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I would like people working in this category to consider adding ALL film actors back into this category. The decision to subcategorize everyone was made before there were category TOCs. Nationality is an artificial distinction to many actors who are multi-national. I could see the utility of being able to browse through a category of all actors. You would still have the choice of browsing by nationality. -- Samuel Wantman 21:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I decided to do some analysis of this category. There are about 3300 Entries in Category:Film actors Almost all don't seem to be listed in the nationality subcategories. For the subcategories there are:
At most there would be about 5000 total names in Category:Film actors which would not make the category very much more crowded than it is now. I also notice that there is already Category:Actors by nationality which makes me wonder why we would need Film actors to also be broken up by nationality. Film actors is already a subcategorization of Actors. -- Samuel Wantman 00:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 04:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
The more general question is "When is a category too big?" The push to subcategorize started before the implementation of category table of contents. I don't know if this question has been really addressed since then. My take on this is that categories get subcategorized into tiny pieces often because it is not possible to do a database selection. These small categories like Category:Polish film directors have minimal browsing value compared to being able to browse through Category:Film directors. These multi-attribute categories are often too small. As a guideline, it seems reasonable that categories be populated at the same level as articles about the subject. We don't have an article about Polish film directors but we do have one about Film directors. It also seems that above about 6000 articles a category would become very unwieldy. -- Samuel Wantman 08:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 16:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
My $.02: First, since previous upgrades to the Wikimedia software, large categories no longer pose the technical problems that they once did. So the size of a category alone should not be the rationale for breaking into subcategories. Second, "profession by nationality" is an extremely arbitrary breakdown -- many professionals simply do not have any intrinsic association with a nationality. So while I have no objection to creating these subcategories for those professionals who do have a strong association by nationality, these subcats should not mean that the primary category is de-populated. older ≠ wiser 16:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
So it sounds like there is general consensus for the notion that categories should be fully populated at the "topic article level". I still don't know the criteria for where the upper limit is. Is it Category:Film actors, Category:Actors, Category:Entertainers, Category:Celebrities or Category:People. I strongly agree with populating Film actors, not certain about Actors and tend to think anything higher is too much. One criteria is to not put an article into every possible category because that clutters the article with categories. I'd propose that we only populate to the level of notariety (there's probably a better way to say this). If people are notable for being Directors, that is the highest level of populating film people categories. There are still grey areas with this, Poets or Writers? Film actors or Actors? Any ideas? What criteria do we use to make these decisions? -- Samuel Wantman 21:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Points that I think we're on the way to establishing, so far:
I've asked Brion Vibber (a developer) about whether there are any technical concerns about having large categories. -- Samuel Wantman 07:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is the response from Brion Vibber. "THERE IS NO ISSUE WITH THE SERVERS DUE TO LARGE CATEGORIES". So the only issue is the awkwardness of browsing large categories. --
Samuel Wantman
02:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
There is certainly no need for any pause to the improvements to the accuracy of categorisation. Things are much better than they were a year ago, but there is still lots to do. No search system is as good as a category system which does some of the work for people. I have found and categorised hundreds and hundreds of articles which were only in the subject category or only in the national category, and the combined categories filter articles through so they are in both. It shouldn't be forgotten that for many occupations and nationalities there are quite small numbers of articles, and without the precise categories they would belong in two big categories, so the six "Fooian xers" would be lost among say 1,252 Fooians (upmerged from 200 different categories) and 2,213 Xers (upmerged from a 150 different categories. Both of these categories would be a useless seas of unfamliar names for most people. It is not a question of whether random browsing is possible, but rather a matter of helping people to target their browsing. People who know exactly what they are looking for can use the search box. By contrast the category system is a natigational tool which helps people to identify groups of related topics. This is especially relevant to people from smaller countries, as the few articles on people of each occupation of their nationality would get lost in a sea of foreigners. In any case starting the conservation with a category where nationality is not quite as relevant as in some other occupations (though it is still very relevant, especially for actors from outside the English-speaking world) has put this discussion on a somewhat false footing.
CalJW
05:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
-- LiniShu 02:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Possible general action items if the consensus statement is accepted:
Comment - There have been a relatively small number of editors involved in the discussion to this point, although it is in a central location as far as categorization is concerned. I would recommend that, after leaving the discussion open a little longer, we then proceed with the effort of making the categorization of individuals in the film, television and theatrical professions consistent. I would not be surprised, though, if the general topic was revisited in other times/places. Hopefully, though, the current discussion may be good groundwork for any future discussions. Thanks, Samuel, for all of your due diligence on the issue of category size. -- LiniShu 02:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the scope of the original discussion (and the area for which we have editors willing to work on consistency of categorization at this time): If the consensus statement proposed above is accepted, we have already established in the discussion that the following "grandparent" categories should be populated with all of the articles in their descendant "by nationality" categories: Category:Film actors, Category:Film directors, Category:Television actors, Category:Television directors, Category:Stage actors, Category:Theatre directors Are there any other similair "fooers" categories to add to this list at this time? -- LiniShu 03:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Other "ancestor" categories in question- We have Category:Actors, Category:Directors, and "Actors by nationality" categories such as Category:American actors. Should any of these be populated with individual articles? If no one has a strong opinion, we could go with the status quo for now; current general usage based on numbers of articles, is to not have "Actors" and "Directors" populated with individual articles, but we do have the "Actors by nationality" categories populated with individual articles. -- LiniShu 03:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 15:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
At this time, among this group we have clear consensus on: do re-populate Category:Film actors and Category:Film directors, do not re-populate up the heirarchy tree above Category:Actors. There is less clear agreement on "Actors" itself, and the NATIONALITY actors categories. We also have the "cousin" categories of the Film categories - Stage and Television. I've been thinking this over the past couple days - I think that those who are interested in helping with the repopulation effort for the "MEDIUM(Film,Stage,Television) Actors" (or directors) categories should go ahead and begin, maybe focusing on the film category first (one has to choose somewhere to start), but at the same time, as we "touch" any articles to add in MEDIUM Actors category tags, why not make sure, at the same time, as Nareek suggested, that the NATIONALITY Actors and Actors category tags are there also? Of the group that has given consensus on populating categories farther up the heirarchy tree than the NATIONALITY MEDIUM Actors categories, no one showed significant opposition to populating NATIONALITY Actors or Actors, and our "populate to the level of notability" criterion could be applied either at the MEDIUM Actors or Actors level, and, interest has been expressed in having Category:Actors populated for browsing.
As we begin this work, it would be good to incorporate Samuel's new "Allincluded" template on the appropriate category pages.
I am planning to proceed as I have described above, if there is strong objection, or a different consensus is reached, my changes can always be undone.
Nareek, I am adding this latest to the Category talk:Actors as well; wasn't sure where it would be most likely to be observed, here or there?
NickelShoe, you were part of this discussion at the beginning; I know that the repopulation of the higher level categories is a new direction from the way we were going before, hopefully, after the discussions above, and the checking of whether categories can be too large (from a technical standpoint), this conclusion is something that you can live with? Your opinion is valued; you do a lot of work improving the quality of Wikipedia, and you had already put in a lot of effort in organizing the Actors categories according to the generally held application of WP:MOS prior to this discussion.
Feedback from all is appreciated, as always. Thanks, Lini 13:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
A wild and crazy idea - for those who prefer smaller subcategories for browsing - for American actors, even the most precise subcategories that we have now Category:American film actors, Category:American stage actors, and Category:American television actors are not small categories. "American film actors" at the time of this writing has 1331 entries; more will be added in the effort to consistently categorize "American actors", and the category will only keep growing with time. With the above discussions about the disadvantages of "over-subcategorizing", I'm not in a hurry to create these new subcategories, and I would not want anyone reading this to rush out and create them, but... what about the idea of actor subcategories by time period, as we have for musical groups? Some actors like George Burns, of course, would have quite a few decades of activity, but others would have only one or two. Advantages would be: a.) we'd have subcategories that at some point stop growing very much b.) we could see people grouped with their contemporaries c.) an actor's time period implies something about the cultural climate in which they worked. What do you all think? (If you are tired of more and more subcategorization, "please don't shoot me" for suggesting this :) - just an idea) Thanks, -- LiniShu 03:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I just noticed a new trend: articles for specific dates, such as January 18, 2005. Not sure I like it (note the related AFD discussion), but lots of them now exist. For the purpose of this talk page, I'm wondering how they should be categorized. The one I linked to above was placed in Category:2005, definitely not a good choice (I removed it). Most of the others seem to be uncategorized at the moment. So how should they be categorized? - dcljr ( talk) 22:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The one problem I see with January 18, 2005 is that it is really a subpage masquerading as an article. It doesn't have the normal intro paragraph, and I would expect to see some sort of navigational template. If these were added, it would probably screw up the formatting of January 2005. — Mike 20:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
A question concerning the purpose of categories: Is the primary purpose of categories to:
I seem to suspect the latter; and the article advises that "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category.".
However, one side-effect of that rule is category fights, wherein two (or more editors) will have a dispute over whether a topic belongs in a particular category, or not--or constantly move the article back and forth between two different categories. Some categories are seen as marks of prestige (such as Category:physics, whereas others are seen as badges of dishonor, like Category:Pseudoscience); I can think of several articles in the realm of physics which have been the subject of such disputes.
Perhaps a wider view of categories may be more appropriate--as in "this is a list of possibly relevant subjects; some of which may be of disputed relevance?" That might nip some of the edit wars in the bud. -- EngineerScotty 23:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
The first guideline for categories is "Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles". Even so, there are multiple taxonomies, and it is important that articles are not mis-categorized. Often categories with the word "related" in them are brought up for deletion at WP:CFD. Ineveitably they are deleted or renamed with the reasoning that EVERY category implies that the articles are related to the name of the category. Some categories ONLY contain related articles. See Category:George W. Bush for an example. This is frequently discussed and there is already language about this here. There is also discussion about this at the top of this page. At a practical level, I don't think we could ever reach consensus about a single taxonomy for all the articles in Wikipedia, and I don't see what use it would be. Categories are only good for browsing and discovering what articles exist here. I recently was involved in trying to mediate a controversy about whether the article Matthew Shepard should be in Category:Hate crimes. Technically, his murderers were never convicted of a hate crime, but the case is definitely related to the subject. The point of the category is to lead users to articles related to the subject, so it is reasonable that all articles related to hate crimes be in the hate crime category. -- Samuel Wantman 09:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Both and neither. I'd say the Wikipedia articles themselves are the best way to list the articles related, or partially related, to a subject, since they can qualify how the topic is related. After all, the articles, not the categories, are the center of this project. The best use of categories is to provide an overview of the breadth and depth of articles in a broad field Wikipedia so that the user does not have to slowly explore the branches of the tree of knowledge one twig at a time. You could say the categories provide a way to speed-read Wikipedia; they should include all the links to specific persons & objects and narrower topics & concepts found on each page.
GUllman
19:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Why can't you see the Categories section of a page when editing a page? Cigarette 15:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I have created Template:Allincluded for use in categories that include the articles that are in its subdirectories. Here is an example of its use from Category:Bridges in New York. {{Allincluded|bridges in New York State|the bridges}} produces the following comment:
![]() | For convenience, all bridges in New York State should be included in this category. This includes all the bridges that can also be found in the subcategories. |
I think this template (or some similar comment should be used when subcategorization does not remove articles from topic categories as discussed above. -- Samuel Wantman 08:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I linked an article about a person to a category, and when the name appeared on the category page it was in the wrong place. It ended up alphabetized under her first name, instead of the last name like everyone else in the category. How did this happen? How can I fix it?
(The article was Paola Giangiacomo and the category was Category:Television journalists.) — Michael J 17:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I've notice that some people have been changing surnames starting with Æ, Ø or Å to different letters when the pipe (|) is used to sort the articles when categorizing. So Ø might have become O and I've seen Å changed to both A and Aa. Is there any guideline or policy on how to sort these names? Just randomly substituting the actual letters with some sort of home-made standard doesn't seem to be very useful. (I'm sure there are examples of other letters as well, but being Norwegian these are letters I've noticed the most. They are the last three letters in the Norwegian alphabet.) Tskoge 14:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I've altered the guideline on the accompanying page to reflect the fact that there's at least a difference of opinion on the subject of populating the category trees. (See above.) There seemed to be a pro-population consensus in the discussion we just had, but perhaps it's too soon to change the guideline completely? In case I acted hastily, I left the old language up, commented out, to make it easy to restore. Nareek 23:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I added some additional specifications to Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. Just mentioning here that most of that was resulting from a discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Naming convention for Dutchmen -- Francis Schonken 20:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
...but why?
Is there any reason why Category:Bill Drummond and Category:Jimmy Cauty shouldn't be both members and subcategories of Category:The KLF? Isn't this is a logical arrangement for the members of music groups who also have profiles as individuals? -- kingboyk 18:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I still have not seen a justification either. I'd love to see something besides, "Don't do it." Here are some excerpts from Category talk:Education: Categorization with respect to Science. and Category talk:Education#The classification of education and loops. Rfrisbie talk 19:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I was asked about the removal of Education from Category:Applied sciences and will respond here. My intent is to eliminate cycles from among the categories. Perhaps there is a better way to do this than my reversion, so I'll lay out the problem.
These are the portions of the Science tree and Education tree that apply:
Note that "Science" links to "Acadmic disciplines." The goal is to connect these together in a way that doesn't cause a cycle. I removed, what in this diagram would be an arrow from "Education" back to "Applied sciences".
One must decide which of these categories is the most general, and thus not a subcat of any of the others. To me the candidates are "Science," "Academia" or "Education" (the most general in the current configuration). The one determined to be most general won't link back to the others.
I hope this makes some sort of sense. JonHarder 03:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The current classification of education is as follows:
Apparently, this is the result of an effort to eliminate category "loops." See the above discussion. An unfortunate side-effect of this effort is that education has been eliminated from categories such as category:Applied sciences and category:Social sciences. This directly contradicts education's place in the articles, List of academic disciplines and Social sciences. I'm going to place the following comment on the category page as a compromise, at least until something better comes along. Rfrisbie talk 17:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
To avoid loops, the following classifications are not included in the education category structure.
There are several reasons why I prefer to keep categorization tree-like, in addition to the confusion of cycles mentioned above:
When categorizing it is helpful to consider whether X is a kind of Y or if X is a part of Y. If so, then X is a subcategory of Y. JonHarder 01:03, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Those all are fine points above for reasons to avoid loops. So show me how to resolve this.
I'd like to take a step back for a second and look at the bigger picture. Wikipedia categories are NOT a pure classification system. Articles are in categories for many reasons. Sometimes they are just related to the subject of the category (for example Category:George W. Bush), sometimes they are members of the set defined by the category (example Category:Suspension bridges). Sometimes the category is very broad like Category:Education. The reason that there is a loop in the education example is because Academia is RELATED to Education, but Academic disciplines are a SUBSET of Academia. This sort of thing is to be expected. This is a wiki. The work that it would take to create a monolithic classification system that everyone could agree to would be huge and probably so frustrating that we'd all leave the project. The beauty of Wikipedia's categories is that multiple intersecting classifications can co-exist. The problems arise when all these hierarchies intersect. So sometimes cycles happen because things have not been thought out very well, but sometimes they just happen.
BTW, I am the original author of Wikipedia:Classification. My intent, in creating the page, was to create a way of showing the multiple classifications systems that exist here. For example, there is a hierarchy under Category:Bridges and another under Category:Toll bridges. By adding a classification, you can illustrate that these are two separate hierarchies that overlap each other. -- Samuel Wantman 09:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps "related" is not the correct word, but here is what I mean: Academia is a place where Education happens. If you move to the other end of the taxonomy, education is the thing that is being studied and taught in academia. So education is a subject of study and also is the process of learning and teaching. Since education has this broad meaning the cycle happens. I find this to be an acceptable cycle. Education does have this self-referential nature. But my bigger point is that this "sloppy"classification system is by design. It allows people to browse in broadly defined categories rather than in narrow ones. I suspect you could create categorization schemes that would have no cycles, but why bother? Categorization should consider the utility of the category for a user who wants to browse. It is not intended to be collaborative work on a perfect taxonomy of all knowledge, and I think that is a good thing. -- Samuel Wantman 07:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I would just leave the loops. I find the comments about the loops on the category pages to be confusing and jarring. The only way remove the loops is to try and separate the different meanings of education into separate categories, and this would make the categories much less useful for browsing. I don't think loops upset many casual users of Wikipedia. They are probably most upsetting to editors who think that categories are a rigid classification system. My experience is that if you follow that view you will be extremely frustrated. It also leads to long unproductive battles over category membership. Restore the categoriztion loops and remove the comments about loops. Think of categories as a collection of articles related to the topic and try to avoid thinking of it as a pure taxonomy. -- Samuel Wantman 20:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I've restored the category loops and removed the comments. -- Samuel Wantman 07:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I think the "education" example is an instance of legitimate self-inclusion, but the KLF one (which I removed a couple of days ago without being aware of this discussion) is basically using "categories as links", on which question I have to disagree with Samuel on. I think the reason to be careful about such things is to preserve some sort of meaning to membership in a part of the hierarchy. Inevitably this breaks down after a certain point -- I noticed that Category:Geography of Greenland is at the base of a vertical chain of inclusion 37 (!) deep, featuring among others, it being classified (sorry) under Category:Philosophical concepts, Category:Apes, and Category:Theoretical physics. Clearly, the category system does not at present lend itself to questions such as "what are the articles on theoretical physics"; it'd currently give the answer, "almost all of them". But it would be worthwhile to work towards that as a goal. Alai 00:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
There's a dispute over at WikiProject Cricket over the appropriate categorization of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and UAE cricketers. Details here. Third party opinions welcome. -- Muchness 14:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that alphabetisation is generally preferable for 5 reasons; (1) when an article has many categories, it makes it easier to find a category, (2) it means that category order will appear more similar between different articles, and (3) alphabetisation isn't susceptible to people re-ordering to give different ones a higher priority/or a POV. A category order POV might sound crazy, but it will happen. Plus of course (4) alphabetical ordering is the easiest to maintain and (5) the most popular way of sorting. Martin 10:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Here is a summary of some reasons to not alphabetize; (1) If there are numerous categories it is hard to find the eponymous category. For an example of this see Category:George W. Bush, (2) Alphabetization should be similar to the way categories are "piped", depending on the subject. The key word for alphabetization might not be the first word. (3) Categories might naturally go together. For example there are two bridge type categories for San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It might make sense to put "Suspension bridge" next to "Cantilever bridge". Another example is birth dates and death dates. (4) There might be good reasons to put certain categories in the same position for all articles of a certain type. For example, it was customary to make the type of bridge the first category in a bridge article. For biographical entries, it seems natural to put the birth and death dates first. -- Samuel Wantman 23:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The problem with subject specific rules is that subjects overlap. It could get very instruction creepy. I can see three possible universal orderings:
I dare say there are other sensible ones. Rich Farmbrough 01:05 17 March 2006 (UTC).
It appears the section on this page, Cycles should usually be avoided is both controversial and ambiguous. While it states they should be avoided, it gives no justification. In addition, the discussion above about Education demonstrates at least one case of a self-referencing system that might be “acceptable,” at least to many editors. Perhaps the more active editors in this area that have weighed in with differing views on the subject, such as SamuelWantman and JonHarder can work together to clarify what types of cycles should be avoided under what circumstances and when it might be okay to use cycles. Using more examples in the "okay" – "not okay" situations would be very helpful as well. Thanks. Rfrisbie talk 18:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Rfrisbie, that's a lot better. I knew there was an example of a useful cycle, I just couldn't think of one. ··gracefool | ☺ 12:14, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about some reforms for the Categories for Deletion page ( WP:CFD). Please take a look here. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 10:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
There are a whole bunch of sub-categories of this category that are filled not with lists, but with individual episodes of television shows. I perhaps too hastily started removing the Episode lists category from those pages and in several cases it was the only category so I created categories with no categorization. After getting a complaint I stopped, but the question remains what to do with these pages that don't belong.
Besides being illogical, the way it was was confusing because the same show could appear in the Category section and the Pages section so you'd have to look in both places to make sure you didn't miss the show you were looking for. To see how it was, look at the second page (the next 200).
A lot of those shows had their own Category page, like Category:Friends in which case Category:Friends episodes could be a sub-category of that and I don't see the need any other categories. So we could create show-specific categories for the pages that were only sub-categories of Category:Episode lists. Or they could be categorized under Category:CBS network shows or something like that.
But I think a better solution would be to create Category:Episodes by television show which would fit nicely under Category:Television series. Comments? -- JeffW 20:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Another reason that these categories are confusing is that there are over 200 pages in Category:Episode lists and when these are sub-categorized, they will then be intermingling with all the Foo episodes categories making them harder to locate. (BTW, does anyone else think that Episode lists should be changed to something like Television series episode lists?). -- JeffW 00:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I think enough time has passed for discussion and I haven't received any replies requesting that I not do this, so I'm going to create Category:Episodes by television series putting it under Category:Television series and start moving the episode categories there. -- JeffW 16:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I recently added and rearranged the sub-categories in the Lists category so there would be categories for the subjects Art, Culture, Geography, History, Mathematics, People, Philosophy, Religion, Science, and Technology. This seems to be working pretty well, but these categories are mixed in with Abbreviations, Books, by Country, by Form (timeline etc.), Reference material, Worst lists, and Year lists which, I think, dilutes their usefulness. I tried sorting the subject cats to the beginning using space followed by the category name, but they came out in two columns. Then someone who was just "tidying up" removed the spaces putting it back the way it was.
Is there another way to do this? Does anyone else feel that it would be a good idea to ask for something like [[Category:Lists|Art|Subjects]] from the programming crew? (with the second piping meaning to place the link to the sub-category under the heading "Subjects", instead of the default letter headings).
In the meantime would naming the categories something like "Subject: Art lists", "Subject: Culture lists", etc. be reasonable? -- JeffW 08:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the best place to ask – please redirect me if necessary – but would anyone else prefer the "middle dot" rather than the "vertical line" as the divider between category names in the list at the bottom of a page, i.e.:
Categories:
This category ·
That category ·
Another category · etc.
rather than
Categories:
This category |
That category |
Another category | etc...?
When glancing, I find it slightly easier to distinguish the categories listed using the dot rather than the line. Thanks for your thoughts, David Kernow 05:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I know we have examples of "related categories" being created manually, such as WTC-9/11, but is there any serious thought to making them an automated feature? That sure would make it a lot easier to create meaningful broader/narrower term hiercharies and avoid those pesky loops! >;-o Rfrisbie talk 03:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that it has become common practice to sort the main article of a category under * so it will appear at the top of the page list. How does this interact with the catmore template? Is one preferred or should both be used?
Also, in many cases it's appropriate to sort a list (especially when the all the pages in a category are instances) to the top of the page list. If there is already a main article for that category, my gut says lists should appear after the main article. Should they be sorted as ** so they appear after the main article but in the same block? Or perhaps + should be used so they appear as a second block. Or should the main article be sorted with a space instead of * and the * used for the the lists? -- JeffW 19:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I recently noticed awkwardness in the wording of the automatically-generated text that precedes a category’s subcategories. The awkward “There are 62 subcategories to this category.” would be better worded as “There are 62 subcategories within this category.” — optikos 00:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to try regulate guideline/policy via help: namespace?
See also my comments here
There appears to be no consensus to include {{ Wikipedia-specific help}} with its present content in Wikipedia:Categorization.
Trying to blank out a link to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes in help namespace is WP:POINT, if not plain obnoxiousness, by user:omniplex – not a appreciable procedure for getting things his way. -- Francis Schonken 12:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I did. See: Template talk:Wikipedia-specific help#No consensus.
Your edit summary read "editing help pages here is pointless" - so don't. Four times you tried to edit away the Wikipedia:Categorization#Categories vs. Lists vs. Info boxes section on the help page, by editing the Wikipedia:Categorization with noinclude tags. Indeed stop that pointless & confusing editing of the help page here. -- Francis Schonken 15:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
There are many occasions when having articles and categories with the same name is not a good idea. Eponymous categories should be avoided unless there are more than a dozen or so related articles. If all the articles are cross-linked to the main article in a prominent way there is no need for the category. Another very important consideration is the effect of having eponymous categories for all the siblings of the article. For example, curently RENT has the eponymous Category:RENT (nominated by me at WP:CFD). If every broadway play had an eponymous category it would fill up Category:Broadway musicals with duplicate entries in the subcategory and article sections with little or no added utility. If Category:Celebrities appearing in South Park (also at CFD) exists, then every TV series could have similar eponymous categories. This would lead to dozens of categories of little value being added to the articles of hundreds of celebrities. I think the standard should be: "Eponymous categories should be avoided unless there are more than a dozen links in the See also section." I'd like to add a guideline about this. Any comments? -- Samuel Wantman 08:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
My point is not about how a category is named, but whether it should exist in any form. It is you last example, a bogus category with only a handful of articles, all crosslinked and with the potential of being copied thousands of time to similar small collections of articles (like Broadway plays). -- Samuel Wantman 21:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Should WP:category redirect here? Afonso Silva 20:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
It's been a while (September 2005) since I worked on Categories, and I was wondering how much things have moved on since then? Is there any summary available of the discussion that hasn't made it onto the guidelines page yet? I also had some questions that I was hoping to get some advice on:
(1) I recently worked on a page that seems to touch a lot of different areas: Ptolemy (name) - it originated from a disambiguation page ( Ptolemy (disambiguation), and I wasn't sure whether to leave the disambiguation tags and categories in place. Eventually I did remove them and added some different categories (Etymology, Names, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Cultural history) - can anyone think of any more, or more suitable, categories?
(2) Would I be right to say that the categorisation scheme is flexible enough to allow slightly different methods to apply in different subject areas? I wrote something here about categorisation in one particular subject area, and was wondering if it sounds OK in terms of the overall categorisation guidelines?
At the same location, I've been considering using the Category Scan tool to get an overall picture of the categorisation scheme for a particular, fairly small, area. Is there an easy way to use the Category Scan tool, or something similar, to generate a "tree-like" snapshot as something that could be posted on a Wikipedia page, either as a text-based "tree", or a screenshot? Carcharoth 19:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been reading through this talk page, and I came across the following comment: "I noticed that Category:Geography of Greenland is at the base of a vertical chain of inclusion 37 (!) deep, featuring among others, it being classified (sorry) under Cat:Philosophical concepts, Cat:Apes, and Cat:Theoretical physics."
I thought I'd follow this up and see why this was the case, trying to find the routes from those three categories down to the Geography of Greenland category. I swiftly gave up, or assumed that the connections had been severed, but I did come across one thing I found strange.
Why is Category:Geography a subcategory of Category:Earth sciences? This seems to me to be a clear case where some of the articles and subcategories of Geography belong in Earth Sciences, but some don't (eg. Political Geography). Lumping all the Geography cat/articles under Earth Sciences has created false links on the "tree". This is a clear example of bad (or lazy) categorisation in a high level category.
Maybe a guideline needs to be written (unless it already exists) that when considering what parent categories to put a category in, consider whether the contents of the category could also be split among different parent categories, either with or without creating new categories to make the categorisation easier.
In the Geography example, Geography would be removed from the Earth sciences category and all the 'science' geography items (for example) would be placed in the Earth Sciences category as well as the Geography category, but the 'non-science' geography items would be placed in the Geography but not the Earth Sciences category. Thus the Geography category, while not itself being a member of the Earth Sciences category, would have children that were members.
Overlapping sets and links skipping levels on the "tree", or reaching over to a distant part of the "tree". This is how I see the Categorisation system, and some of the subtleties of categorisation. But I thought it best to see if I'm getting this right before I start being bold and changing things where I think the categorisation is not quite right. I'm also still looking for a way to show other people small areas of the expanded category "tree". I'm only aware of the Category Scan tool, but how do I get the output from that into a form that is easily posted on a talk page? Carcharoth 01:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Something I've realised recently is that it is probably useful to differentiate between categorizing articles and categorizing categories. The guidelines here almost exclusively talk about how to categorize articles. I feel that something about when and how to categorise a category would be a useful addition to the guidelines.
I see "categorizing categories" as creating links on the category "tree", making links between different areas, as opposed to populating the tree (adding articles to categories). Before doing this, it is important to realise the nature of the category and where you are in the category tree: ie. how many levels downwards does the category reach that you are trying to "graft" onto the "tree", and how many articles are present inside the category and its subcategories? If the number is small and in a tightly focused area, then you may have a pretty good idea of suitable categories that should be linked to. On the other hand, if the subject is broad (like the Geography category) then a simnple graft is not the right way to proceed (you have to surgically tweak out branches from the geography category and graft them onto separate areas of the "tree").
Another way to look at categorising categories might be the following. When considering what categories to put an article in, consider whether, instead of putting the article in a candidate category, you can link the article to that category by putting one of the article's categories (parent or other ancestor) in the candidate category. The link, and browsing route, is thus created without having an excessive amount of similar categories for that article. In other words: categorize an article on where you want it "listed" with similar articles, but rely on the process of 'categorising the categories' to create the "browsing links" that allow people to browse the whole structure to find a particular category.
Would something like this be useful for the guidelines? Carcharoth 02:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
A new editor is trying to build categories that mimic the industry codes in an economics journal. When I objected, the editor stated he is willing to accept suggestions, but as I have not worked either in his field, or with the categorization project much, I could use some assistance in helping him to achieve his goals. Here is an example of the type of category he is creating: Category:Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting JEL:M See Talk:JEL classification codes. -- Blainster 06:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think a reasonable starting point would be to remove the JEL codes from the category names and also add (Economics) where this is not already in the name. I'll add the code on the page for the category itself, and check with AEA that they have no problems with the implementation. However, there's no obvious way for a non-admin to change a category name. Can someone give me a hand on this. —This unsigned comment was added by John Quiggin ( talk • contribs) .
This is now posted at WP:CFD. Discussion should continue there. -- Samuel Wantman 00:00, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I want to create a category for sorting people as per their language knowledge. So, L.L. Zamenhof should be listed in Category:Esperanto speakers, Category:Polish speakers, etc. or Kimi Räikkönen in Category:Finnish speakers, Category:English speakers. I think this will be useful, but I want to have consensus to start this work. Best, Mxcatania 14:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Found it!! :-) Category:Polyglots was hidden away in Category:Linguists. I rescued it and added it to Category:People. Anyway, the Polyglots category could be a useful starting point, or it could be that that is all that people really want from a classification system. I think there might be a demand for people who aren't polyglots, but who speak more than one language. But classifying all the people who speak one language seems a bit excessive. Carcharoth 16:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
PS. Category:Esperantists already covers speakers of Esperanto. Carcharoth 16:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
PPS. I rescued Category:Esperantists and put it in Category:People, so you now have two categories (that one and the Polyglots one) to start a People by languages category. Carcharoth 16:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I really don't see the point. Is it noteworthy that a German speaks German? Are you commiting your time to going through all the thousands of existing People articles and deciding which language they speak? -- JeffW 17:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I suggest this:
This would be an attempt to sort people by language. If this proposal is accepted, then we don't need to categorize every article, just subcategorize some categories. Best, Mxcatania 20:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I find this to be an interesting discussion. I've been wondering about language categorizations for a while, and thought I'd wait until I was clear in my own opinions before saying anything. As the conversation has started, I'll add my two cents:
So, by your #2 above, if people are categorized by language and nationality then all people should be listed in the People category? I wouldn't find that a good thing. -- JeffW 02:30, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
My proposal:
Category:People by language
Category:Catalan people (1)
Category:English speakers
Category:American people
Category:Australian people
Category:British people
Shakira (3)
Category:Esperantists
Category:Idists
Category:Spanish speakers
Category:Argentine people
Category:Chilean people
Category:Colombian people
Shakira (2)
Category:Spanish people
Category:Venezuelan people
Category:Welsh people
...
(1)
They are part of
Category:Spanish people, then they both speak Spanish and Catalan as per this categorization.
(2)
We assume people do speak the native language of the region he are from.
Shakira is supposed to speak Spanish because
Colombia is a Spanish-speaker country.
(3)
When he/she speaks other language (and it's worthy mentioning), then we include it in other language category. In this case, Shakira being Colombian (Spanish spaker) sings in English, then we include her into English speaker category.
I think this would be the best way. Mxcatania 14:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
(2)
same as Shakira applies to English speakers. I mean, if someone in the US speaks Spanish and it's worthy mentioning (maybe
Christina Aguilera), then you tag him/her as Spanish speaker as an exception. We will do exceptions for cases like this (
Category:Mexican American writers will apply to Spanish speakers being tagged ad hoc and English speakers being American people). Let me know your comments. Best,
Mxcatania
13:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)The more I think about this, the more important and valuable it seems. I'm hoping these categories can be widely applied. I'm especially looking forward to seeing the subcategories of Category:Film directors by language, which is much more useful than Category:Film directors by nationality.-- Samuel Wantman 07:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking about Samuel Wantman's proposal to limit the eponymous categories unless there are at least a dozen related articles. But what if we went the other way?
What if every article in the main space was also a category? Then if I had an article that is related to Adidas, I could just add Adidas as its category without worrying about creating the category. I have two ideas for the user interface. In the first there would be buttons at the top and bottom of every article to take you to the category side of the article. The second would be to put the panes for subcategories and included pages at the bottom of the page, so that you would have the article text, followed by the categories the article belongs in, followed by the subcategories of the article/category, followed by the articles that have this article as their category.
Now, how to do it technically is a different matter and I'm not familiar with the the technicals of Wikimedia and I realize that the programmers have a big backlog as it is. But its something to think about. -- JeffW 13:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Samuel Wantman's idea above for a "Proposed category reorganisations" page is a great idea. As well as the proposed "People by language" organisation, I would like to add the "Geography/Earth sciences" reorganisation I proposed above. That is not so much a reorganisation, but a tidying up and correction. I come across quite a lot of these big tangled messes in my perusal of the category system, and it would be nice if there was a central place to mention them and get people interested in sorting them out. Obviously the Wikiproject, if active or interested in categorisation, is a good place to start, but I'm never sure whether to bring these things up on the project pages or here. I guess "both" is the answer.
Another thing I want to ask about is the stability of the categories. I often find that if you leave a neat and tidy area of the category tree for a few months, it can have degenerated into an untidy mess by the time you come back. Is there any way to address this? I find that people tend to ignore or not read clear instructions in the blurb at the top of a category page, and are even less likely to look at the talk page for a category. Carcharoth 09:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I've had a number of recent discussions about top-sorting of subcategories with people I've ended up working at cross-purposes with, through no fault of any of us. Would there be any objection to a) saying something about top-sorting being a good idea, and b) if so (and if not, if it happens to be done anyway) which character to use? I'll put my 2 eurocents in for "yes", and for "*", respectively, but I'd just appreciate some clarity, one way or another. Alai 22:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I have come across several articles that give an overview of an area, and thus touch on many subject areas that it might be possible to categorise by. What is the guideline for this sort of article? Categorise as widely as possible, or try and restrict it? An example is Rationing, which I recently categorised under several other categories that are relevant for the sections of the article. In effect, I am categorising based on the sections. Is this done in general? Are there better ways to do this? How briefly or extensive does a section have to be to make the article deserve/not deserve a category based on that section? Carcharoth 13:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
PS. What is the verdict on how to categorise multi-stub pages? I don't mean categories that say it is a multi-stub page, but do they need categories for each of the "stubs"? Eg. Medicine, Military, for the rationing multi-stub page? Carcharoth 17:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I've recently been looking at Category:Categories by person and was horrified to see that many of these eponymous categories are categorised as if they were the article about the person!!! This strikes me as just plain wrong.
Looking at two examples of these eponymous categories, such as Category:Bill Gates and Category:Beethoven, the categories typically are placed in categories like Category:Billionaires and Category:German pianists. This then leads to the ridiculous situation where articles in the original "Bill Gates" and "Beethoven" categories, such as The_Road_Ahead and Scots_Musical_Museum appearing under "Billionaires" and "German pianists" respectively.
In my opinion, people will arrive at an eponymous category by clicking on the link at the bottom of an article in that category, and they will be pleased to see this lead to a wide-ranging selection of articles on that topic.
The alternative route for arriving at the category is through browsing downwards through the category "tree". Taking "Beethoven" as an example, people arrive at (say) "German pianists", and see that there is a "Beethoven" category, and click on it to get to the article and associated categories and articles. In my opinion, the correct route is rearrange things so that people arrive in the category "German pianists" and click on the article "Ludwig van Beethoven" and then click on the Category link at the bottom of that page. If that seems too arduous, it is possible to create what I call a "soft" link to the category from (in this case) the "German pianist" category, by inserting the following as the category blurb: "This category is for German pianists. For a collection of articles about Beethoven and his works, see Category:Beethoven."
[Of course, there should be a way to distinguish between sideways links and up and down links, but the Wikipedia categorisation system isn't advanced enough to do that.]
In other words, these eponymous categories should draw articles together from a wide range of different areas, linked only by the person (or topic - see next comment below), but these categories should be at the apex of a tree, with only one parent category - in all these cases Category:Categories by person. For an example of this, see Category:Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So I think that all 58 of these eponymous categories should be stripped of all their categories except the Category:Categories by person tag, and these tags added back to the "root article". This will make the categorisation more logical. It will still be possible to hop from the grouped articles up to the category, but accessing the "by name" category from the category tree will be less easy, though the links can be added back as "soft" links.
What do people think? Carcharoth 20:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Picking up the thread from further up, I looked at Category:Categories by topic, and there are currently 11 subcategories.
This organisation in this "by topic" category, strikes me as being a bit haphazard at the moment. I arrived there expecting to see a large alphabetical list of subcategories in "by topic", possibly subcategorised by "categories by fooian topic". But instead there is this rather strange listing. I guess I should start discussion on this at the (currently non-existant talk page for the "by topic" category page), but for now, I've put comments below:
These all appear to be geographical and should, IMO, be in something like Category:Categories by location, which would then subsume back under the "Geography" category and the "Categories" category.
This currently only contains computer companies, though I can see how the concept could be expanded, and it does look like a very useful category. Looking at how the company categories have themselves been categorised, my comments above about eponymous categories would also apply.
From looking at all these categories, I'm still not sure what a "topic" is! I'm not sure that language, nationality and people are topics, but rather they are something else. Language and nationality are cultural labels, while the people one should explain itself. I think that any "Category by Foo" would fit well in the "Categories" category and the "Foo" category, but shoving them in this "by topic" category feels a bit artificial.
I even tried to click on topic to find out what it means, but ran into four layers of disambiguation pages and still failed to find a suitable Wikipedia page on what a "topic" is: topic -> subject -> content -> information?
Overall, my impression from these wide-ranging categories found in Category:Categories by topic is that they are trying to bring together loosely related articles in much the same way that a portal does. Indeed, the portals are only one level up to Category:Categories, and then one level down to Category:Portals. So Category:Portals and Category:Categories by topic do seem to be brother super-categories, of sorts!
My argument would be that, since there is no Portal:Topics, all the "by topic" categories could simply link into something similar to Category:Browse, which looks rather odd at the moment. Maybe I am thinking of Portal:Browse?
Anyway, what I would expect to see under "categories by topic" is a large list of categories named for their topics. Either "Foo" or "Foo topics". For example, Category:War (different from Category:Wars) or Category:War topics. Ultimately, this reminds me of the distinction between "topic" categories like Category:Opera and Category:Disaster and the corresponding "event/object" categories like Category:Operas and Category:Disasters.
I would expect to see the "topical" categories link up to the "by topic" top level eventually. The path from "Opera" is via "Genres", but the path from "Disaster" or "War" is less clear. The route from "War" seems to stop at "Behaviour", which then leads to various "Top 10" or "Fundamental" categories, though, IMO, a link to "by topic" could also be inserted here.
Maybe the simplest way to think of this is to say that any category that has a corresponding portal should go in Category:Categories by topic, and maybe even to say that only portal-like categories should go in Category:Categories by topic? Does that sound reasonable? To have the "by topic" category be an analogue of the Portal category? Carcharoth 07:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
To take the specific example that JeffW raised above, Category:Chicago, Illinois is well-integrated into a geographical hierarchy, and as such, articles about the geography of Chicago fit well in that category. Tracing back up the category tree, we see that the slip in language came at the point where "Geography of the United States" led to "Cities of the United States" - the correct formulation would have been "Geography of the cities of the United States". The alternative wording has led people to treat it as a general all-purpose category for any articles remotely related to US cities. The wording of intermediate subcategories gets rather long, but the point should be that these are only used to categorise categories, so it doesn't matter - they are purely category-category links. Then, as you get near the article-inhabited part of the "tree", the wording narrows again, so you end up with "Geography of Chicago", which is in both "Geography" and "Geography of cities of the United States", etc. and also in "Chicago". The Chicago category would contain all the articles concerning Chicago, but starting from the apex category "Chicago", rather than reaching it through the apex category "Geography". Other subcategories might be "History of Chicago", which would be in both "History" and "History of cities of the United States". It all flows naturally from careful consideration of the names of the categories. Which is probably why there is so much activity in deleting and renaming categories. People intuitively realise that misleading naming can cause chaos in a categorisation system. Carcharoth 16:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm confused over whether a category of articles linked by a person should be grouped under Category:Categories by person or Category:Categories by topic? I think that the "by person" category should be used to group articles about the person (biographical, what the person did in their lifetime, etc), and that this should be clearly distinguished from a higher level category that groups a wider range of articles linked by the topic of that person and his works and related materials. The "by name" categories are already in a subcategory of the "by topic" category, so the logic works well here.
Essentially, I would expect to be able to find a group of articles about person X by finding the article on person X, and then clicking on a category link at the bottom to a category of articles about the person, and then clicking on a link in that category to get to a grouping of articles about the subject concerning that person and wider issues such as study of that person and the influence of that person.
Does this description of "by topic" and "by person" sound right? Carcharoth 21:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
In Category:Top_10, the subcategories and articles are sorted using the "space" trick after the "bar". I like the way this looks, though I didn't start it. However, everytime I check back, someone will have spotted this "strange" space and removed it, saying they like the categories appearing under those big "ABC" letters. Of course, the reason for the pipe sorting in this category, which by definition has a limited number of subcategories, is to avoid this and just have them list in alphabetical order without the lettering layout. But how can you stop people changing things back? I can bet that if I come back 6 months later, it will be a mixture again. Is this a good case for adding comments only visible to editors? I've done it on Technology as an example. Carcharoth 21:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a way to categorize an article by a name other than its title? For example, say philosopher Foo has an article. Foo is most famous for his Bar theory, and much of the article is concerned with Bar. Can I have a link titled "Bar" in Category:Philosophical theories which is piped to the article about Foo, or would Bar need to have its own page? - Rynne 22:44, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I compared MediaWiki's category system and its usage in Wikipedia with traditional classification and collaborative tagging. People tend to confuse a lot in categories so maybe my paper can help a bit (or confuse you even more - it's a scientific research paper ;-)
Greetings -- Nichtich 09:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
What is the proper hierarchy for including naval subcategories, articles or subcategories? For example, looking at Category:Destroyer classes, almost all of the ships classes have both an article and a subcategory (such as the Arleigh Burke class destroyer article and Category:Arleigh Burke class destroyers), however in some cases the article is a member of Category:Destroyer classes while in other cases it is the subcategory. Thanks, -- Kralizec! ( talk) 15:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Would it be ok if I were to tag chinese ctities under Category:Taiwan as the goverment of Taiwan ( Republic of China) claims to rule mainland china? -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 09:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
When an article is split up into multiple pages, how should the "sub"-pages be categorized? If it is a list that is broken out then it can be put in a Lists sub-category, but what should be done in the general case? For a specific example, see Facebook features. This article is closely related to and is linked to by Facebook but I don't see the point of putting the child article into the same categories as the parent. That would just cause clutter in those categories.
I'm tempted to create a Facebook category to hold all the related pages, but I'm sure some would object to that. On the other hand, maybe it should be ok for a page to not be in a category, but then it will keep showing up on lists of uncategorized pages. Any suggestions? -- JeffW 21:26, 17 April 2006 (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 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
I would like people working in this category to consider adding ALL film actors back into this category. The decision to subcategorize everyone was made before there were category TOCs. Nationality is an artificial distinction to many actors who are multi-national. I could see the utility of being able to browse through a category of all actors. You would still have the choice of browsing by nationality. -- Samuel Wantman 21:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
I decided to do some analysis of this category. There are about 3300 Entries in Category:Film actors Almost all don't seem to be listed in the nationality subcategories. For the subcategories there are:
At most there would be about 5000 total names in Category:Film actors which would not make the category very much more crowded than it is now. I also notice that there is already Category:Actors by nationality which makes me wonder why we would need Film actors to also be broken up by nationality. Film actors is already a subcategorization of Actors. -- Samuel Wantman 00:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 04:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
The more general question is "When is a category too big?" The push to subcategorize started before the implementation of category table of contents. I don't know if this question has been really addressed since then. My take on this is that categories get subcategorized into tiny pieces often because it is not possible to do a database selection. These small categories like Category:Polish film directors have minimal browsing value compared to being able to browse through Category:Film directors. These multi-attribute categories are often too small. As a guideline, it seems reasonable that categories be populated at the same level as articles about the subject. We don't have an article about Polish film directors but we do have one about Film directors. It also seems that above about 6000 articles a category would become very unwieldy. -- Samuel Wantman 08:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 16:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
My $.02: First, since previous upgrades to the Wikimedia software, large categories no longer pose the technical problems that they once did. So the size of a category alone should not be the rationale for breaking into subcategories. Second, "profession by nationality" is an extremely arbitrary breakdown -- many professionals simply do not have any intrinsic association with a nationality. So while I have no objection to creating these subcategories for those professionals who do have a strong association by nationality, these subcats should not mean that the primary category is de-populated. older ≠ wiser 16:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
So it sounds like there is general consensus for the notion that categories should be fully populated at the "topic article level". I still don't know the criteria for where the upper limit is. Is it Category:Film actors, Category:Actors, Category:Entertainers, Category:Celebrities or Category:People. I strongly agree with populating Film actors, not certain about Actors and tend to think anything higher is too much. One criteria is to not put an article into every possible category because that clutters the article with categories. I'd propose that we only populate to the level of notariety (there's probably a better way to say this). If people are notable for being Directors, that is the highest level of populating film people categories. There are still grey areas with this, Poets or Writers? Film actors or Actors? Any ideas? What criteria do we use to make these decisions? -- Samuel Wantman 21:06, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Points that I think we're on the way to establishing, so far:
I've asked Brion Vibber (a developer) about whether there are any technical concerns about having large categories. -- Samuel Wantman 07:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
This is the response from Brion Vibber. "THERE IS NO ISSUE WITH THE SERVERS DUE TO LARGE CATEGORIES". So the only issue is the awkwardness of browsing large categories. --
Samuel Wantman
02:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
There is certainly no need for any pause to the improvements to the accuracy of categorisation. Things are much better than they were a year ago, but there is still lots to do. No search system is as good as a category system which does some of the work for people. I have found and categorised hundreds and hundreds of articles which were only in the subject category or only in the national category, and the combined categories filter articles through so they are in both. It shouldn't be forgotten that for many occupations and nationalities there are quite small numbers of articles, and without the precise categories they would belong in two big categories, so the six "Fooian xers" would be lost among say 1,252 Fooians (upmerged from 200 different categories) and 2,213 Xers (upmerged from a 150 different categories. Both of these categories would be a useless seas of unfamliar names for most people. It is not a question of whether random browsing is possible, but rather a matter of helping people to target their browsing. People who know exactly what they are looking for can use the search box. By contrast the category system is a natigational tool which helps people to identify groups of related topics. This is especially relevant to people from smaller countries, as the few articles on people of each occupation of their nationality would get lost in a sea of foreigners. In any case starting the conservation with a category where nationality is not quite as relevant as in some other occupations (though it is still very relevant, especially for actors from outside the English-speaking world) has put this discussion on a somewhat false footing.
CalJW
05:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
-- LiniShu 02:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Possible general action items if the consensus statement is accepted:
Comment - There have been a relatively small number of editors involved in the discussion to this point, although it is in a central location as far as categorization is concerned. I would recommend that, after leaving the discussion open a little longer, we then proceed with the effort of making the categorization of individuals in the film, television and theatrical professions consistent. I would not be surprised, though, if the general topic was revisited in other times/places. Hopefully, though, the current discussion may be good groundwork for any future discussions. Thanks, Samuel, for all of your due diligence on the issue of category size. -- LiniShu 02:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the scope of the original discussion (and the area for which we have editors willing to work on consistency of categorization at this time): If the consensus statement proposed above is accepted, we have already established in the discussion that the following "grandparent" categories should be populated with all of the articles in their descendant "by nationality" categories: Category:Film actors, Category:Film directors, Category:Television actors, Category:Television directors, Category:Stage actors, Category:Theatre directors Are there any other similair "fooers" categories to add to this list at this time? -- LiniShu 03:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Other "ancestor" categories in question- We have Category:Actors, Category:Directors, and "Actors by nationality" categories such as Category:American actors. Should any of these be populated with individual articles? If no one has a strong opinion, we could go with the status quo for now; current general usage based on numbers of articles, is to not have "Actors" and "Directors" populated with individual articles, but we do have the "Actors by nationality" categories populated with individual articles. -- LiniShu 03:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Nareek 15:13, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
At this time, among this group we have clear consensus on: do re-populate Category:Film actors and Category:Film directors, do not re-populate up the heirarchy tree above Category:Actors. There is less clear agreement on "Actors" itself, and the NATIONALITY actors categories. We also have the "cousin" categories of the Film categories - Stage and Television. I've been thinking this over the past couple days - I think that those who are interested in helping with the repopulation effort for the "MEDIUM(Film,Stage,Television) Actors" (or directors) categories should go ahead and begin, maybe focusing on the film category first (one has to choose somewhere to start), but at the same time, as we "touch" any articles to add in MEDIUM Actors category tags, why not make sure, at the same time, as Nareek suggested, that the NATIONALITY Actors and Actors category tags are there also? Of the group that has given consensus on populating categories farther up the heirarchy tree than the NATIONALITY MEDIUM Actors categories, no one showed significant opposition to populating NATIONALITY Actors or Actors, and our "populate to the level of notability" criterion could be applied either at the MEDIUM Actors or Actors level, and, interest has been expressed in having Category:Actors populated for browsing.
As we begin this work, it would be good to incorporate Samuel's new "Allincluded" template on the appropriate category pages.
I am planning to proceed as I have described above, if there is strong objection, or a different consensus is reached, my changes can always be undone.
Nareek, I am adding this latest to the Category talk:Actors as well; wasn't sure where it would be most likely to be observed, here or there?
NickelShoe, you were part of this discussion at the beginning; I know that the repopulation of the higher level categories is a new direction from the way we were going before, hopefully, after the discussions above, and the checking of whether categories can be too large (from a technical standpoint), this conclusion is something that you can live with? Your opinion is valued; you do a lot of work improving the quality of Wikipedia, and you had already put in a lot of effort in organizing the Actors categories according to the generally held application of WP:MOS prior to this discussion.
Feedback from all is appreciated, as always. Thanks, Lini 13:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
A wild and crazy idea - for those who prefer smaller subcategories for browsing - for American actors, even the most precise subcategories that we have now Category:American film actors, Category:American stage actors, and Category:American television actors are not small categories. "American film actors" at the time of this writing has 1331 entries; more will be added in the effort to consistently categorize "American actors", and the category will only keep growing with time. With the above discussions about the disadvantages of "over-subcategorizing", I'm not in a hurry to create these new subcategories, and I would not want anyone reading this to rush out and create them, but... what about the idea of actor subcategories by time period, as we have for musical groups? Some actors like George Burns, of course, would have quite a few decades of activity, but others would have only one or two. Advantages would be: a.) we'd have subcategories that at some point stop growing very much b.) we could see people grouped with their contemporaries c.) an actor's time period implies something about the cultural climate in which they worked. What do you all think? (If you are tired of more and more subcategorization, "please don't shoot me" for suggesting this :) - just an idea) Thanks, -- LiniShu 03:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I just noticed a new trend: articles for specific dates, such as January 18, 2005. Not sure I like it (note the related AFD discussion), but lots of them now exist. For the purpose of this talk page, I'm wondering how they should be categorized. The one I linked to above was placed in Category:2005, definitely not a good choice (I removed it). Most of the others seem to be uncategorized at the moment. So how should they be categorized? - dcljr ( talk) 22:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The one problem I see with January 18, 2005 is that it is really a subpage masquerading as an article. It doesn't have the normal intro paragraph, and I would expect to see some sort of navigational template. If these were added, it would probably screw up the formatting of January 2005. — Mike 20:49, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
A question concerning the purpose of categories: Is the primary purpose of categories to:
I seem to suspect the latter; and the article advises that "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category.".
However, one side-effect of that rule is category fights, wherein two (or more editors) will have a dispute over whether a topic belongs in a particular category, or not--or constantly move the article back and forth between two different categories. Some categories are seen as marks of prestige (such as Category:physics, whereas others are seen as badges of dishonor, like Category:Pseudoscience); I can think of several articles in the realm of physics which have been the subject of such disputes.
Perhaps a wider view of categories may be more appropriate--as in "this is a list of possibly relevant subjects; some of which may be of disputed relevance?" That might nip some of the edit wars in the bud. -- EngineerScotty 23:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
The first guideline for categories is "Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles". Even so, there are multiple taxonomies, and it is important that articles are not mis-categorized. Often categories with the word "related" in them are brought up for deletion at WP:CFD. Ineveitably they are deleted or renamed with the reasoning that EVERY category implies that the articles are related to the name of the category. Some categories ONLY contain related articles. See Category:George W. Bush for an example. This is frequently discussed and there is already language about this here. There is also discussion about this at the top of this page. At a practical level, I don't think we could ever reach consensus about a single taxonomy for all the articles in Wikipedia, and I don't see what use it would be. Categories are only good for browsing and discovering what articles exist here. I recently was involved in trying to mediate a controversy about whether the article Matthew Shepard should be in Category:Hate crimes. Technically, his murderers were never convicted of a hate crime, but the case is definitely related to the subject. The point of the category is to lead users to articles related to the subject, so it is reasonable that all articles related to hate crimes be in the hate crime category. -- Samuel Wantman 09:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Both and neither. I'd say the Wikipedia articles themselves are the best way to list the articles related, or partially related, to a subject, since they can qualify how the topic is related. After all, the articles, not the categories, are the center of this project. The best use of categories is to provide an overview of the breadth and depth of articles in a broad field Wikipedia so that the user does not have to slowly explore the branches of the tree of knowledge one twig at a time. You could say the categories provide a way to speed-read Wikipedia; they should include all the links to specific persons & objects and narrower topics & concepts found on each page.
GUllman
19:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Why can't you see the Categories section of a page when editing a page? Cigarette 15:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I have created Template:Allincluded for use in categories that include the articles that are in its subdirectories. Here is an example of its use from Category:Bridges in New York. {{Allincluded|bridges in New York State|the bridges}} produces the following comment:
![]() | For convenience, all bridges in New York State should be included in this category. This includes all the bridges that can also be found in the subcategories. |
I think this template (or some similar comment should be used when subcategorization does not remove articles from topic categories as discussed above. -- Samuel Wantman 08:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I linked an article about a person to a category, and when the name appeared on the category page it was in the wrong place. It ended up alphabetized under her first name, instead of the last name like everyone else in the category. How did this happen? How can I fix it?
(The article was Paola Giangiacomo and the category was Category:Television journalists.) — Michael J 17:37, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I've notice that some people have been changing surnames starting with Æ, Ø or Å to different letters when the pipe (|) is used to sort the articles when categorizing. So Ø might have become O and I've seen Å changed to both A and Aa. Is there any guideline or policy on how to sort these names? Just randomly substituting the actual letters with some sort of home-made standard doesn't seem to be very useful. (I'm sure there are examples of other letters as well, but being Norwegian these are letters I've noticed the most. They are the last three letters in the Norwegian alphabet.) Tskoge 14:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I've altered the guideline on the accompanying page to reflect the fact that there's at least a difference of opinion on the subject of populating the category trees. (See above.) There seemed to be a pro-population consensus in the discussion we just had, but perhaps it's too soon to change the guideline completely? In case I acted hastily, I left the old language up, commented out, to make it easy to restore. Nareek 23:45, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I added some additional specifications to Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. Just mentioning here that most of that was resulting from a discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Naming convention for Dutchmen -- Francis Schonken 20:02, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
...but why?
Is there any reason why Category:Bill Drummond and Category:Jimmy Cauty shouldn't be both members and subcategories of Category:The KLF? Isn't this is a logical arrangement for the members of music groups who also have profiles as individuals? -- kingboyk 18:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I still have not seen a justification either. I'd love to see something besides, "Don't do it." Here are some excerpts from Category talk:Education: Categorization with respect to Science. and Category talk:Education#The classification of education and loops. Rfrisbie talk 19:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I was asked about the removal of Education from Category:Applied sciences and will respond here. My intent is to eliminate cycles from among the categories. Perhaps there is a better way to do this than my reversion, so I'll lay out the problem.
These are the portions of the Science tree and Education tree that apply:
Note that "Science" links to "Acadmic disciplines." The goal is to connect these together in a way that doesn't cause a cycle. I removed, what in this diagram would be an arrow from "Education" back to "Applied sciences".
One must decide which of these categories is the most general, and thus not a subcat of any of the others. To me the candidates are "Science," "Academia" or "Education" (the most general in the current configuration). The one determined to be most general won't link back to the others.
I hope this makes some sort of sense. JonHarder 03:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The current classification of education is as follows:
Apparently, this is the result of an effort to eliminate category "loops." See the above discussion. An unfortunate side-effect of this effort is that education has been eliminated from categories such as category:Applied sciences and category:Social sciences. This directly contradicts education's place in the articles, List of academic disciplines and Social sciences. I'm going to place the following comment on the category page as a compromise, at least until something better comes along. Rfrisbie talk 17:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
To avoid loops, the following classifications are not included in the education category structure.
There are several reasons why I prefer to keep categorization tree-like, in addition to the confusion of cycles mentioned above:
When categorizing it is helpful to consider whether X is a kind of Y or if X is a part of Y. If so, then X is a subcategory of Y. JonHarder 01:03, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Those all are fine points above for reasons to avoid loops. So show me how to resolve this.
I'd like to take a step back for a second and look at the bigger picture. Wikipedia categories are NOT a pure classification system. Articles are in categories for many reasons. Sometimes they are just related to the subject of the category (for example Category:George W. Bush), sometimes they are members of the set defined by the category (example Category:Suspension bridges). Sometimes the category is very broad like Category:Education. The reason that there is a loop in the education example is because Academia is RELATED to Education, but Academic disciplines are a SUBSET of Academia. This sort of thing is to be expected. This is a wiki. The work that it would take to create a monolithic classification system that everyone could agree to would be huge and probably so frustrating that we'd all leave the project. The beauty of Wikipedia's categories is that multiple intersecting classifications can co-exist. The problems arise when all these hierarchies intersect. So sometimes cycles happen because things have not been thought out very well, but sometimes they just happen.
BTW, I am the original author of Wikipedia:Classification. My intent, in creating the page, was to create a way of showing the multiple classifications systems that exist here. For example, there is a hierarchy under Category:Bridges and another under Category:Toll bridges. By adding a classification, you can illustrate that these are two separate hierarchies that overlap each other. -- Samuel Wantman 09:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps "related" is not the correct word, but here is what I mean: Academia is a place where Education happens. If you move to the other end of the taxonomy, education is the thing that is being studied and taught in academia. So education is a subject of study and also is the process of learning and teaching. Since education has this broad meaning the cycle happens. I find this to be an acceptable cycle. Education does have this self-referential nature. But my bigger point is that this "sloppy"classification system is by design. It allows people to browse in broadly defined categories rather than in narrow ones. I suspect you could create categorization schemes that would have no cycles, but why bother? Categorization should consider the utility of the category for a user who wants to browse. It is not intended to be collaborative work on a perfect taxonomy of all knowledge, and I think that is a good thing. -- Samuel Wantman 07:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I would just leave the loops. I find the comments about the loops on the category pages to be confusing and jarring. The only way remove the loops is to try and separate the different meanings of education into separate categories, and this would make the categories much less useful for browsing. I don't think loops upset many casual users of Wikipedia. They are probably most upsetting to editors who think that categories are a rigid classification system. My experience is that if you follow that view you will be extremely frustrated. It also leads to long unproductive battles over category membership. Restore the categoriztion loops and remove the comments about loops. Think of categories as a collection of articles related to the topic and try to avoid thinking of it as a pure taxonomy. -- Samuel Wantman 20:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I've restored the category loops and removed the comments. -- Samuel Wantman 07:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I think the "education" example is an instance of legitimate self-inclusion, but the KLF one (which I removed a couple of days ago without being aware of this discussion) is basically using "categories as links", on which question I have to disagree with Samuel on. I think the reason to be careful about such things is to preserve some sort of meaning to membership in a part of the hierarchy. Inevitably this breaks down after a certain point -- I noticed that Category:Geography of Greenland is at the base of a vertical chain of inclusion 37 (!) deep, featuring among others, it being classified (sorry) under Category:Philosophical concepts, Category:Apes, and Category:Theoretical physics. Clearly, the category system does not at present lend itself to questions such as "what are the articles on theoretical physics"; it'd currently give the answer, "almost all of them". But it would be worthwhile to work towards that as a goal. Alai 00:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
There's a dispute over at WikiProject Cricket over the appropriate categorization of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and UAE cricketers. Details here. Third party opinions welcome. -- Muchness 14:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
My opinion is that alphabetisation is generally preferable for 5 reasons; (1) when an article has many categories, it makes it easier to find a category, (2) it means that category order will appear more similar between different articles, and (3) alphabetisation isn't susceptible to people re-ordering to give different ones a higher priority/or a POV. A category order POV might sound crazy, but it will happen. Plus of course (4) alphabetical ordering is the easiest to maintain and (5) the most popular way of sorting. Martin 10:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Here is a summary of some reasons to not alphabetize; (1) If there are numerous categories it is hard to find the eponymous category. For an example of this see Category:George W. Bush, (2) Alphabetization should be similar to the way categories are "piped", depending on the subject. The key word for alphabetization might not be the first word. (3) Categories might naturally go together. For example there are two bridge type categories for San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It might make sense to put "Suspension bridge" next to "Cantilever bridge". Another example is birth dates and death dates. (4) There might be good reasons to put certain categories in the same position for all articles of a certain type. For example, it was customary to make the type of bridge the first category in a bridge article. For biographical entries, it seems natural to put the birth and death dates first. -- Samuel Wantman 23:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The problem with subject specific rules is that subjects overlap. It could get very instruction creepy. I can see three possible universal orderings:
I dare say there are other sensible ones. Rich Farmbrough 01:05 17 March 2006 (UTC).
It appears the section on this page, Cycles should usually be avoided is both controversial and ambiguous. While it states they should be avoided, it gives no justification. In addition, the discussion above about Education demonstrates at least one case of a self-referencing system that might be “acceptable,” at least to many editors. Perhaps the more active editors in this area that have weighed in with differing views on the subject, such as SamuelWantman and JonHarder can work together to clarify what types of cycles should be avoided under what circumstances and when it might be okay to use cycles. Using more examples in the "okay" – "not okay" situations would be very helpful as well. Thanks. Rfrisbie talk 18:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Rfrisbie, that's a lot better. I knew there was an example of a useful cycle, I just couldn't think of one. ··gracefool | ☺ 12:14, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about some reforms for the Categories for Deletion page ( WP:CFD). Please take a look here. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 10:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
There are a whole bunch of sub-categories of this category that are filled not with lists, but with individual episodes of television shows. I perhaps too hastily started removing the Episode lists category from those pages and in several cases it was the only category so I created categories with no categorization. After getting a complaint I stopped, but the question remains what to do with these pages that don't belong.
Besides being illogical, the way it was was confusing because the same show could appear in the Category section and the Pages section so you'd have to look in both places to make sure you didn't miss the show you were looking for. To see how it was, look at the second page (the next 200).
A lot of those shows had their own Category page, like Category:Friends in which case Category:Friends episodes could be a sub-category of that and I don't see the need any other categories. So we could create show-specific categories for the pages that were only sub-categories of Category:Episode lists. Or they could be categorized under Category:CBS network shows or something like that.
But I think a better solution would be to create Category:Episodes by television show which would fit nicely under Category:Television series. Comments? -- JeffW 20:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Another reason that these categories are confusing is that there are over 200 pages in Category:Episode lists and when these are sub-categorized, they will then be intermingling with all the Foo episodes categories making them harder to locate. (BTW, does anyone else think that Episode lists should be changed to something like Television series episode lists?). -- JeffW 00:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I think enough time has passed for discussion and I haven't received any replies requesting that I not do this, so I'm going to create Category:Episodes by television series putting it under Category:Television series and start moving the episode categories there. -- JeffW 16:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I recently added and rearranged the sub-categories in the Lists category so there would be categories for the subjects Art, Culture, Geography, History, Mathematics, People, Philosophy, Religion, Science, and Technology. This seems to be working pretty well, but these categories are mixed in with Abbreviations, Books, by Country, by Form (timeline etc.), Reference material, Worst lists, and Year lists which, I think, dilutes their usefulness. I tried sorting the subject cats to the beginning using space followed by the category name, but they came out in two columns. Then someone who was just "tidying up" removed the spaces putting it back the way it was.
Is there another way to do this? Does anyone else feel that it would be a good idea to ask for something like [[Category:Lists|Art|Subjects]] from the programming crew? (with the second piping meaning to place the link to the sub-category under the heading "Subjects", instead of the default letter headings).
In the meantime would naming the categories something like "Subject: Art lists", "Subject: Culture lists", etc. be reasonable? -- JeffW 08:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the best place to ask – please redirect me if necessary – but would anyone else prefer the "middle dot" rather than the "vertical line" as the divider between category names in the list at the bottom of a page, i.e.:
Categories:
This category ·
That category ·
Another category · etc.
rather than
Categories:
This category |
That category |
Another category | etc...?
When glancing, I find it slightly easier to distinguish the categories listed using the dot rather than the line. Thanks for your thoughts, David Kernow 05:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I know we have examples of "related categories" being created manually, such as WTC-9/11, but is there any serious thought to making them an automated feature? That sure would make it a lot easier to create meaningful broader/narrower term hiercharies and avoid those pesky loops! >;-o Rfrisbie talk 03:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that it has become common practice to sort the main article of a category under * so it will appear at the top of the page list. How does this interact with the catmore template? Is one preferred or should both be used?
Also, in many cases it's appropriate to sort a list (especially when the all the pages in a category are instances) to the top of the page list. If there is already a main article for that category, my gut says lists should appear after the main article. Should they be sorted as ** so they appear after the main article but in the same block? Or perhaps + should be used so they appear as a second block. Or should the main article be sorted with a space instead of * and the * used for the the lists? -- JeffW 19:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I recently noticed awkwardness in the wording of the automatically-generated text that precedes a category’s subcategories. The awkward “There are 62 subcategories to this category.” would be better worded as “There are 62 subcategories within this category.” — optikos 00:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to try regulate guideline/policy via help: namespace?
See also my comments here
There appears to be no consensus to include {{ Wikipedia-specific help}} with its present content in Wikipedia:Categorization.
Trying to blank out a link to Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes in help namespace is WP:POINT, if not plain obnoxiousness, by user:omniplex – not a appreciable procedure for getting things his way. -- Francis Schonken 12:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I did. See: Template talk:Wikipedia-specific help#No consensus.
Your edit summary read "editing help pages here is pointless" - so don't. Four times you tried to edit away the Wikipedia:Categorization#Categories vs. Lists vs. Info boxes section on the help page, by editing the Wikipedia:Categorization with noinclude tags. Indeed stop that pointless & confusing editing of the help page here. -- Francis Schonken 15:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
There are many occasions when having articles and categories with the same name is not a good idea. Eponymous categories should be avoided unless there are more than a dozen or so related articles. If all the articles are cross-linked to the main article in a prominent way there is no need for the category. Another very important consideration is the effect of having eponymous categories for all the siblings of the article. For example, curently RENT has the eponymous Category:RENT (nominated by me at WP:CFD). If every broadway play had an eponymous category it would fill up Category:Broadway musicals with duplicate entries in the subcategory and article sections with little or no added utility. If Category:Celebrities appearing in South Park (also at CFD) exists, then every TV series could have similar eponymous categories. This would lead to dozens of categories of little value being added to the articles of hundreds of celebrities. I think the standard should be: "Eponymous categories should be avoided unless there are more than a dozen links in the See also section." I'd like to add a guideline about this. Any comments? -- Samuel Wantman 08:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
My point is not about how a category is named, but whether it should exist in any form. It is you last example, a bogus category with only a handful of articles, all crosslinked and with the potential of being copied thousands of time to similar small collections of articles (like Broadway plays). -- Samuel Wantman 21:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Should WP:category redirect here? Afonso Silva 20:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
It's been a while (September 2005) since I worked on Categories, and I was wondering how much things have moved on since then? Is there any summary available of the discussion that hasn't made it onto the guidelines page yet? I also had some questions that I was hoping to get some advice on:
(1) I recently worked on a page that seems to touch a lot of different areas: Ptolemy (name) - it originated from a disambiguation page ( Ptolemy (disambiguation), and I wasn't sure whether to leave the disambiguation tags and categories in place. Eventually I did remove them and added some different categories (Etymology, Names, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Cultural history) - can anyone think of any more, or more suitable, categories?
(2) Would I be right to say that the categorisation scheme is flexible enough to allow slightly different methods to apply in different subject areas? I wrote something here about categorisation in one particular subject area, and was wondering if it sounds OK in terms of the overall categorisation guidelines?
At the same location, I've been considering using the Category Scan tool to get an overall picture of the categorisation scheme for a particular, fairly small, area. Is there an easy way to use the Category Scan tool, or something similar, to generate a "tree-like" snapshot as something that could be posted on a Wikipedia page, either as a text-based "tree", or a screenshot? Carcharoth 19:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been reading through this talk page, and I came across the following comment: "I noticed that Category:Geography of Greenland is at the base of a vertical chain of inclusion 37 (!) deep, featuring among others, it being classified (sorry) under Cat:Philosophical concepts, Cat:Apes, and Cat:Theoretical physics."
I thought I'd follow this up and see why this was the case, trying to find the routes from those three categories down to the Geography of Greenland category. I swiftly gave up, or assumed that the connections had been severed, but I did come across one thing I found strange.
Why is Category:Geography a subcategory of Category:Earth sciences? This seems to me to be a clear case where some of the articles and subcategories of Geography belong in Earth Sciences, but some don't (eg. Political Geography). Lumping all the Geography cat/articles under Earth Sciences has created false links on the "tree". This is a clear example of bad (or lazy) categorisation in a high level category.
Maybe a guideline needs to be written (unless it already exists) that when considering what parent categories to put a category in, consider whether the contents of the category could also be split among different parent categories, either with or without creating new categories to make the categorisation easier.
In the Geography example, Geography would be removed from the Earth sciences category and all the 'science' geography items (for example) would be placed in the Earth Sciences category as well as the Geography category, but the 'non-science' geography items would be placed in the Geography but not the Earth Sciences category. Thus the Geography category, while not itself being a member of the Earth Sciences category, would have children that were members.
Overlapping sets and links skipping levels on the "tree", or reaching over to a distant part of the "tree". This is how I see the Categorisation system, and some of the subtleties of categorisation. But I thought it best to see if I'm getting this right before I start being bold and changing things where I think the categorisation is not quite right. I'm also still looking for a way to show other people small areas of the expanded category "tree". I'm only aware of the Category Scan tool, but how do I get the output from that into a form that is easily posted on a talk page? Carcharoth 01:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Something I've realised recently is that it is probably useful to differentiate between categorizing articles and categorizing categories. The guidelines here almost exclusively talk about how to categorize articles. I feel that something about when and how to categorise a category would be a useful addition to the guidelines.
I see "categorizing categories" as creating links on the category "tree", making links between different areas, as opposed to populating the tree (adding articles to categories). Before doing this, it is important to realise the nature of the category and where you are in the category tree: ie. how many levels downwards does the category reach that you are trying to "graft" onto the "tree", and how many articles are present inside the category and its subcategories? If the number is small and in a tightly focused area, then you may have a pretty good idea of suitable categories that should be linked to. On the other hand, if the subject is broad (like the Geography category) then a simnple graft is not the right way to proceed (you have to surgically tweak out branches from the geography category and graft them onto separate areas of the "tree").
Another way to look at categorising categories might be the following. When considering what categories to put an article in, consider whether, instead of putting the article in a candidate category, you can link the article to that category by putting one of the article's categories (parent or other ancestor) in the candidate category. The link, and browsing route, is thus created without having an excessive amount of similar categories for that article. In other words: categorize an article on where you want it "listed" with similar articles, but rely on the process of 'categorising the categories' to create the "browsing links" that allow people to browse the whole structure to find a particular category.
Would something like this be useful for the guidelines? Carcharoth 02:03, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
A new editor is trying to build categories that mimic the industry codes in an economics journal. When I objected, the editor stated he is willing to accept suggestions, but as I have not worked either in his field, or with the categorization project much, I could use some assistance in helping him to achieve his goals. Here is an example of the type of category he is creating: Category:Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting JEL:M See Talk:JEL classification codes. -- Blainster 06:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I think a reasonable starting point would be to remove the JEL codes from the category names and also add (Economics) where this is not already in the name. I'll add the code on the page for the category itself, and check with AEA that they have no problems with the implementation. However, there's no obvious way for a non-admin to change a category name. Can someone give me a hand on this. —This unsigned comment was added by John Quiggin ( talk • contribs) .
This is now posted at WP:CFD. Discussion should continue there. -- Samuel Wantman 00:00, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I want to create a category for sorting people as per their language knowledge. So, L.L. Zamenhof should be listed in Category:Esperanto speakers, Category:Polish speakers, etc. or Kimi Räikkönen in Category:Finnish speakers, Category:English speakers. I think this will be useful, but I want to have consensus to start this work. Best, Mxcatania 14:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Found it!! :-) Category:Polyglots was hidden away in Category:Linguists. I rescued it and added it to Category:People. Anyway, the Polyglots category could be a useful starting point, or it could be that that is all that people really want from a classification system. I think there might be a demand for people who aren't polyglots, but who speak more than one language. But classifying all the people who speak one language seems a bit excessive. Carcharoth 16:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
PS. Category:Esperantists already covers speakers of Esperanto. Carcharoth 16:39, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
PPS. I rescued Category:Esperantists and put it in Category:People, so you now have two categories (that one and the Polyglots one) to start a People by languages category. Carcharoth 16:54, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I really don't see the point. Is it noteworthy that a German speaks German? Are you commiting your time to going through all the thousands of existing People articles and deciding which language they speak? -- JeffW 17:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I suggest this:
This would be an attempt to sort people by language. If this proposal is accepted, then we don't need to categorize every article, just subcategorize some categories. Best, Mxcatania 20:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I find this to be an interesting discussion. I've been wondering about language categorizations for a while, and thought I'd wait until I was clear in my own opinions before saying anything. As the conversation has started, I'll add my two cents:
So, by your #2 above, if people are categorized by language and nationality then all people should be listed in the People category? I wouldn't find that a good thing. -- JeffW 02:30, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
My proposal:
Category:People by language
Category:Catalan people (1)
Category:English speakers
Category:American people
Category:Australian people
Category:British people
Shakira (3)
Category:Esperantists
Category:Idists
Category:Spanish speakers
Category:Argentine people
Category:Chilean people
Category:Colombian people
Shakira (2)
Category:Spanish people
Category:Venezuelan people
Category:Welsh people
...
(1)
They are part of
Category:Spanish people, then they both speak Spanish and Catalan as per this categorization.
(2)
We assume people do speak the native language of the region he are from.
Shakira is supposed to speak Spanish because
Colombia is a Spanish-speaker country.
(3)
When he/she speaks other language (and it's worthy mentioning), then we include it in other language category. In this case, Shakira being Colombian (Spanish spaker) sings in English, then we include her into English speaker category.
I think this would be the best way. Mxcatania 14:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
(2)
same as Shakira applies to English speakers. I mean, if someone in the US speaks Spanish and it's worthy mentioning (maybe
Christina Aguilera), then you tag him/her as Spanish speaker as an exception. We will do exceptions for cases like this (
Category:Mexican American writers will apply to Spanish speakers being tagged ad hoc and English speakers being American people). Let me know your comments. Best,
Mxcatania
13:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)The more I think about this, the more important and valuable it seems. I'm hoping these categories can be widely applied. I'm especially looking forward to seeing the subcategories of Category:Film directors by language, which is much more useful than Category:Film directors by nationality.-- Samuel Wantman 07:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking about Samuel Wantman's proposal to limit the eponymous categories unless there are at least a dozen related articles. But what if we went the other way?
What if every article in the main space was also a category? Then if I had an article that is related to Adidas, I could just add Adidas as its category without worrying about creating the category. I have two ideas for the user interface. In the first there would be buttons at the top and bottom of every article to take you to the category side of the article. The second would be to put the panes for subcategories and included pages at the bottom of the page, so that you would have the article text, followed by the categories the article belongs in, followed by the subcategories of the article/category, followed by the articles that have this article as their category.
Now, how to do it technically is a different matter and I'm not familiar with the the technicals of Wikimedia and I realize that the programmers have a big backlog as it is. But its something to think about. -- JeffW 13:41, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I think Samuel Wantman's idea above for a "Proposed category reorganisations" page is a great idea. As well as the proposed "People by language" organisation, I would like to add the "Geography/Earth sciences" reorganisation I proposed above. That is not so much a reorganisation, but a tidying up and correction. I come across quite a lot of these big tangled messes in my perusal of the category system, and it would be nice if there was a central place to mention them and get people interested in sorting them out. Obviously the Wikiproject, if active or interested in categorisation, is a good place to start, but I'm never sure whether to bring these things up on the project pages or here. I guess "both" is the answer.
Another thing I want to ask about is the stability of the categories. I often find that if you leave a neat and tidy area of the category tree for a few months, it can have degenerated into an untidy mess by the time you come back. Is there any way to address this? I find that people tend to ignore or not read clear instructions in the blurb at the top of a category page, and are even less likely to look at the talk page for a category. Carcharoth 09:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I've had a number of recent discussions about top-sorting of subcategories with people I've ended up working at cross-purposes with, through no fault of any of us. Would there be any objection to a) saying something about top-sorting being a good idea, and b) if so (and if not, if it happens to be done anyway) which character to use? I'll put my 2 eurocents in for "yes", and for "*", respectively, but I'd just appreciate some clarity, one way or another. Alai 22:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I have come across several articles that give an overview of an area, and thus touch on many subject areas that it might be possible to categorise by. What is the guideline for this sort of article? Categorise as widely as possible, or try and restrict it? An example is Rationing, which I recently categorised under several other categories that are relevant for the sections of the article. In effect, I am categorising based on the sections. Is this done in general? Are there better ways to do this? How briefly or extensive does a section have to be to make the article deserve/not deserve a category based on that section? Carcharoth 13:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
PS. What is the verdict on how to categorise multi-stub pages? I don't mean categories that say it is a multi-stub page, but do they need categories for each of the "stubs"? Eg. Medicine, Military, for the rationing multi-stub page? Carcharoth 17:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
I've recently been looking at Category:Categories by person and was horrified to see that many of these eponymous categories are categorised as if they were the article about the person!!! This strikes me as just plain wrong.
Looking at two examples of these eponymous categories, such as Category:Bill Gates and Category:Beethoven, the categories typically are placed in categories like Category:Billionaires and Category:German pianists. This then leads to the ridiculous situation where articles in the original "Bill Gates" and "Beethoven" categories, such as The_Road_Ahead and Scots_Musical_Museum appearing under "Billionaires" and "German pianists" respectively.
In my opinion, people will arrive at an eponymous category by clicking on the link at the bottom of an article in that category, and they will be pleased to see this lead to a wide-ranging selection of articles on that topic.
The alternative route for arriving at the category is through browsing downwards through the category "tree". Taking "Beethoven" as an example, people arrive at (say) "German pianists", and see that there is a "Beethoven" category, and click on it to get to the article and associated categories and articles. In my opinion, the correct route is rearrange things so that people arrive in the category "German pianists" and click on the article "Ludwig van Beethoven" and then click on the Category link at the bottom of that page. If that seems too arduous, it is possible to create what I call a "soft" link to the category from (in this case) the "German pianist" category, by inserting the following as the category blurb: "This category is for German pianists. For a collection of articles about Beethoven and his works, see Category:Beethoven."
[Of course, there should be a way to distinguish between sideways links and up and down links, but the Wikipedia categorisation system isn't advanced enough to do that.]
In other words, these eponymous categories should draw articles together from a wide range of different areas, linked only by the person (or topic - see next comment below), but these categories should be at the apex of a tree, with only one parent category - in all these cases Category:Categories by person. For an example of this, see Category:Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So I think that all 58 of these eponymous categories should be stripped of all their categories except the Category:Categories by person tag, and these tags added back to the "root article". This will make the categorisation more logical. It will still be possible to hop from the grouped articles up to the category, but accessing the "by name" category from the category tree will be less easy, though the links can be added back as "soft" links.
What do people think? Carcharoth 20:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Picking up the thread from further up, I looked at Category:Categories by topic, and there are currently 11 subcategories.
This organisation in this "by topic" category, strikes me as being a bit haphazard at the moment. I arrived there expecting to see a large alphabetical list of subcategories in "by topic", possibly subcategorised by "categories by fooian topic". But instead there is this rather strange listing. I guess I should start discussion on this at the (currently non-existant talk page for the "by topic" category page), but for now, I've put comments below:
These all appear to be geographical and should, IMO, be in something like Category:Categories by location, which would then subsume back under the "Geography" category and the "Categories" category.
This currently only contains computer companies, though I can see how the concept could be expanded, and it does look like a very useful category. Looking at how the company categories have themselves been categorised, my comments above about eponymous categories would also apply.
From looking at all these categories, I'm still not sure what a "topic" is! I'm not sure that language, nationality and people are topics, but rather they are something else. Language and nationality are cultural labels, while the people one should explain itself. I think that any "Category by Foo" would fit well in the "Categories" category and the "Foo" category, but shoving them in this "by topic" category feels a bit artificial.
I even tried to click on topic to find out what it means, but ran into four layers of disambiguation pages and still failed to find a suitable Wikipedia page on what a "topic" is: topic -> subject -> content -> information?
Overall, my impression from these wide-ranging categories found in Category:Categories by topic is that they are trying to bring together loosely related articles in much the same way that a portal does. Indeed, the portals are only one level up to Category:Categories, and then one level down to Category:Portals. So Category:Portals and Category:Categories by topic do seem to be brother super-categories, of sorts!
My argument would be that, since there is no Portal:Topics, all the "by topic" categories could simply link into something similar to Category:Browse, which looks rather odd at the moment. Maybe I am thinking of Portal:Browse?
Anyway, what I would expect to see under "categories by topic" is a large list of categories named for their topics. Either "Foo" or "Foo topics". For example, Category:War (different from Category:Wars) or Category:War topics. Ultimately, this reminds me of the distinction between "topic" categories like Category:Opera and Category:Disaster and the corresponding "event/object" categories like Category:Operas and Category:Disasters.
I would expect to see the "topical" categories link up to the "by topic" top level eventually. The path from "Opera" is via "Genres", but the path from "Disaster" or "War" is less clear. The route from "War" seems to stop at "Behaviour", which then leads to various "Top 10" or "Fundamental" categories, though, IMO, a link to "by topic" could also be inserted here.
Maybe the simplest way to think of this is to say that any category that has a corresponding portal should go in Category:Categories by topic, and maybe even to say that only portal-like categories should go in Category:Categories by topic? Does that sound reasonable? To have the "by topic" category be an analogue of the Portal category? Carcharoth 07:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
To take the specific example that JeffW raised above, Category:Chicago, Illinois is well-integrated into a geographical hierarchy, and as such, articles about the geography of Chicago fit well in that category. Tracing back up the category tree, we see that the slip in language came at the point where "Geography of the United States" led to "Cities of the United States" - the correct formulation would have been "Geography of the cities of the United States". The alternative wording has led people to treat it as a general all-purpose category for any articles remotely related to US cities. The wording of intermediate subcategories gets rather long, but the point should be that these are only used to categorise categories, so it doesn't matter - they are purely category-category links. Then, as you get near the article-inhabited part of the "tree", the wording narrows again, so you end up with "Geography of Chicago", which is in both "Geography" and "Geography of cities of the United States", etc. and also in "Chicago". The Chicago category would contain all the articles concerning Chicago, but starting from the apex category "Chicago", rather than reaching it through the apex category "Geography". Other subcategories might be "History of Chicago", which would be in both "History" and "History of cities of the United States". It all flows naturally from careful consideration of the names of the categories. Which is probably why there is so much activity in deleting and renaming categories. People intuitively realise that misleading naming can cause chaos in a categorisation system. Carcharoth 16:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm confused over whether a category of articles linked by a person should be grouped under Category:Categories by person or Category:Categories by topic? I think that the "by person" category should be used to group articles about the person (biographical, what the person did in their lifetime, etc), and that this should be clearly distinguished from a higher level category that groups a wider range of articles linked by the topic of that person and his works and related materials. The "by name" categories are already in a subcategory of the "by topic" category, so the logic works well here.
Essentially, I would expect to be able to find a group of articles about person X by finding the article on person X, and then clicking on a category link at the bottom to a category of articles about the person, and then clicking on a link in that category to get to a grouping of articles about the subject concerning that person and wider issues such as study of that person and the influence of that person.
Does this description of "by topic" and "by person" sound right? Carcharoth 21:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
In Category:Top_10, the subcategories and articles are sorted using the "space" trick after the "bar". I like the way this looks, though I didn't start it. However, everytime I check back, someone will have spotted this "strange" space and removed it, saying they like the categories appearing under those big "ABC" letters. Of course, the reason for the pipe sorting in this category, which by definition has a limited number of subcategories, is to avoid this and just have them list in alphabetical order without the lettering layout. But how can you stop people changing things back? I can bet that if I come back 6 months later, it will be a mixture again. Is this a good case for adding comments only visible to editors? I've done it on Technology as an example. Carcharoth 21:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there a way to categorize an article by a name other than its title? For example, say philosopher Foo has an article. Foo is most famous for his Bar theory, and much of the article is concerned with Bar. Can I have a link titled "Bar" in Category:Philosophical theories which is piped to the article about Foo, or would Bar need to have its own page? - Rynne 22:44, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I compared MediaWiki's category system and its usage in Wikipedia with traditional classification and collaborative tagging. People tend to confuse a lot in categories so maybe my paper can help a bit (or confuse you even more - it's a scientific research paper ;-)
Greetings -- Nichtich 09:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
What is the proper hierarchy for including naval subcategories, articles or subcategories? For example, looking at Category:Destroyer classes, almost all of the ships classes have both an article and a subcategory (such as the Arleigh Burke class destroyer article and Category:Arleigh Burke class destroyers), however in some cases the article is a member of Category:Destroyer classes while in other cases it is the subcategory. Thanks, -- Kralizec! ( talk) 15:49, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Would it be ok if I were to tag chinese ctities under Category:Taiwan as the goverment of Taiwan ( Republic of China) claims to rule mainland china? -- Cool Cat Talk| @ 09:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
When an article is split up into multiple pages, how should the "sub"-pages be categorized? If it is a list that is broken out then it can be put in a Lists sub-category, but what should be done in the general case? For a specific example, see Facebook features. This article is closely related to and is linked to by Facebook but I don't see the point of putting the child article into the same categories as the parent. That would just cause clutter in those categories.
I'm tempted to create a Facebook category to hold all the related pages, but I'm sure some would object to that. On the other hand, maybe it should be ok for a page to not be in a category, but then it will keep showing up on lists of uncategorized pages. Any suggestions? -- JeffW 21:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)