subcategory of Bridges in New York City, and Musical films as a subcategory of Musicals.
This should be followed by clear instructions on how to figure out whether or not a subcategory is distinguished. Any language about "sometimes" and "no need" is a waste of the reader's time. The instructions about duplicate categorization should be written in terms of individual articles instead of subcategories. The rule about metacategory membership taking precedence should be included, but it shouldn't say "Of course", because it's not obvious.
> we mustn't change the wording to describe some new practice
No, of course not.
> You can always propose new practices
Everything in this section (
Miscellaneous comments) except this subsection ("Current practice?") is a proposal. I may mention the current system in my draft, but its main focus will be on describing what I believe the rules should be.
—
Codrdan (
talk)
12:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a rough draft of a possible guideline at User:Codrdan/Categories. It's still a work in progress. Comments are welcome either here or on the article's talk page. In some sections, such as the names for subcat sets, multiple options are temporarily listed together. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
> You need to understand that not every subcategory that isn't part of a complete systematic set has the property that pages listed in the subcategory are also listed in the parent.
Kotniski, what do you mean when you say that listing a subcategory's articles in the parent is a "property"? Are you trying to dictate your own guidelines to other wikipedians and force us to obey you? Are you trying to prevent an open discussion of where articles should be listed? How is listing articles a "property" that can't be changed by changing the guideline? —
Codrdan (
talk)
08:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
From my perspective, which is admittedly kind of not even understanding what all the fuss is about, I think the discussion between you two has gone as far as it can go. Kotniski has pretty clearly expressed a desire for it to not continue, so I think you should respect that, Codrdan, and stop directing comments towards him and referring to things he said before. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd agree with the nauseating part. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Maybe the category header templates can be improved and this guideline can state that all category descriptions should have a header template. (See the category header templates listed on {{
CatDiffuse}}.)
Currently I interpret {{
Allincluded}} and {{
Distinguished subcategory}} as headers for categories that would follow the duplicate categorization rule. I see {{
Container category}} as a header for an intermediate category (and {{
CatDiffuse}} as a maintenance header for that).
If we come up with appropriate names and templates, then concensus is built as categories and editors begin to use the templates. -
¢Spender1983 (
talk)
15:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Re this edit, which seems to be moving again towards making this page contain everything about categories, rather than keeping it focused on guidance as to correct practice (with the information about the mechanics taken to Help:Category). What do people think - do we want a one-stop-shop page, or do we want to keep the two separate pages with their different purposes? (If the latter, then I disagree with the above edit, as that information clearly belongs on the Help page.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
With the recent kerfuffle about BLPs, I've been using the List Comparer in WP:AWB a lot to compile lists of pages to check for being unreferenced. The Category (recursive) scan is the most useful, but it also throws up a lot of false positived. I have no real interest in reading all of the discussions above, so I don't know if it's related, but should a "parent cat" be correct through all of it's subtrees? The one I'm on today is Category:Australian people. Because of eponymous cats like Category:J. M. Coetzee being in Category:Australian writers or Category:J. G. Thirlwell being in Category:Australian electronic musicians, all of the articles in their subcats, ie their books, albums etc show up in the recursive scan of Category:Australian people. Should I remove the "person" related cat from the eponymous cat, and if so what do they go into? Or is my recursive catscan not an intended use of the category structure and should I just live with the false positives? It's bad enough with the overseas people turning up from university alumni cats or sportsmen from overseas who represent a local team being caught into the Aust people cat, but books and albums are pushing the rules a bit I think! The-Pope ( talk) 07:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a meta-meta-category called
Category:Works by type and year. Each subcategory is a metacategory that subdivides some category of creative medium by year. Is this a current accepted practice? I don't see any support for it in the guideline. —
Codrdan (
talk)
03:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Same question applies to
Category:Films by subgenre. It's really just a meta-meta-category in disguise. —
Codrdan (
talk)
04:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
It is recommended (required?) that sort keys use no diacritics at all to allow for useful ordering. Isn't this rather an unintended (read: bug) behavior in the software that is now imposed on the editors? I mean, changing the collation algorithm for Latin text to ignore diacritics and capitalization sounds easier than requiring all sort keys to be diacritic-free and correctly capitalized. So in general: Shouldn't this be solved in the software itself instead of trying to impose conventions on editors? — Johannes Rössel ( talk) 15:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I found a cycle in the Category:Universe subcategories tree: Category:Universe --> Category:Cosmology --> Category:Physical cosmology --> Category:Universe. I read somewhere that cycles should usually be avoided, but cannot find this advice in the guideline. What is the best course of action? -- M4gnum0n ( talk) 15:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned about how categories such as Jewish Americans by occupation and Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States are used.
They came to my attention because of edits to an article about a former cabinet member whom I knew (his family and mine were friends for many years). He was of Jewish descent, his wife was of Scottish descent, and they and their sons were all Unitarians (as were we).
I don't know what's going on with the categories, but I have to ask: are they being populated on the basis that some names just "look Jewish" or what? – Athaenara ✉ 20:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
See upmerger nomination of Category:Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 8#Category:Jewish_members_of_the_Cabinet_of_the_United_States. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
A series of discussions at CFD over the last few days have revealed a number of problems in the naming conventions of the top-level categories for inhabited human settlements.
The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.
Your contributions will be welcome. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
(discussion moved from User talk:Alan Liefting)
Hi, what's with removing all the African countries from the category of African countries? According to WP:EPON, they ought to be there.-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
You have good points there. I can't say I'm convinced, but I won't insist further on the issue, either. Besides, we can't reenact the RFC here. I guess the real issue here is that the category system has a fundamental flaw in this respect, but I can't point to the correct solution (to be honest, I haven't actually stopped to think of one). Anyway, I'll leave it to you and Alan. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my queries and present your views. -- Waldir talk 13:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Hello. What I noticed about the removal of this category from African countries is that it resulted in an inconsistency: France is still part of the category Countries of Europe and Suriname is still part of the category South American countries. However one continent is treated, the others should be treated the same. Munci ( talk) 14:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Coming in late. Can't be bothered reading all of the above, though I've read much of it. This problem has been around for years. I think people let it go because they think it is too hard to solve, but actually it is pretty easy to solve.
Egypt is an African country. Not everything in
Category:Egypt is an African country. But everything in
Category:Egypt is an African topic, sorted by country. This analysis yields the following category structure:
Egypt —> Category:African countries | | v v Category:Egypt —> Category:African topics by country
Simple, accurate, correct. Hesperian 23:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, at the moment Ghost is a child of Ghosts which in turn is a child of Paranormal which is a child of Pseudoscience. This has been used as a rationale to add the Pseudoscience category directly to Ghost, even though the literature, via demarcation problem, seems to indicate that this is unsupported by serious sources. While it is clear that Ghost hunting is based in pseudoscience, it is not clear that Ghost is not better seen as Folklore or similar. Any thoughts on this? Unomi ( talk) 04:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
We don't need a solution because there is no problem other than the general one that it's not clear what the category system is for. Even being in the pseudoscience category itself doesn't imply that something is pseudoscience, it could just be related. For something that is only in a subcategory, the presumption that it is a pseudoscience itself is even weaker. In the case of Ghost that's exactly what we need: Ghosts are somehow related to pseudoscience, but not strongly. Hans Adler 11:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Where can i find list of existing categories to put my article in ?-- ThorX ( talk) 18:20, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
How do I link to a category in the article's middle and without adding the article to the category?
I can put the category page title into the article's middle but if I link it then it doesn't show at all in the article's middle but instead becomes a category that includes the article, which is erroneous.
The article I tried this in is Charter_school_(New_York) and you can compare the first version, a failure, and the second, a kludge. Scroll to the Schools List section and compare the second paragraph of the section of each version.
If there's a good method, I'd like to add it to the Categorization page.
Thanks.
Nick Levinson ( talk) 02:24, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Omakaitse - the dispute over categorization of article content. An opinion of an uninvolved editor requested. Opinion of Baltic editors is already known and disputed, hence is not requested.
The issue is that part of article content, directly and immediately related to the article subject, falls into categories "Holocaust" and "Nazi collaborators", which Estonian editors try to remove from everything related to WWII history of Estonia. Please comment. Timurite ( talk) 02:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
How can I generate automatically a list with all the articles and subcategories of a certain category? For example I need a list with all articles in the subcategories of Category:Companies of Romania by industry, is there any tool for that? Thanks -- Ark25 ( talk) 21:37, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
This guideline has been identified as a possible candidate to contain a core . Can you please have a look here. Gnevin ( talk) 14:51, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Comment. Clearly, there are different views on whether the paranormal should be classified as pseudoscience, but the same applies to much of what is labelled pseudoscience. By categorising fields of study as study as "pseudoscience", wikipedia is making a thoroughly POV editorial judgement in favour of one side of a debate
We wouldn't do this in other fields: businesses and bankers are not categorised according to the language of Marxist analysis, nor are non-Christian people categorised as heathens. Why is this area allowed to retain such a POV categoristaion structure? Because arbcom says so.
The arbcom ruling summarised in the box at Category talk:Pseudoscience explicitly says "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience."
Looking at the principles section of the arbcom ruling, I see that the first principle is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of all significant points of view regarding the subject of an article" ... and the next one is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience".
In other words, NPOV goes out the window when scientists call something pseudo science. By the same logic, non-Catholic christian ministers should be labelled as "pseudo-clergy", because the Roman Catholic church does not recognise the validity of their ordinations.
And before the denunciations start flying, no I don't have any interest in UFOs or astrology or any of the topics in Category:Pseudoscience. I just don't like seeing one belief system being or intellectual approach being categorised according to the derogatory labels of those who follow a different path. We might as well categorise the Catholic mass under Category:Blasphemy, since that's what some critics of Catholicism call it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:53, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
How should such territories like Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Falklands, Guam or Puerto Rico be dealt with for categories sort by country? Should these categories be categorised under Foo of Denmark, Foo of the UK or Foo of the US, or should they be categorised right under Foo by country? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 ( talk) 20:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
The discussion here was initiated and continued by 119.237.150.205, the IP incarnation of a banned user who uses categories and templates for nationalist NPOV purposes. The real answer here is that constituent parts of sovereign states have various levels of independence and some may properly be countries and some are not. There is not, and cannot, be one simple guideline. The troll here wishes to seek out a statement that all constituent countries are equally "countries" by Wikipedia standards in order to pursue his own nationalist agenda. SchmuckyTheCat ( talk)
Where categories follow a clear numerical or chronological sequence, e.g. Category:English football clubs 1887–88 season clearly follows after Category:English football clubs 1886–87 season), is there a standard way of linking them, maybe via a template that links to the preceding and succeeding category? (such as you get with the prevseason and nextseason parameters in Template:Infobox football club season). This would be useful as you wouldn't have to navigate back up to the parent category to get to the next category along. -- Jameboy ( talk) 23:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
In the fictional example of a man called John Smith who was also a musician called Johnny Rocket, where we want to categorize the "Johnny Rocket" redirect in a musicians category (so it shows up on the category listing), should we also place the John Smith article in the musicians category? Past discussion concluded that it should (because otherwise the category won't show up on the article page at all - too bad that it results in double listing at the category). Given that the guideline has jsut been edited to say something different, has consensus changed on this point? -- Kotniski ( talk) 06:10, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
When categorising a redirect as R from Spanish-language terms, should I live the R from alternative language cat? -- Againme ( talk) 16:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
The proliferation of ethnicity-related categories and their inclusion in articles with no references to sustain them is a troubling problem in regards to BLP concerns. Take for example Category:European American basketball players. I went through just the A's in the category and found that NONE of those categorized articles had a single reference or even mention of European ancestry. User:Mayumashu, who added the category to many of the articles, argued when discussing another race-related category that we should interpret a person's ethnicity/race using pictures of that person. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous. Is there any way we can prevent such "interpretations" and speculation?-- TM 13:40, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I have mentioned this to Mayumashu in the past and he told me he often categorizes such articles just based purely on their last name, which of course is a completely inaccurate way to do it. -
DJSasso (
talk)
17:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
I stated this above nearly a month ago but I'm going to repeat this because it got lost in the shuffle: any category that asserts facts that are not even mentioned in the article can be summarily removed from that article. Whether those facts need direct sourcing to be mentioned in the article is another issue (I would say always yes for assertions of ethnicity), but there is no basis for adding a category to an article that does not even deign to mention that category's subject. postdlf ( talk) 02:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
The article Wikipedia:Categorization#Content of category pages has no guidance on the placement of portal links? I've updated Category:LGBT-related music in Canada. It has four links to other portals. At first, I thought it was overkill. Now I think it is proper for them to remain. Any help on my questions is greatly appreciated. Argolin ( talk) 20:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
portal}}
, I think {{
portal box}}
should be used instead (and this applies to articles too), but you don't have to change it on pages where it's already this way, because this will be probably handled by a bot.
Svick (
talk)
22:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | → | Archive 15 |
From wp:categorization# Subcategorization it isn't clear if all or just some the page members of a distinguished category are supposed to be a subset of the page members of the parent category. Which is it, all or some? Also, could I have a couple of content category examples of the "perfect" or "ideal" distinguished category? Maybe I can glean the answer from the examples and learn some other things about content categories in general. Pknkly ( talk) 05:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Where did speedy criterion #6 come from? Debresser ( talk) 11:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
The just-created Category:Pairs contains Crime and Punishment, Fire and Ice, Religion and politics, and more. Is this a helpful category? Is this the right place to ask, or am I supposed to make up my own mind and take it to WP:CFD? Johnuniq ( talk) 08:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing village pump discussion about this here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Inclusion criteria What are the criteria by which a category of the sort (e.g.) Category:People from Chicago, Illinois may be added to an article? That article reads "The following people were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with the city of Chicago and its surrounding metropolitan area." Is this normative for other such categories? Can someone point me to a policy/guideline/consensus about this matter? Thanks. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 02:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
An edit summary for paragraphs 2/3 and 3/3 of the Quick summary section:
The minor changes are suitable for correction without the need to revert the multi-paragraph copy edit. — Cpiral Cpiral 00:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
{{ CatDiffuse}} has been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 28
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_15#Template:This_is_a_redirect for a Tfd discussion related to this WikiProject. (related to the above notification)
Not positive I have the terminology correct, but believe this is whats called a 'meta-template', a template used to create other templates. The template: Template:This is a redirect was created by User:Lenoxus, a member of the Wiki_Redirect project. The template allows easily creating a specific template used to put TYPE redirects into a specific redirect category - "redirect of TYPE", e.g. "schools" and "hospitals", or "from alternative spelling" and "from alternative name". Categorizing redirects may also serve to facilitate disambiguation.
Template:This is a redirect directly supports intentionally entering the disambiguation categories indicated on the disambiguation guideline, which as a new editor here, I find straightforward. This approach both prevents overcategorization, but does not auto-categorize. - MornMore ( talk) 02:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Feedback wanted from anyone interested in template programming and categorization.
Some templates add categories to the pages they are used on. This unfortunately also means they usually add categories to pages where they are only tested or demonstrated. So we have a how-to guide about how to avoid this problem. And some templates also need to use different categories in different namespaces, which can be tricky to do. So now we have made a meta-template that will make it much easier to handle categorization in templates. Here's the relevant links:
Oh, and please don't start a discussion here, instead use the talk pages of the above pages.
-- David Göthberg ( talk) 03:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
We really, really need to do something about the term "list category" in this guideline, as it causes endless confusion with the concept of "category of lists". In the discussions and RFC on eponymous categories this summer, this was very clear; I just noticed that there was a late answer at Talk:Saskatchewan#Category:Provinces and territories of Canada vs. Category:Saskatchewan, the discussion that initiated the RFC in the first place, which even more clearly shows the confusion. I also see here that Debresser commented on the same thing yesterday. The term needs to be changed to avoid further confusion. "Set category" would be most logical, but I doubt most people would think of a set as in mathematics; perhaps "collection category", "item category", "membership category"? I'm sure someone has a better suggestion, but "list category" must go. — JAO • T • C 10:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
What about "series"/"group" category, to indicate that it contains multiples of similar things—members of a series or group, as opposed to a "topic" category, which contains subtopics related to a singular thing. The distinction should be clear from the category's name: plural versus singular titling. Category:European countries is a group of countries; Category:Europe is a topic with subtopics. Subcategory members of a group category may in turn be further subgroupings, or topics in their own right; and subcategories of a topic category may also be subtopics that are singular topics or groups themselves. postdlf ( talk) 13:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Suggest Subject category - I was just looking at list categories where it seems to say that "list categories" are "subject categories". So, why not make them a "subject category". I liked the advise given above by one of the editors about using nouns. Stay away from verbs or words that may be interpreted as verbs (e.g., group, index, list), especially verbs that describe what a category already does. If we use "subject categories" it would compliment "topic categories". Pknkly ( talk) 17:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm curious: How can a graph contain "approximately" no cycles? I thought "The category system" is intended to describe the desired state of affairs, rather than the "impurities" due manual labor. Spill paint over the hood of a Ferrari, and you still have a Ferrari. BTW, finding cycles looks like a job for CatBot. Regards, Paradoctor ( talk) 20:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I finally found out what has been bugging me: "Acyclic directed graph" is too general, the category system has the same structure as a DAWG. Paradoctor ( talk) 13:20, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
For what the guideline used to say some time ago, see the old version of the guideline (the section "Cycles should usually be avoided"). When I rewrote the page I took the passage out because it seemed to be a lot of words saying nothing (it first says that we don't like cycles, but then goes on to say that some cycles - no particular clue as to which - are acceptable). I mentioned it at talk at the time and no-one commented, but if anyone wants to belatedly reinsert that passage now, so we can perhaps work on changing it to say something more useful, then that would be fine.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Seriously, let's declare cycles to be the epitomy of evil. Either the text will stand, or someone will come up with a cogent counter-example. Win-win. Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
edit conflicts are fun |-()Oy, I noticed two more: "form a hierarchical structure, consisting in effect of overlapping trees". In a hierarchy, all elements are comparable wrt level. Here's a subgraph, which can (and presumably does) exist in the category graph: A>B>C & A>D>E>C. Is B on the same "level" as D, E, both, or none? Furthermore, "overlapping trees" does not specify how the trees overlap, allowing the possibility of different roots.
I suggest we reformulate the intro thusly:
"Wikipedia's categories resemble a rooted tree, the difference being that subtrees may overlap.",
and drop the technical stuff about DAGs/DAWGs/CLs/whatever in the second sentence, or stuff it into a footnote. This is a guideline, not a course in graph theory. ;) Paradoctor ( talk) 15:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
And even if we were going to go down a "They resemble a tree except..." line, it would be must easier to understand if you phrased the exception as the logically equivalent "the difference being that categories may have more than one parent category". Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
There has been some edit-warring behaviour over the last month regarding the categorization of the List of Volkswagen Group factories article. One editor ( 78.32.143.113 ( talk)) is adamant that the article belongs in categories such as Category:Motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany, Category:Truck manufacturers, Category:Bus manufacturers and Category:Motor vehicle engine manufacturers and has reverted multiple attempts by myself and another editor to rationalize this article's categories, despite attempts to discuss the matter. My opinion, based on the existing membership of these categories and similar articles such as List of Ford factories, is that the appropriate article to include in these categories would be the one about the company itself (i.e. Volkswagen Group or Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles), and not this related "List of..." article. The only WP guideline regarding categories for "List of..." articles I can find is You can add a suitable subcategory of Category:Lists at the bottom of the page ( WP:LIST), which doesn't really provide much guidance. Anybody care to comment? Letdorf ( talk) 13:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC).
I added a terminology section. It was necessary in order to keep the "Quick summary" short, and in order to understand the terminology in "The category system" section. Happy editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 05:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
@Debresser "referent" is correct, check out the lede of reference. The problem with that "clarification" is that it attempts way too precise language, and fails at it. In a terminology section, I expect to see a list of terms and their definitions, discussions only when a term is difficult. E. g.
[[category:X]]
are members of category XParadoctor ( talk) 17:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I've had the impression before, but now it's official: The section is way to narrow in its description of applications of categories. Check out this section on on category headers. One thing that should be kept in mind is that categories are basically just sets, and seeing that almost all of mathematics can be expressed in terms of sets, it doesn't make sense to restrict categories to being navigational aids for the readers. Rather, rules for categories should be described in relation to a specific application. Paradoctor ( talk) 10:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
The issue of having templates as an entry in a category that is otherwise for articles is still an ongoing problem. There is no explicit guideline on it. Convention, which is occasionally ignored, is to place all templates in Category:Wikipedia templates and its subcats. Categorising templates is an administration task and they are not needed in content categories. For previous discussions see:
I would like to have this guideline added:
Or suchlike. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 19:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Images have their own category and the guideline is to not have them in article categories. That same should apply to templates. Wikipedia articles rarely make reference to the administration pages. There are exceptions - eg. hatnotes such as in image etc. The same should apply for content categories. As things currently stand the content categories do not have a clear separation from administration. For example:
It is not recommended that articles be placed in ordinary content categories by using templates. — Cpiral Cpiral 06:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
How do you add a new subcategory to a category? I thought this would be a simple thing, but I can't find any explanation on how to add a subcategory. Thanks. stmrlbs| talk 23:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
[[Category:Name]]
on the article/page/subcategory.
PrimeHunter (
talk)
23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)The difference between WP:categorization and Help:category determines the content and sizes. I'd like to discuss the intentions of the content of the two, and propose moving some things from here to there to get both articles to about 30kb in size. Categorization is 42kb, and category is only 24kb.
I think the namespaces are like this:
Help is hue-collar: task-oriented, how-to-ish, procedural.
WP is white-collar: managing, guiding, conceptualizing, planning, and engineering.
Categorization should be understood for the most part, and then the Help:category article shows the tools.
Indeed WP:categorization is linked more often than Help:category. I checked out what links here and what links there.
Here a section outline in this article that belongs there, and would shave off 9 kb.
3 Display of category pages 3.1 Form of entries 3.2 Sort order 3.2.1 Using sort keys 3.2.2 Typical sort keys 3.3 Split display 3.4 Category description
Both articles discuss sorting, and both articles discuss hiding categories.
Here is the outline for Help:Category, a 24kb sized article:
1 Summary 2 Putting pages in categories 3 Category pages 4 Hiding categories 5 Sort order 5.1 Default sort key 6 Categories and templates 7 Categorizing redirect pages 8 Moving and redirecting category pages 9 Applying "Related Changes" to a category 9.1 Detection of additions to a category 10 Comparison with "What links here" 11 Category considerations 12 Extended tools 12.1 List of all categories 12.2 Visualizing category trees 12.3 Dynamic page list 12.4 Category intersection, union, etc. 12.5 Category flattening 12.6 Count 12.7 Retrieving category information
There we should give-up 7, Categorizating redirect pages. There we should move 11, Category considerations to the lead section there telling them to come here first.
Here is our outline:
1 Quick summary 2 The category system 2.1 Categorizing pages 2.1.1 Eponymous categories 2.2 What categories should be created 2.3 Subcategorization 2.3.1 Duplicate categorization rule 3 Display of category pages 3.1 Form of entries 3.2 Sort order 3.2.1 Using sort keys 3.2.2 Typical sort keys 3.3 Split display 3.4 Category description 4 Project categories 4.1 User pages 4.2 Images 4.3 Hiding categories 5 Categorization using templates 6 Redirected categories 7 Interlanguage links to categories 8 Tips 8.1 Displaying category contents on pages 8.2 Retrieving category information 8.3 Linking to categories 8.4 Searching for articles in categories 9 See also
We should lose 5, Categorization using templates to Help. Sections 7 and 8 are also their territory. They are short, 2.7 kb.
That would make categorization 30 kb and help 35 kb, but... the redone-dancy will square, and all will be well.
Also, we should interact more with WP:classification. We could discuss WP:classification more here. We barely mention the name. The classification article is 7.8 kb, and has both theory and practice content.
— Cpiral Cpiral 01:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Debresser ( talk) 07:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Based on some recent discussions, I wonder if there should be some established criteria for inclusion in descendant categories. Currently inclusion is rather arbitrary since you can include anyone who has ancestors from a place. Let's ignore the issue of this characteristic being defining. Should someone who is 10 generations removed from a place still be included as a decedent? How about 2 generations. What percentage of blood, remembering that someone in the first generation could only be 25% by blood and at the second generation it drops down to 12.5%. If we go with something, we probably should create a template for these categories to explain this or link to the guideline. Vegaswikian ( talk) 22:46, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
Is there a MOS that applies to linking to categories in the article text or infobox such as Template:Nationfilmlist if not can can users offer there opinions Gnevin ( talk) 11:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
For an article like Murder of Piotr Stańczak and similarly named titles, what should the sort key be? A survey of a few reveals no consistent scheme being used. After moving this article upon a requested move I changed the sort key to {{DEFAULTSORT:Stańczak, Piotr, Murder of}}. Is this best? Something else?-- Fuhghettaboutit ( talk) 13:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I have seen category boxes covering the last post on the last discussion on talk pages. Us441 ( talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
There's a proposal on adding a new speedy rename criterion for categories at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion. Feel free to comment. Jafeluv ( talk) 08:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
I have left a message at Template talk:Catmore#Change link. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 07:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
Since this page gets more traffic than WT:CATP, be advised that I've fixed a number of annoying inclusions of project categories in content categories; see discussion at the wikiproject for details. I've also added a shortcut to the "Project categories" section, and mentioned it in Template:Wikipedia category. Pcap ping 23:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
In the category namespace category conveys the concept "a collection of pages". But according to the wording of the article,
a category is also a member page and a subcategory. I don't think category should be used as both the container and the contained, unless we say so in a terminology section. Rather, if we adopt Paradoctor's simple terminology for the term category —this subject is a branch off the previous subject [WT:categorization#Terminology section]]— we could then be consistent (to a reasonable extent, Debrresser) with that term in the article.
This article needs lucidity concerning the word category because it is an article about categorization, and because categorization is an important craft to teach and use. The new concept for first time readers of Categorization is category. Really and sincerely, in your opinion must category mean both container and contained, both category and subcategory?.
Appropriately for a talk-page I must say category currently has four referents: (1) the category namespace one "collection of pages", (2) the category namespace one "member page", and (3) the category namespace one "subcategory", (as in If the articles of one category logically also belong to another category, then the first category is made a subcategory or as in such eponymous categories are considered distinguished subcategories (in fact they are not true subcategories at all) (4) the main namespace one wikt:category. If two, three, and four are the same, we should explain that in a terminology section in a way I, posing as a newcomer, could understand.
The very first sentence: Wikipedia's categories form a hierarchical structure could be read incorrectly as "A collection of pages forms a structure." I'm sure you would agree that if you were struggling with a new concept, that it might just as easily be written "The set of category pages forms a ... structure." I predict this will all take some time, and I am in no hurry on this. I want to volunteer to help improve this article.
Peaceful editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 21:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Categorizing pages contains these two statements, which seem to be contradictory:
The first statement seems to say that articles should not be incuded in distinguished ancestor categories, while the second seems to suggest that they should. Duplicate categorization rule seems to agree that articles should be added to distinguished ancestor categories:
Also, User:PennySpender1983 mentioned in the Error in "Duplicate categorization rule" section discussion that some parent categories explicitly state whether or not articles should be added to them. Is there an established rule to include or exclude articles from distinguished ancestor categories? If so, can the rule be overridden for individual cases? — Codrdan ( talk) 23:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
You still haven't defined "distinguished; can you give an example of a distinguished ancestor? Personally, I don't believe they exist.
I would not support the removal of the duplicate categorization option. I think that when some basic/elementary users click on Category:Bridges in New York City they will have an expectation to see all of the bridges in New York City. This is not unreasonable as it is not an overly large category. - ¢Spender1983 ( talk) 02:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
User:Codrdan pointed here because of my deletion of the category:romantic comedy films from the article Get Over It. The category 2000s romantic comedy films was already present, which was why I deleted the parent category. The entire romantic comedy films category has been broken down systematically into decades. (In fact, all of the general genre film categories, drama, romance, westerns, etc. have been broken down into these decades subcategories.) All romantic comedy films fit into one of those decades subcategories, there's no way they can't. The romantic comedy category has been systematically broken down, therefore making each of those decades subcats non-distinguished. They fit into one or the other. WP:FILM, under categorization, includes as example that lists 2000s comedy films, not comedy films. These genre cats would be enormous had they not been broken down somehow. Something like category:comedy of remarriage films is a distinguished category; you can't categorize all films that don't fit into it as category:non-comedy of remarriage films. I would take the duplicate categorization rule to mean that if something is in the comedy of remarriage distinguished category, it would also be listed under the decade-appropriate romantic comedy films category. Wool Mintons ( talk) 08:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I am removing the {{contradict}} templates that have been placed on the guideline. The discussion so far shows that only one editor (Codrdan) does not understand the guideline. This discussion can continue and if others start to weigh in that there is a contradiction in the guideline, then we can either fix the text in the guideline or put the template back. - ¢Spender1983 ( talk) 23:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Could someone add from month year subcategories to Category:BLP articles lacking sources, thank you. Mattg82 ( talk) 16:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources}}to
{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources|from|{{{date|}}}}}
{{Monthly clean up category
| toc = toc
| type = BLP articles lacking sources
| cat = BLP articles lacking sources
| hidden = y
| message =
}}
There are no rules in Wikipedia. Guidelines don't exist to declare rules; they exist to inform newbs about current practice. I assert that it is current practice throughout Wikipedia to disperse articles into the most specific available categories; and that this guideline is therefore terribly inaccurate.
If the guideline said that is was occasionally okay to put an article into a category and its parent, that would be acceptable. But in fact it goes far beyond that, and as a result it appears that some people are now using this guideline to push the very opposite of current practice. There is a problem here that needs to be fixed.
Hesperian 23:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a "distinguished" subcategory is. (That's not a particularly good name, I know.) It's not true that the majority of subcategories are distinguished. In my experience, it's very hard to find an example of such a thing. The vast majority of subcategories are systematic (non-distinguished... someone come up with better terminology please) - breaking down the parent category by decade, by year by country, etc. - and therefore in practice you should hardly ever get a situation where an article is in both parent and sub category. Except in the notorious case of eponymous categories, which are dealt with in the section after the duplicate categorization rule. Perhaps we could think of some rewording along that line of thought.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I remain of the opinion that the guidance given here—to place articles in every category up the ancestral chain until you arrive at an intermediate or non-distinguished category—does not reflect current practice. And personally, I am glad of that. I think the thing to do is to ditch this particular point of guidance; and hopefully that would allow us to ditch all this "distinguished" silliness too.
Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? —
Codrdan (
talk)
13:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
(moved Q to new section. —
Codrdan (
talk)
14:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC))
It seems the above discussion has collapsed into attempts to figure out exactly what all that waffle means, and to rephrase it to make more sense. My point stands that the section describes a fictional practice. Why bother rephrasing something that is rubbish no matter how we phrase it? Does anyone here truly believe that the duplicate categorisation rule actually describes current practice? Nuke it from orbit! Hesperian 23:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
These are things that have been discussed before but, I think, without any answers being reached:
I would also have another general suggestion for this page, which seems too long at the moment: move all the technical help to Help:Category (it should be there already anyway), making this page just for guidance on proper use of categories (i.e. what to do, not how to do it), and then simplify it to make it more practical and less of an academic discourse. What do people think of this idea? (Make that question 3.)
Suggestions please.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
On reflection, I think that the criterion for including articles in categories further up the category tree is simply category tree population: if a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories. The reason we have gotten bogged down in complicated definitions is because the question naturally arises, "why should such an underpopulated category tree exist at all? It ought to be upmerged, right?" The answer, as you know, is that this situation legitimately arises whenever the subcategories were created not to diffuse the parent's articles, but because they are inherently interesting. But we don't need to say this! Our task is to identify situations where it is okay to include articles in not-the-most-specific categories, not to give a long-winded and hideously complicated explanation of how such situations come about! All that is required is to say "If a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories." And if we absolutely must go on to explain and defend the existence of such underpopulated category trees, then at least make it a secondary paragraph.
Re 2:That sounds a possible way to go, though we'd need some concept of "safely" (we've always been very vague about what an appropriate maximum size for a category should be, and I don't think we're likely to agree on one now).-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule (and your new rule if it's different from the DCR) if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? — Codrdan ( talk) 14:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for answering me, Kotniski. In that case, I'd like to suggest a few things:
— Codrdan ( talk) 15:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed that Commons are calling "intermediate categories" meta categories. [1] 23:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Templates are categorised in Category:Wikipedia templates regardless of whether they are for main/admin or contain content links. Some editors that I have come across insist that templates containing content links (used for navigation with a topic) should be categorised in the related category. I disagree with this stance. Template pages are of no use to readers as a member of a content category. Editors are able to find useful templates in Category:Wikipedia templates or when pages relating to the template are viewed. I would like to see the Wikipedia:Categorization guideline modified as follows:
The rationale for this proposal is to ensure separation between content and maint/admin. Readers, who are the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia, have no interest in the existence of template pages. See also Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Templates_in_article_categories. -- Alan Liefting ( talk) - 08:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Support. There's no reason to throw things into inappropriate categories just because of a vague relation. Relevant templates can appear on the category page or be linked from there if really important, but we shouldn't be mixing up editing tools with encyclopedia articles in the same category - we ought to be categorizing like with like. -- Kotniski ( talk) 12:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, I propose replacing the text of this guideline with the version at Wikipedia:Categorization/Draft. Consequences:
I'm not claiming the new version is perfect, but I believe it's much clearer than the one we've got, so I propose making the substitution and then working on any proposed further improvements.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
If a group of subcategories collectively contain every member article of their parent exactly once, they can be called a "full", "complete", "exhaustive", "comprehensive", or "systematic" set of subcategories. Such a set of subcategories systematically subdivides the parent category according to some additional criterion. They may be placed in their own Wikipedia page, which is listed in the parent category's page in place of the individual subcategories. If this is done, the separated set of subcategories can be called a "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory".
Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list either all its member articles or any member articles that are not contained in at least one subcategory. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.
Is there some background personal issue here that I'm not aware of? Kotniski put a lot of effort into cleaning up a dreadfully over-complicated and waffly page. I'd say he's taken us 95% of the way to a good outcome. All that is required is the identification and repair of any objectionable sentences. I can't understand the hostile reception. Hesperian 23:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Re "it is not recommended that" versus "should not" - if we list ten good reasons not to do something, I think it's pretty clear that we mean that people shouldn't do it. But it really doesn't matter to me - put back the slightly longer wording if you think it makes a difference. (Good Ol'factory, I'm not sure, but I think you may be confusing two issues - what we were talking about before was putting templates into article categories; what's been raised now is putting articles into categories using templates. Two completely different things. Sorry if I misunderstood you though.)
Re Codrdan's first paragraph: the separated set (the "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory") is a category, right? (Of the Category:Foos by country type. So whatever we call it, I think it needs to be a "something category", otherwise we will really confuse people. (Again, sorry if I've misunderstood.)
Re Codrdan's second paragraph: it seems at first sight not to be saying anything. Obviously a category lists member articles that are not in any subcategory, otherwise they wouldn't be member articles. But if you mean "or only any member articles..." (which seems necessary to give the statement any substance), then we needlessly prohibit partially diffused categories from having ad hoc categories in addition to the diffusing ones. -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
> what's defective in my thinking when I call a category that's intermediate between two things an "intermediate category"?
What's defective is that you don't seem to realize that "intermediate categories" aren't categories at all, and you're simply ignoring my explanations instead of answering them seriously. I've already told you several times that an "intermediate category" is really just a list or set of categories, but you've insulted me by treating my comments as if they're not even worth responding to directly. —
Codrdan (
talk)
18:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list all of its member articles. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.
> you're ... proposing something [that] would mean ... changes to the category structure
Nope. The duplicate-categorization rule as I described it can be implemented manually by editors, so the software doesn't have to be changed, and it seems to be the current practice anyway, so the hierarchy doesn't have to change.
> exceptions would inevitably arise ... (as you seem to acknowledge with your "It could display only some of them if...").
I was suggesting an alternate guideline. It has nothing to do with exceptions.
> whether the draft wording (or some other wording) adequately describes the [current] way of doing things
The "Notable-feature subcategories" section doesn't describe anything adequately. In addition to being one of the most confusing attempts to define terminology I've ever seen in my life, its description of the duplicate-categorization rule isn't even what editors are currently using. At 05:45, 3 February 2010, Wool Mintons removed cat:romantic comedy films from
Get Over It (film) with the reason "already under non-distinguished subcat 2000s romantic comedy films", even though the film is also in the "distinguished" (ad-hoc) subcategory American romantic comedy films. This is exactly the rule I've been proposing: Whether or not an article is listed in a parent category page depends on whether or not the parent has a systematic set of subcats, not on whether or not the article is in an ad-hoc ("distinguished") subcat. So the current wording doesn't even reflect current practice.
—
Codrdan (
talk)
18:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Not all subcategories serve the "diffusion" function described above; some are simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest ... These are called notable-feature subcategories.
If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.
[notable-feature subcats] sometimes provide an exception to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory: there is no need to take pages out of the parent category purely because of their membership of a notable-feature subcategory.
> there is a rule that says ["pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory"] ... it's the part of the DCR that talks of non-distinguished subcategories
That's not the same thing. You said there's a general rule that all articles (with exceptions mentioned elsewhere) are excluded from parent category listing. DCR part 1 doesn't say that. It's really just an indirect way of saying what I've proposed: Pages are not listed in parent categories if the parent has one or more full sets of subcategories.
> The rule has two exceptions: the eponymous category case ... and the "distinguished/ad hoc/notable-feature" case
But the "distinguished" case isn't based on whether an article is in an ad-hoc subcat. Wool Mintons already showed that. She deleted an article's parent category declaration because the article is in a systematic set of subcats, even though it's also in an ad-hoc subcat. I don't know how you can have so much trouble understanding that. Membership in ad-hoc subcats has no effect on whether or not an article is listed in the parent category page.
> It's nothing to do with complete sets of subcats - try to expel that idea from your mind.
It's entirely about complete sets, and if no one else here can see that, I'll have to expel this entire guideline from my mind as an exercise in muddled thought and bad writing.
> the principle applies just the same when there aren't [complete sets]
You mean articles are normally not listed in the parent if there's no complete set of subcats? That doesn't sound right. Why wouldn't they be listed in that case, and if they're not, why would Wool Mintons cite membership in a full set as her reason for removing the article from the parent listing?
> "of interest": it has to be read in the context of ... "not serving the diffusion function" and the word "simply". I.e. there are subcats which are only "of interest", as opposed to being of interest AND serving the diffusion function.
Hold on a second. Why should we worry about the context if you've just agreed that both ad-hoc and "systematic" subcats are "of interest"? Your explanation isn't even self-consistent! Now it looks like your definition of ad-hoc subcats is the word "simply": You define ad-hoc subcats as being "simply" subsets, while "systematic" subcats also serve to subdivide the parent. Do you seriously expect readers to differentiate ad-hoc subcats from "systematic" subcats from the one word "simply"? I just don't understand how anyone could support such tortured logic. As far as I'm concerned, all categories are "of interest" in some way or other, and all subcategories serve to partially subdivide the parent, so there's no such thing as a subcategory that is "simply" a subset without at least partially serving to subdivide the parent.
The guideline confuses readers even more by not bothering to define "non-distinguished" in older versions and by not even mentioning "systematic" subcats in the draft. So it defines category lists (with a misleading name that calls them "categories"), and it defines some subset categories (ad-hoc/"distinguished"), but it completely ignores the remaining subset categories ("systematic") and provides no name for subset categories as a whole. The confusion and muddled thinking of the text is breathtaking. I can't support it under any circumstances at all.
> I'm sure it's possible to word this much better, and I invite you or anyone to try
All you have to do is read, Kotniski. My text is already in the current document.
> it has to be understood that not only complete sets can serve a diffusion function.
Exactly. Even ad-hoc subcats serve to partially subdivide the parent. Have a nice day, Kotniski :)
—
Codrdan (
talk)
20:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
So tell me, Kotniski, how do we determine whether a subcat is distinguished or systematic? — Codrdan ( talk) 08:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyway, let me see if I understand what you mean by "distinguished" and "systematic". We don't really have a way for users to determine whether a given subcat is distinguished or systematic. New York toll bridges is distinguished because it's interesting, and Former voivodeships of Poland is called "non-distinguished" because it's "not interesting". Your answers to my question about whether a subcat can be both distinguished and systematic seem to suggest that "distinguished" and "non-systematic" are synonymous, which would imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are also synonymous. But "Former voivodeships of Poland" doesn't sound very systematic to me, even though you clearly placed it in the "non-distinguished" category by saying its articles should not be listed in the parent page. So again your writing has confused me.
Meanwhile, the duplicate-categorization rule says "the non-distinguished (systematic) subcategory Category:Bridges in France", which also seems to imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are synonyms. Kotniski, don't you think you're insulting French people by calling their bridges "non-distinguished" if what you mean by that is "not interesting"? Some of the most breathtaking bridges in the world are in France. How is it appropriate for an encyclopedia to gratuitously play favorites by giving some articles duplicate categorization and hiding others based on the personal tastes of one or more editors, when the "interesting" articles are already listed in their "distinguished" subcategory? —
Codrdan (
talk)
20:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
If a person is x and y, but is only known and notable for y, should he be categorized under both or only under y? Maurreen ( talk) 11:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
How is Category:Bridges in France not a distinguished subcategory of Category:Bridges? — Codrdan ( talk) 20:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
If a page is contained logically in both a category and a subcategory of that category, it must be considered whether it should still be placed directly into the first (parent) category. The rule normally applied is as follows, based on the definition of distinguished category as given above:
For example, Angers Bridge is not placed directly into Category:Bridges, because it belongs to the non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategory Category:Bridges in France. This is because articles about individual bridges are systematically broken down into distinct geographical categories. Each bridge is placed into a category based on its location (although bridges that cross borders between countries might be placed into two geographical categories). (If all of the articles about individual bridges were placed in Category:Bridges, that category would be too large to be useful.)
On the other hand, articles are not excluded from Category:Bridges in New York City on the grounds that they also belong to Category:Toll bridges in New York City, since the latter is a distinguished subcategory. This is because there is not a Category:Non-toll bridges in New York City and because the Category:Bridges in New York City is not so-large as to need to be broken into non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategories.
Information to determine if a category is distinguished or non-distinguished is found in the category description, which should be found on the category page as noted above.
Thanks for that discussion! That was exactly what i was wondering about :) -- Lexischemen ( talk) 13:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
For anyone left who cares about making this guideline readable, the draft at WP:Categorization/Draft still stands. I've modified it to meet the objections raised before (restored "it is recommended that" in the bit about categorizing articles using templates; changed "intermediate categories" to "metacategories", changed "notable-feature" subcats to "non-diffusing" subcats since that's precisely what's meant, and clarified that being in a non-diffusing subcat doesn't preclude being in a diffusing one (and thus being diffused) as well). Are there any more objections about the wording before this goes live? I mean faults that don't already exist with the present wording of the guideline (I'm not saying the draft is perfect, only that it's a clear improvement over the present mess).-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
These are my current thoughts about the guideline.
These are some thoughts and suggestions for establishing better practices and describing them more clearly. —
Codrdan (
talk)
17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
When a category has no subcategories, all of its articles are displayed together on the category's page, with no redundancy. This is convenient for users who want to read all of the articles in the category or have some other use for a complete listing of the category's member articles. When subcategories are introduced, listing only some of the parent's articles makes it much harder for users to find all of the parent's member articles: They may be distributed into many different subcategories, and individual articles may be listed redundantly by being added to multiple subcategories. Minimizing this inconvenience to readers should be the top priority of any duplicate-categorization rule. The parent should either list its member articles on an all-or-nothing basis, so readers know where and how to find a convenient listing, or clearly label the list of articles as incomplete. If the parent is small enough, all of its articles should be listed so the parent still has the convenience of a full article list. The guiding principal behind listing a parent category's member articles should be to make it as easy as possible for readers to find or construct a complete, redundancy-free list of all the articles. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
If the parent category is too big to list all of its member articles, it should have at least one complete set of subcats that subdivide the parent according to some criterion and collectively contain all of the parent's member articles. Each such set should be clearly identified by either displaying the set in its own labeled section of the parent page or moving it to a separate "by" page (e.g. Films by genre). The guideline documentation should make it clear that each member article is expected to be listed at least once in each of these sets. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
— Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
As I currently understand it, the term "distinguished subcategory" has almost no objective definition at all. Other than not being part of a systematic subdivision (either partial or complete) of the parent category, the defining characteristic of a distinguished subcategory seems to be that some unspecified group or individual considers its subject matter to be especially interesting, notable, important, or otherwise worthy of special treatment. The purpose of the current duplicate-categorization rule seems to be to grant some kind of special " VIP" status to selected subcategories by listing their articles in the parent category's page. Subjectively selecting categories for special treatment is inherently biased. For example, there are many fascinating bridges in France, so why does the current document call Bridges in France "non-distinguished"? Subjective classification of categories by perceived importance should be abandoned in favor of objective classification based on membership in a comprehensive set of subcats. This will make it easier for users to find all of the parent's member articles. The subjectively defined terms "distinguished subcategory" and "systematic subcategory" should be eliminated in favor of "ad-hoc category" and "complete set of subcategories", which are defined objectively. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
What is the current practice in duplicate categorization? I don't see any documentation that clearly describes it. The two parts of the current duplicate-categorization rule conflict when an article is in two subcategories, one distinguished and the other non-distinguished. For example, Get Over It (film) is in both 2000s romantic comedy films (non-distinguished subcat of Romantic comedy films) and American romantic comedy films (distinguished subcat). Which part of the DCR applies to that case? The current draft that has been proposed says nothing definite at all about how to figure out whether or not articles in a distinguished category should be listed on the parent's page. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi Kotniski, thank you for answering me.
> "if otherwise appropriate" ... removed the contradiction
I see. Interesting choice of words :)
> improve the wording
We need to agree on what the current accepted practice of duplicate categorization is before we can discuss documentation. Here's a starting point for the rest:
In addition to metacategories, a category may contain subcategories that are not part of a metacategory. Subcategories that are not in a metacategory and are considered to be particularly interesting are called distinguished subcategories. These include Best Actor Academy Award winners as a subcategory of Film actors, Toll bridges in New York City as a subcategory of Bridges in New York City, and Musical films as a subcategory of Musicals.
This should be followed by clear instructions on how to figure out whether or not a subcategory is distinguished. Any language about "sometimes" and "no need" is a waste of the reader's time. The instructions about duplicate categorization should be written in terms of individual articles instead of subcategories. The rule about metacategory membership taking precedence should be included, but it shouldn't say "Of course", because it's not obvious.
> we mustn't change the wording to describe some new practice
No, of course not.
> You can always propose new practices
Everything in this section (
Miscellaneous comments) except this subsection ("Current practice?") is a proposal. I may mention the current system in my draft, but its main focus will be on describing what I believe the rules should be.
—
Codrdan (
talk)
12:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a rough draft of a possible guideline at User:Codrdan/Categories. It's still a work in progress. Comments are welcome either here or on the article's talk page. In some sections, such as the names for subcat sets, multiple options are temporarily listed together. — Codrdan ( talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
> You need to understand that not every subcategory that isn't part of a complete systematic set has the property that pages listed in the subcategory are also listed in the parent.
Kotniski, what do you mean when you say that listing a subcategory's articles in the parent is a "property"? Are you trying to dictate your own guidelines to other wikipedians and force us to obey you? Are you trying to prevent an open discussion of where articles should be listed? How is listing articles a "property" that can't be changed by changing the guideline? —
Codrdan (
talk)
08:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
From my perspective, which is admittedly kind of not even understanding what all the fuss is about, I think the discussion between you two has gone as far as it can go. Kotniski has pretty clearly expressed a desire for it to not continue, so I think you should respect that, Codrdan, and stop directing comments towards him and referring to things he said before. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd agree with the nauseating part. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Maybe the category header templates can be improved and this guideline can state that all category descriptions should have a header template. (See the category header templates listed on {{
CatDiffuse}}.)
Currently I interpret {{
Allincluded}} and {{
Distinguished subcategory}} as headers for categories that would follow the duplicate categorization rule. I see {{
Container category}} as a header for an intermediate category (and {{
CatDiffuse}} as a maintenance header for that).
If we come up with appropriate names and templates, then concensus is built as categories and editors begin to use the templates. -
¢Spender1983 (
talk)
15:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Re this edit, which seems to be moving again towards making this page contain everything about categories, rather than keeping it focused on guidance as to correct practice (with the information about the mechanics taken to Help:Category). What do people think - do we want a one-stop-shop page, or do we want to keep the two separate pages with their different purposes? (If the latter, then I disagree with the above edit, as that information clearly belongs on the Help page.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
With the recent kerfuffle about BLPs, I've been using the List Comparer in WP:AWB a lot to compile lists of pages to check for being unreferenced. The Category (recursive) scan is the most useful, but it also throws up a lot of false positived. I have no real interest in reading all of the discussions above, so I don't know if it's related, but should a "parent cat" be correct through all of it's subtrees? The one I'm on today is Category:Australian people. Because of eponymous cats like Category:J. M. Coetzee being in Category:Australian writers or Category:J. G. Thirlwell being in Category:Australian electronic musicians, all of the articles in their subcats, ie their books, albums etc show up in the recursive scan of Category:Australian people. Should I remove the "person" related cat from the eponymous cat, and if so what do they go into? Or is my recursive catscan not an intended use of the category structure and should I just live with the false positives? It's bad enough with the overseas people turning up from university alumni cats or sportsmen from overseas who represent a local team being caught into the Aust people cat, but books and albums are pushing the rules a bit I think! The-Pope ( talk) 07:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
There's a meta-meta-category called
Category:Works by type and year. Each subcategory is a metacategory that subdivides some category of creative medium by year. Is this a current accepted practice? I don't see any support for it in the guideline. —
Codrdan (
talk)
03:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Same question applies to
Category:Films by subgenre. It's really just a meta-meta-category in disguise. —
Codrdan (
talk)
04:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
It is recommended (required?) that sort keys use no diacritics at all to allow for useful ordering. Isn't this rather an unintended (read: bug) behavior in the software that is now imposed on the editors? I mean, changing the collation algorithm for Latin text to ignore diacritics and capitalization sounds easier than requiring all sort keys to be diacritic-free and correctly capitalized. So in general: Shouldn't this be solved in the software itself instead of trying to impose conventions on editors? — Johannes Rössel ( talk) 15:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I found a cycle in the Category:Universe subcategories tree: Category:Universe --> Category:Cosmology --> Category:Physical cosmology --> Category:Universe. I read somewhere that cycles should usually be avoided, but cannot find this advice in the guideline. What is the best course of action? -- M4gnum0n ( talk) 15:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned about how categories such as Jewish Americans by occupation and Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States are used.
They came to my attention because of edits to an article about a former cabinet member whom I knew (his family and mine were friends for many years). He was of Jewish descent, his wife was of Scottish descent, and they and their sons were all Unitarians (as were we).
I don't know what's going on with the categories, but I have to ask: are they being populated on the basis that some names just "look Jewish" or what? – Athaenara ✉ 20:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
See upmerger nomination of Category:Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 8#Category:Jewish_members_of_the_Cabinet_of_the_United_States. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
A series of discussions at CFD over the last few days have revealed a number of problems in the naming conventions of the top-level categories for inhabited human settlements.
The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.
Your contributions will be welcome. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
(discussion moved from User talk:Alan Liefting)
Hi, what's with removing all the African countries from the category of African countries? According to WP:EPON, they ought to be there.-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
You have good points there. I can't say I'm convinced, but I won't insist further on the issue, either. Besides, we can't reenact the RFC here. I guess the real issue here is that the category system has a fundamental flaw in this respect, but I can't point to the correct solution (to be honest, I haven't actually stopped to think of one). Anyway, I'll leave it to you and Alan. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my queries and present your views. -- Waldir talk 13:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Hello. What I noticed about the removal of this category from African countries is that it resulted in an inconsistency: France is still part of the category Countries of Europe and Suriname is still part of the category South American countries. However one continent is treated, the others should be treated the same. Munci ( talk) 14:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Coming in late. Can't be bothered reading all of the above, though I've read much of it. This problem has been around for years. I think people let it go because they think it is too hard to solve, but actually it is pretty easy to solve.
Egypt is an African country. Not everything in
Category:Egypt is an African country. But everything in
Category:Egypt is an African topic, sorted by country. This analysis yields the following category structure:
Egypt —> Category:African countries | | v v Category:Egypt —> Category:African topics by country
Simple, accurate, correct. Hesperian 23:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, at the moment Ghost is a child of Ghosts which in turn is a child of Paranormal which is a child of Pseudoscience. This has been used as a rationale to add the Pseudoscience category directly to Ghost, even though the literature, via demarcation problem, seems to indicate that this is unsupported by serious sources. While it is clear that Ghost hunting is based in pseudoscience, it is not clear that Ghost is not better seen as Folklore or similar. Any thoughts on this? Unomi ( talk) 04:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
We don't need a solution because there is no problem other than the general one that it's not clear what the category system is for. Even being in the pseudoscience category itself doesn't imply that something is pseudoscience, it could just be related. For something that is only in a subcategory, the presumption that it is a pseudoscience itself is even weaker. In the case of Ghost that's exactly what we need: Ghosts are somehow related to pseudoscience, but not strongly. Hans Adler 11:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Where can i find list of existing categories to put my article in ?-- ThorX ( talk) 18:20, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
How do I link to a category in the article's middle and without adding the article to the category?
I can put the category page title into the article's middle but if I link it then it doesn't show at all in the article's middle but instead becomes a category that includes the article, which is erroneous.
The article I tried this in is Charter_school_(New_York) and you can compare the first version, a failure, and the second, a kludge. Scroll to the Schools List section and compare the second paragraph of the section of each version.
If there's a good method, I'd like to add it to the Categorization page.
Thanks.
Nick Levinson ( talk) 02:24, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Omakaitse - the dispute over categorization of article content. An opinion of an uninvolved editor requested. Opinion of Baltic editors is already known and disputed, hence is not requested.
The issue is that part of article content, directly and immediately related to the article subject, falls into categories "Holocaust" and "Nazi collaborators", which Estonian editors try to remove from everything related to WWII history of Estonia. Please comment. Timurite ( talk) 02:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
How can I generate automatically a list with all the articles and subcategories of a certain category? For example I need a list with all articles in the subcategories of Category:Companies of Romania by industry, is there any tool for that? Thanks -- Ark25 ( talk) 21:37, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
This guideline has been identified as a possible candidate to contain a core . Can you please have a look here. Gnevin ( talk) 14:51, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Comment. Clearly, there are different views on whether the paranormal should be classified as pseudoscience, but the same applies to much of what is labelled pseudoscience. By categorising fields of study as study as "pseudoscience", wikipedia is making a thoroughly POV editorial judgement in favour of one side of a debate
We wouldn't do this in other fields: businesses and bankers are not categorised according to the language of Marxist analysis, nor are non-Christian people categorised as heathens. Why is this area allowed to retain such a POV categoristaion structure? Because arbcom says so.
The arbcom ruling summarised in the box at Category talk:Pseudoscience explicitly says "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience."
Looking at the principles section of the arbcom ruling, I see that the first principle is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of all significant points of view regarding the subject of an article" ... and the next one is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience".
In other words, NPOV goes out the window when scientists call something pseudo science. By the same logic, non-Catholic christian ministers should be labelled as "pseudo-clergy", because the Roman Catholic church does not recognise the validity of their ordinations.
And before the denunciations start flying, no I don't have any interest in UFOs or astrology or any of the topics in Category:Pseudoscience. I just don't like seeing one belief system being or intellectual approach being categorised according to the derogatory labels of those who follow a different path. We might as well categorise the Catholic mass under Category:Blasphemy, since that's what some critics of Catholicism call it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:53, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
How should such territories like Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Falklands, Guam or Puerto Rico be dealt with for categories sort by country? Should these categories be categorised under Foo of Denmark, Foo of the UK or Foo of the US, or should they be categorised right under Foo by country? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 ( talk) 20:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
The discussion here was initiated and continued by 119.237.150.205, the IP incarnation of a banned user who uses categories and templates for nationalist NPOV purposes. The real answer here is that constituent parts of sovereign states have various levels of independence and some may properly be countries and some are not. There is not, and cannot, be one simple guideline. The troll here wishes to seek out a statement that all constituent countries are equally "countries" by Wikipedia standards in order to pursue his own nationalist agenda. SchmuckyTheCat ( talk)
Where categories follow a clear numerical or chronological sequence, e.g. Category:English football clubs 1887–88 season clearly follows after Category:English football clubs 1886–87 season), is there a standard way of linking them, maybe via a template that links to the preceding and succeeding category? (such as you get with the prevseason and nextseason parameters in Template:Infobox football club season). This would be useful as you wouldn't have to navigate back up to the parent category to get to the next category along. -- Jameboy ( talk) 23:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
In the fictional example of a man called John Smith who was also a musician called Johnny Rocket, where we want to categorize the "Johnny Rocket" redirect in a musicians category (so it shows up on the category listing), should we also place the John Smith article in the musicians category? Past discussion concluded that it should (because otherwise the category won't show up on the article page at all - too bad that it results in double listing at the category). Given that the guideline has jsut been edited to say something different, has consensus changed on this point? -- Kotniski ( talk) 06:10, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
When categorising a redirect as R from Spanish-language terms, should I live the R from alternative language cat? -- Againme ( talk) 16:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
The proliferation of ethnicity-related categories and their inclusion in articles with no references to sustain them is a troubling problem in regards to BLP concerns. Take for example Category:European American basketball players. I went through just the A's in the category and found that NONE of those categorized articles had a single reference or even mention of European ancestry. User:Mayumashu, who added the category to many of the articles, argued when discussing another race-related category that we should interpret a person's ethnicity/race using pictures of that person. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous. Is there any way we can prevent such "interpretations" and speculation?-- TM 13:40, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I have mentioned this to Mayumashu in the past and he told me he often categorizes such articles just based purely on their last name, which of course is a completely inaccurate way to do it. -
DJSasso (
talk)
17:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
I stated this above nearly a month ago but I'm going to repeat this because it got lost in the shuffle: any category that asserts facts that are not even mentioned in the article can be summarily removed from that article. Whether those facts need direct sourcing to be mentioned in the article is another issue (I would say always yes for assertions of ethnicity), but there is no basis for adding a category to an article that does not even deign to mention that category's subject. postdlf ( talk) 02:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
The article Wikipedia:Categorization#Content of category pages has no guidance on the placement of portal links? I've updated Category:LGBT-related music in Canada. It has four links to other portals. At first, I thought it was overkill. Now I think it is proper for them to remain. Any help on my questions is greatly appreciated. Argolin ( talk) 20:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
portal}}
, I think {{
portal box}}
should be used instead (and this applies to articles too), but you don't have to change it on pages where it's already this way, because this will be probably handled by a bot.
Svick (
talk)
22:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)