Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/Archive 5

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Needs a better category

Hey guys, I just went to go and look for a category for male film directors, but saw that we didn't have any. I noticed that we did have a category for women film directors (Category:American women film directors), but that male directors go in just the general category. Given the amount of flack we got over not having a category for male novelists, I think that it'd be a good idea to do this with directors as well before someone catches on and we get more hell from the media. I haven't the foggiest how to get this started other than posting here, though.

I'm reposting this here since I'd put this in another forum, but I do think that this would be a good thing to do - there's already precedent. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:22, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Why do you think we got flak for not having a category for male novelists? I don't read the article saying that. - Kautilya3 (talk) 13:57, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Category:American women film directors is supposed to be non-diffusing, and the category says as much. But there are clearly articles in there that aren't in the parent category, so that should be fixed first. It doesn't necessarily follow that a corresponding male category is required. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:02, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Basically, Wikipedia got accused of putting female novelists in a completely different area, as if there were "regular" novelists and then there were female novelists, as if it were a completely different species. There's more about it here and to put it in a nutshell, here's how one person and many media outlets summarized it: "She suggested the reason for the move might be to create a male-only list of 'American Novelists' on Wikipedia." That's why I kind of think that this needs to be changed to include a more specific category for male film directors. I mean, why is being a female film director so special that it needs to have a separate category? Why is being a male film director so non-special that it needs to be the general default for the category? The female novelists stuff was all over the media during 2013 and it still gets brought up whenever anyone wants to take a swipe at Wikipedia - especially when it comes to women-related topics, so I'd like to avoid them being able to say that about the film director category. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Basically, every once in a while (especially since 2013) people try to say that Wikipedia does not adequately cover female topics and that it's not an inviting environment for people to write about them, since the default for everything is "male". The female novelist snafu is something that they like to highlight in the media and I can see this turning into another nightmare, especially since this category was created around the same time that the female novelist category was created. I want to avoid them asking questions as to why this wasn't addressed in multiple categories (where females were moved to their own categories) when people had an issue with the main categories being used for only male authors as the "default". Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 14:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
  • But Category:American women film directors is supposed to be non-diffusing. At the time Category:American women novelists wasn't. And that particular problem was solved (I fixed the vast majority of them) mainly thanks to Category:American novelists by century, which allowed diffusion of the parent category while retaining the gendered categories as an extra. I don't think it would make sense for film directors to be split along the same lines. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:41, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
  • But at the same time, why is it that women have to have the separate category at all? Even with the non-diffusing, we still essentially have a situation where a user can go to the main category and see that all film directors are male and women are off in their own specific category. It just seems like we're just kind of turning ourselves into a sitting duck here for more criticism. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
@Tokyogirl79: If you think a particular women category isn't worthwhile, please feel free to nominate it for CfD. But my experience is that there is usually strong support for retaining them. See, for example women historians, which was initiated in my response to my CfD for male historians. The male categories are almost always useless in my opinion. - Kautilya3 (talk) 21:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Should main topic and fundamental categories have multiple supercats?

Every category in Main topic classifications that I have examined so far has several supercats. That seems odd for something that is supposed to be at the top of the article tree. I could see maybe one additional supercat leading up to Fundamental categories, but not several that are often way down the tree. Some categorizations are circular. For example, Knowledge -> Information -> Knowledge; both of these categories are fundamental. Knowledge has 10 supercats, so it's not surprising to find a loop. The categories in Fundamental categories are not quite as bad, but there is Concepts -> Thought -> Concepts. Perhaps they should all be trimmed so there is only one route to each of the top categories? RockMagnetist(talk) 23:00, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is another example where a fundamental category is found 8 levels down its own tree: Concepts -> Cognition -> Consciousness -> Mind -> Concepts in metaphysics -> Philosophical concepts -> Concepts by field -> Concepts. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Just to show that these loops are everywhere I look, I'll do two more: Life -> Biology -> Life sciences -> Life. Also, Life -> Life sciences -> Natural sciences -> Nature -> Universe (so Universe contains another main topic and a fundamental topic). RockMagnetist(talk) 23:26, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree - there simply shouldn't be category loops.
Regarding Main topic clasifications - Part of the problem may be that some editors are placing a category (presumably a category for a subject that they think is very important) directly in Cat:MTC when that category may not really belong there (e.g. because it's already in that category via other categories) - e.g. Category:Business was recently placed there (by an IP, with no explanation) - I've just reverted. Category:Objects has been added to and removed from Cat:MTC this year. Category:Religion and Category:Telecommunications were placed in Cat:MTC this year (again I've reverted). Further purging of Cat:MTC may be appropriate. Perhaps Cat:MTC should have a note on it saying that categories should not be placed directly in Cat:MTC if they are already in Cat:MTC via other categories (with a link to WP:SUBCAT). Another cause may be people adding inappropriate parent categories - I suggest placing all the categories (currently) in Cat:MTC on your watchlist and reverting the addition of any more inappropriate parent categories.
Regarding category loops I think the biggest problem is that Foobarology (the study of Foobars) is sometimes categorized as a subtopic of Foobars, sometimes the reverse and sometimes both. IMO, "Study of X" is a subtopic of X and not the reverse. DexDor (talk) 06:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with you on "Study of X"; maybe something about that should be placed in WP:Categorization. Fixing some of this may be very difficult. I removed a lot of loops by removing three categories that were part of Mental content. However, Mental content is a subcategory of Philosophical concepts, etc. And the article Concepts is in lots of categories. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:53, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Chronology

Following up on the "Study of X" theme, Chronology is a curious choice for a main topic. Time would be better, although turn categories such as Dimension and Physical quantities. Still, it's so basic that it might be a good choice. Thoughts? RockMagnetist(talk) 22:01, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I've removed Chronology from being directly in the MTC category (it was already under MTC via another category). I agree that it would make more sense for Time to "a MTC category", but Time is (currently) categorized under Universe which is (currently) a MTC category. DexDor (talk) 13:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
That works. There is no law of conservation of main topic classifications! RockMagnetist(talk) 01:21, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

sets

I am seeing a need for a category that refers to sets/groups/collections in the broad sense of a bunch of things. See, for example, my attempts to categorize Theories, where Category:Conceptual systems was the best I could come up with but didn't seem quite right. There are probably many more examples, but it's late and I can't think of them. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:48, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirects in article categories, workaround

Yesterday I posted WT:RE#Redirects in article categories, workaround, which is relevant here. Now I post this cross-reference at WT:CAT-R too. --P64 (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

{{Images}}

template:Images has been proposed for deletion, see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_October_12#Template:Images -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Defining?

I have posted a question at: Wikipedia_talk:Defining#Li Ka-shing. I would appreciate your views. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:08, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Funny issue with categories

I recently created Category:NAIA football navigational boxes, but I don't see it in either of its two parent categories, Category:American college football navigational boxes and Category:NAIA football. Have others had this sort of issue? Any idea what's going on? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 05:16, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Your thoughts needed on title change being proposed to history of video gaming console pages

A user has placed a request for renaming all of the video game console generations pages (eg, History of video game consoles (third generation) → Third generation of video game consoles).

These pages are used to categorize eras in video gaming history not only on Wikipedia but due to what some believe is a documentable case of citogenesis, has probably helped form a standard naming convention outside of Wikipedia as well. So these pages have some level of influence and visibility beyond this site.

The reason I'm here is that the current structure of the category names is likely flawed and not up to Wikipedia standard, but historically this often becomes a contentious change debating semantics (the last time this came up it sure did) and I believe that if it's going to be changed it should be changed to a Wikipedia standard form. I just want this current vote to have high enough visibility to get a clear consensus so that we're not back here in a couple of years when the next new crop of editors decides they have a better way to phrase the category titles.

So I'm bringing this debate to a greater audience so we can hear your thoughts and help us video game editors in the process. Thanks for your attention and I hope to see your thoughts on this vote. BcRIPster (talk) 01:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

proposal for Category:Enzyme disambiguation pages

Wikipedia:Categorization does not seem to have instructions on how to propose a new category, for discussion or for a more experienced editor to simply create. I suggest that said article should be modified to mention it.

I have noticed many disambiguation articles with multiple entries that are chemicals, usually enzymes, for example, HPSE. There is a Category:Science disambiguation pages‎, which seems awfully broad for this and contains only 4 articles, one of which is an enzyme disambiguation page, DHQD. I would like to propose a subcategory of Category:Science disambiguation pages: Category:Chemical disambiguation pages with its subCategory:Enzyme disambiguation pages, but I want a discussion first. If this is to be done, I think templates should be made, or existing templates modified, e.g. {{Disambiguation|chem}} and {{Disambiguation|enzyme}}.

Also note that DHQD has been set up as a member of Category:Enzyme set index pages. This is a possible path for HPSE and many other pages, but I am not sure if it is the best path. —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Anomalocaris, I'm not keen on adding more and more reader-side categories to dab pages. We could end up with a dab page of 20 items (a person, a place, a ship, a book...) being in 20 categories; for a page that readers do not want to navigate to that's a lot of editor effort, watchlist noise etc (plus blurring the distinction with articles and making it harder to keep dab pages out of article categories). If a particular wikiproject has an interest in a particular dab page (because some/all of the dab entries are within its scope) then they can tag its talk page and hence put it in a category such as Category:Disambig-Class chemicals articles. Note: If there was a consensus here to create such a category you'd still need to have a discussion at Template talk:Disambiguation to get that template changed.
I'm also not keen on things which really should be dabs being rebadged as SIAs. An example where a SIA may make sense is Nitrogen oxide, but DHQD really should be (just) a dab page - e.g. no-one is going to talk about DHQD meaning both the alkaloid and the enzyme so any inlinks to that page should be fixed (and the next thing to turn up abbreviated DHQD may be in a totally different field). DexDor (talk) 21:10, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Category tree for Ethnic Greek people vs. Greek people

Hello,

I notice that a user has recently created a separate category tree for Ethnic Greek people. This user (@Johnpacklambert:) is now blocked indefinitely, maybe for other purposes although it seems relative to BLP categorization. My first reaction would tend against the creation such a category tree, however I'd like to listen here what the opinions are.

I understand that "ethnic" categories are sometimes useful, and I understand the difference between ethnic Greek and Greek (although these terms may each cover very different concepts at different times in history) but I think that:

For these reasons, I think that this new category tree does shows more problems than advantages, and I would tend towards its deletion. However, again, I'd like to listen here what the opinions are. (Also notified Project Greece.) Place Clichy (talk) 16:08, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I rather agree with Place Clichy. There is scope for differentiating between ethnic Greeks and hellenized people, but frankly, there is little point to it. Then we would have to differentiate between ethnic Greeks who have been acculturated in a different ethnicity, and then hellenized people by origin/ethnicity/etc. and split hairs ad infinitum. In addition, the statement "The category Category:Greek people is for people who are or were nationals of the modern Greece." in the Ethnic Greek people category shows a rather arbitrary limitation of Greek-ness and a narrow definition of nationality/ethnicity to coincide with nation-state borders that I for one am not comfortable with. As Place Clichy points out, there already exists a host of categories for any flavour of "Greekness", we don't have to add more. Constantine ✍ 20:16, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Johnpacklambert: I was thinking of nominating this new hierarchy for merger or deletion, but most of the sub-categories have now been emptied. Are you abandoning it? – Fayenatic London 19:05, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

  • This is a reflection of the fact that the category Greek people is meant for those in some way connected with the modern nation state of Greece, but people insist on putting in Greek categories those who are not so connected, this solves the problem. I have not abandoned it, but keeping it up is a lot of work because some people insist on ignoring how the category tree is designed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:47, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
  • The point of this category is to include people who are ethnically Greek but not nationals of Greece. It is to stop people putting non-Greek nationals in Greek categories. It is meant to include no nationals of Greece.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:48, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@Johnpacklambert: Why do you consider that the Greek people category is restricted to the citizens of the current state of Greece? This seems like a personal interpretation to me, and not the way Wikipedia categories work. By strictly applying what you suggets, this would mean that there were no Greek people prior to 1821, or that one of the greatest Greeks of all time, Eleftherios Venizelos, was not himself Greek as he was a Cretan at a time when Crete was still Ottoman. As discussed above, the will to "stop people putting non-Greek nationals in Greek categories" is not worth the creation of a parallel category tree that can never be correctly populated, among other problems. May I have the friendly suggestion to use other categories such as Ancient Greeks, Byzantine people, Greek Cypriot people, People of Greek descent etc. for the purpose you are looking for. @Cplakidas and Fayenatic london: I can see that more Ethnic Greek categories have showed up in the last few days, despite this discussion. I suggest nominating these categories for deletion with a link to this discussion (a process I am not familiar with), for the categories that are not already empty. Place Clichy (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I just found most subcats empty and tagged them for speedy deletion. After that I noticed that in at least one case it was you, Place Clichy, who had emptied them. [1] The standard process is at WP:CFD. Please note for future reference that it is considered "out of process" to empty a category without, before or during a discussion. – Fayenatic London 00:50, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I have been involved in a friendly discussion with @Johnpacklambert: regarding the same issue with some Albanian related categories, similarly starting with the word "Ethnic". Most of them are empty. I am aware that John had nothing but good intentions of formalizing the categories according to a uniform logic. Anyway, the topic of ethnicity vs nationality in the Balkans is much more complicated. When we talk about Greek, Albanians, Bulgarians we talk about a nation, or conscience, not only ethnicity, and vice versa. Not really connected to the citizenship. The translation "Albanian mathematician" to "mathematician from Albania (Republic of Albania)" may seem right but it is not correct. It may work for Americans, US citizen = National of US, citizen of US, but not for the rest of the nationalities. Saying "...an ethnic Greek..." or "...ethnic Albanian..." can be used inside the articles to give more detailed information about people's origin, not in the very first sentence, infobox, or categories.
As an example, we have an article that states "Eshref Ademaj (1940–1994) was an ethnic Albanian mathematician..." - instead of saying "Eshref Ademaj (1940–1994) was an Kosovar Albanian mathematician", or "Kosovar mathematician", or "Albanian mathematician from Kosovo". The word "ethnic" does not fit here. The categories follow the same logic. I don't know any non-ethnic Albanian or non-ethnic Greek btw. You are Albanian or you're not. We also have more specific denominations, as Kosovar Albanians, Venetian Albanians, Ottoman Albanians, etc.
How do we call Carlo Giuseppe Verdi (1785–1867) or Temistocle Solera (1815-1878)? An "ethnic Italian" or "Italian"?--Mondiad (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the points that Mondiad raises. These ethnic X categories need to be deleted as they create more confusion and duplication of categorizations. While we are distinguishing the ethnic Greeks/Albanians from Greek/Albanians that lived in a recognized country, we don't we make such distinctions for the Americans before the United States existed? Why for instance are we not saying that John Adams, Sr. was a British citizen, or an "American ethnic"? Perhaps Johnpacklambert knows the answer: These things would create confusion. So do the ethnic X categories. --MorenaReka (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
There were no Grwek people prior to 1821. The attempts to assign people as part of a natuon that they are not are what need to stop. People who were from Crete when it was part of the Ottoman Empire and people from other places not in Greece should not be classed as Greek. We need precision in applying terms and the general disregard for natuonal boundaries and historical realities advocated here is exactly what we do not need. It invites presentism in categories that ignores the reality of the time and feeds modern ethno-natunalistic attempt to isentify past people in ways they did not think of themselves. At the same time the Greeks and other millets in the Ottoman Empire are clear ethno-religious groups. We need the modifier ethnic just as much here as we would for Jews if in the 1940s they had choisen to name their country Judea instead of Israel. An ethnicGreek born, living, creating music and dying in 19th-century Egypt clearly is Greek in some way but not in the sense of natuonality so he can not be placed in Greek by nationality categories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpacklambert (talk • contribs) 01:41, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
What a silly idea, that there were no Greek people prior to 1821. I think you are still confusing nationality with ethnicity. When we say Greek people, or Albanian people we mean it firstly in the ethnic sense, and then for the nationality. The nations of Greece and Albania were created in 1821 and 1912 respectively, but they were not created out of nothing. Following your logic we ought to tag Leonardo Da Vinci as an ethnic Italian, not as an Italian, because Italy didn't exist at his time. --MorenaReka (talk) 15:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Excellent examples: by JPL's logic, there would be no Italian people prior to 1860, no German people prior to 1871. I recognise that Johnpacklambert's efforts are in good faith, and it is always worth mentioning in the body of an article if, for instance, someone is a Kosovo Albanian vs. just an Albanian, or a Greek from Egypt, or an Armenian American. That said, there are already plenty of categories to mention these nuances, and the word ethnic can be understood in so many wrong ways that it is, frankly, not necessary the way it is used here. These "ethnic" categories are more harmful than useful. Place Clichy (talk) 20:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree and I did see a point in it in the beginning, but the more I thought the more I got convinced that it was a redundant duplication. --MorenaReka (talk) 03:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
  • People still ignore the fact that without the ethnic cartegories we tag people as Greek by nationality who were part of the Ottoman Empire at a time when Greece was a distinct nation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:35, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I think we would save ourselves endless headaches like the debates over how to categorize Nicholas Copernicus if we held to such straight forward cut-off times for German and Italian categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:37, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Lighting and light sources

I think that it makes little sense that category:lighting is in category:light sources. Lighting as a service and candlepower are quite rightly in cat:lighting, but are not light sources for instance. I think that both categories should be direct subcategories of category:light and that a very large wodge of both categories' entries should be moved to category:types of lamp and that made a subcategory of both of them. SpinningSpark 18:14, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Since there have been no comments, I will start this work shortly. I will also unwatch this page so ping me if there are any replies. SpinningSpark 14:59, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:21st-century cricketers

I tried to add Category:21st-century cricketers to Category:21st-century Indian cricketers but I see the following message:

What should I do? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:48, 31 October 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Well even if the category had not previously been deleted, you should not be adding categories that do not exist, the category you want to add should be created first. The discussion that decided to delete this category can be found here. So this category should not be recreated without a new discussion first. SpinningSpark 20:05, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: I have just nominated the Indian sub-cat at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 January 8. I note that you did not create it, and the creator of the category has been blocked. – Fayenatic London 15:38, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Uncategorized pages

I see that the number of articles in Category:Monthly clean up category (Uncategorized pages) counter keeps growing. Just wondering if anyone here ever tries to tackle it? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:09, 11 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me

CfD backlog

Don't know if it's meaningful to mention it here too but WP:CFD has a backlog of some 150 category discussions to be closed. I left a similar note on the administrators' noticeboard yesterday. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:48, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Namespace - category combinations

I've created a matrix showing which combinations of namespace and high level categories should/do not contain pages. For example, there should be no user talk pages below Category:Articles and there should be no articles below Category:Wikipedians.

The matrix still has quite a few "TBD"s (e.g. is it ever appropriate for a disambiguation page or a talk page to be in Category:Articles?) - I'm hoping to fix many of these before the matrix might be moved into Wikipedia namespace. Suggestions for other ways the matrix might be improved are welcome. DexDor (talk) 23:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

New tool: CatCycle

This may have been around for a while, but I have only just discovered:

I had wasted hours trying to figure out why a category tree trawl using WP:AWB had produced some weird anomalies (categories which should never be subcats of the one I started from), but CatCycle solved the problem in under 60 seconds. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Smallcat discussion

Feel free to join this discussion about whether or not to make the WP:SMALLCAT guideline more specific. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:57, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Films about women

Doesn't this seem a trifle broad (no pun intended)? The vast majority of films have a female lead character. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it's probably too broad. I think it's probably meant more along the lines of "films with a strong female lead". Although this is a thing in film discourse, it's too interpretive. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 15:38, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I raised this previously but nothing came of it. I'm not sure this category is of any real use at the moment. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 18:36, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Agree with the above. Looking at current subcats, Films about women include films about couples (Bonnie & Clyde‎, Romeo & Juliet, Jason & Medea), fantasy or otherwise non-human characters (Tinker Bell, Mermaids, Beauty & the Beast, Lilo & Stitch) and also, interestingly, Alien (franchise) films and Kill Bill. Also, it is a subcategory of Biographical films, which puts Alien in biographical films.
By this definition (is there a definition?), too many films are about women for this category to serve any purpose. On the contrary, categories of films about specific topics like feminism, romance, specific historical figures, all-girl education, lesbianism probably make better category topics. BTW where's Category:Films about men? Any proposal for deletion, or major rearrangement, or partial merger into Women in film, gets my vote. On way to do it is to rename the category into Biographical films about women and to remove everything that does not fit this definition. Place Clichy (talk) 15:21, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Okay then. I've nominated it for deletion (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 January 25). Clarityfiend (talk) 23:08, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Ambiguous name: Category:Directors and national subcats

Category:Directors is for directors of creative or artistic productions: films, theatre, television, etc.

This is well-summarised in the categ description: for people who direct stage, television, radio, video, or motion picture productions for entertainment, information, or instruction. They are responsible for creative decisions, such as interpretation of script, choice of guests, set design, sound, special effects, and choreography.

The topical subcats are unambiguously named: Category:Film directors, Category:Theatre directors. But the head category, and national subcats of Category:Directors by nationality (e.g. Category:French directors) are ambiguous. The unqualified title "director" probably applies most commonly to directors of companies, and the title "director" is widely used for divisional managers in organisations of all types. This ambiguity has already led to Category:Corporate directors being added [2] as a subcat of Category:Directors by genre or type.

I would like to put together a group CFR to rename these categories to something which clarifies their scope without becoming too verbose. With so many categories involved, there are technical advantages to proposing a specific title (or a few options for title), so I would welcome suggestions.

My ideas so far:

  1. artistic directors sounds like a possibility, but we already have Category:Artistic directors. The head article Artistic director explains that the title is for a senior management role in an artistic organisation.
  2. creative directors is also a specific job title, whose meaning varies in difft fields. (see Creative director)
  3. directors of artistic productions avoids a clash with specific job titles, but feels a bit narrow. There is scope for argument over the extent to which television programmes are "artistic".
  4. directors of creative productions avoids the what-is-art pedantry. It may not be ideal for documentary films, but I think there is a reasonable case for including them
  5. directors of creative works also avoids the what-is-art pedantry, and may have a slightly broader scope per Category:Creative works. I am unsure whether that broader scope is desirable.

Using "directors of creative worka" would lead to the following renamings:

Note that all the categs which would be renamed are {{container}} categories (even if not tagged as such). Individual directors would still be categorised under Category:French film directors, Category:Irish theatre directors, Category:American television directors, etc.

Those are more verbose than I would like, but they don't appear too ugly or unwieldy, and they avoid the ambiguity with corporate roles. Any thoughts?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) 03:03, 10 February 2016‎ (UTC)

Based on this presentation I agree with 5, directors of creative works, as specified below the numbered list. Thanks.
I doubt these would be {{container}} categories. Rather {{category diffuse}} cats. --P64 (talk) 21:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment at Talk:Rafik Yousef#Request for comment regarding categorisation

I initiated at request for comment at Talk:Rafik Yousef#Request for comment regarding categorisation on the 12th of February but am yet to receive any replied. So input would be most welcome. AusLondonder (talk) 16:12, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment requested

Your thoughts are requested at WP:Village pump (idea lab)#BLPCAT, mental illnesses, and learning disabilities. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:40, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Detecting circular categories

Is there a tool that would detect circular categorization when given a category title? Something like Information -> Knowledge -> Information.--OsamaK (talk) 17:24, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Have you tried CatCycle? See the discussion above, #New tool: CatCycle. I just tried it by putting Knowledge in the Start Category, and clicked "Find cycles". It found four cycles back to Knowledge, and several more involving closely related categories. – Fayenatic London 20:47, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Category:Fair use in... images

Per this RfC and this CfD, Category:Fair use in... images should be moved to Category:Otherwise uncategorizable non-free images with fair use rationale. Could a category-expert do the honors? Eman235/talk 17:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I went to do this in response to this post. I read through the proposal, but saw what I thought was a problem. So instead I have participated in the discussion there. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:53, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

A big problem with our category structures

Take a look at this use of CatCycle.

It shows how in only 32 steps, Category:Expatriate sportspeople in the Soviet Union is a sub-cat of Category:Scotland ... via Category:George W. Bush and Category:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant activities.

My use of CatCycle suggests that this sort of problem is widespread. How can we fix it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:14, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

This has been discussed time and time again. The belief that this is a problem is a result of mistakenly thinking the category system is, can be, or should be, a strictly logical hierarchy. It has never been that, and it can't function as that without breaking valuable connections between related topics. It has always instead been a network to group related articles, primarily to aid navigation, and secondarily to classify articles by the categories in which they are placed (not to classify them by what connections those categories in turn have at a far remove). The opposing view would sacrifice fundamental connections at individual steps for the sake of what gets connected through "32 steps". postdlf (talk) 15:37, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
I understand the broad fuzziness, but this is extreme. In this instance, I solved the problem by removing Category:September 11 attacks for Category:Presidency of George W. Bush. Eponymous categories for people are not supposed be used in that way, and there had been some inappropriate categorisation of some broad event categories under the eponcats for recent American presidents. For example, Obama's category had categs for lots of shootings, which didn't belong there. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:57, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
This is an entertaining and interesting example, but IMHO it is not a problem at all. It would greatly reduce the navigational value of categories if sub-cats could only be made where they contain the same type of thing (person, organisation, work, event...) as the parent category. For instance, it is valuable to link art by country and artists by country. In some cases, sideways-links could be made instead using "see also", but vertical hierarchy links are generally very useful even if they jump into a different type of thing.
The fact that this CatCycle path goes from one military participant to another is an inevitable result of having category hierarchies both for Category:Military units and formations by war and Category:Wars by country. Once we construct both of those, the result is zig-zag category paths like the one in your example. – Fayenatic London 16:18, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
@Fayenatic london: I have repeatedly seen that Category:Wars by country causes huge category-spread. There is a simple solution: apply the Category:wars involving Foo only to the head article (and any country-specific subcats), not the whole war. That way we don't end up with the entire global history of WWII and its aftermath base being categorised under the all the nations which participated in WWII. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:19, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
That might be a good solution. However, it might clash with the goal of avoiding category clutter on articles. – Fayenatic London 21:54, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
It's not a problem, there is nothing to solve.
The category system in the english wikipedia is not a branch, it is a circular net.
You can start at any category and reach every other category, which is good, because in reality there is never a topic without existing parent- and subtopics (=categories).
English wikipedia chose not to have a strict hierarchic category system like the german wikipedia has.
You should not look at the possible journeys through the system, but instead only ask for single categories, if their sub- and parent categories are meaningful.
There are two types of category relationships, "is-relations" and "belongs-to-relations". The first need no discussion but the second ones can be tricky. Sadly there can be no absolute set of rules for it, so you have to use common sense to answer, if the category really is so connected to another, that it belongs in it as a subcategory, or you need to ask other people. The place in Wikipedia where people every day deal with categories from every topic is Wikipedia:CFD. I started a proposal (Link) of creating a forum there, for discussing these problems I just mentioned. CN1 (talk) 20:43, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

When is a category "eponymous" for an article?

I was under the impression that it was when a category took its name from the article? An IP keeps adding Category:World Snooker Championships to List of world snooker champions (see [3]). I believe that it is redundant per WP:SUBCAT because the article already belongs to Category:World snooker champions which in turns is a child of Category:World Snooker Championships. The IP contends that the category should be present per WP:EPON. I disagree, because surely an eponymous category for this article would be Category:World snooker Champions, as opposed to Category:World Snooker Championships. The latter would seem to be eponymous for World Snooker Championship. Can someone advise on this i.e. should the parent category be considered "eponymous" in this case and should the article be added to the category even though it is in the sub-category? Betty Logan (talk) 11:43, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

You are right that WP:ECON does not support putting the list in cat WSC as well as cat Wschampions.
There are big problems here, however.
  1. Pages such as 1952 World Professional Match-play Championship are in cat WPMC as well as cat WSC;
  2. cat WSC is named (capitalized) for a particular brand name event, and described for that brand, "This category contains articles related to the World Snooker Championship, the most important event in snooker's annual calendar." Thus cat WSC is not a candidate parent for cat Wschampions
There should be a category for Snooker world championships in general; offhand I think I prefer the name cat "World championship snooker". Its three subcats should be Category:World snooker champions, World Snooker Championship (competition under one brand, whose category name should be singular if i understand correctly), and World Professional Match-play Championship (another brand, with another cat name singular iiuc). The "List" of champions under all brands should be in the first subcat only.
The parent cat might, i say hastily, contain only two pages [a] Template:World Snooker Championship (which should be at the top of the list as its purpose is navigation of the category) and [b] Triple Crown (snooker).
Get another opinion as this one is too hasty to be more than a suggestion. And get facts such as whether both brands do officially use the singular proper nouns. There are championships officially named "Championships" plural, for multiple categories. --P64 (talk) 17:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@P64: Is it ok if I copy your reply over to the Snooker Project talk page, given that it affects other areas of our categorization? Betty Logan (talk) 23:48, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

It is OK if there you call/describe/label/note me User:p64 "who does not watch this page" --P64 (talk) 00:13, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments requested on whether subcategories should be diffusing or non-diffusing (Indian Air Force)

There is a category tree for officers of the Indian Air Force where Category:Indian Air Force officers is the parent category, Category:Indian Air Force air marshals is a subcategory and Category:Chiefs of Air Staff (India) is a further subcategory of the second. There is currently a mixture in the categorization where some biographies are listed in two or even all three categories, while others are listed in one only. This issue came to my attention when I noticed Vinodtiwari2608 add the parent officer category to two articles in the air marshals subcategory.
I think that in this case the general rule described at WP:SUBCAT should apply, namely that the articles "...should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it." I do not see any reason for the subcategories to be treated as non-diffusing (as described at WP:DUPCAT). I will allow Vinodtiwari2608 to explain their reasons for thinking that the subcategories should overlap.
On a related point, because since 1966 the Chief of Air Staff has held a separate rank of Air Chief Marshall, as described here, I think that Category:Indian Air Force air marshals, a new Category:Indian Air Force air chief marshals and Category:Chiefs of Air Staff (India) should all be separate categories under the parent category. Chiefs of Air Staff can be non-diffused into either air marshall or air chief marshall depending on whether they were pre- or post-1966. But all of these should be diffused from the parent "officers" category. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 06:36, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Non-diffusung categories should be avoided in all/most cases as they complicate categorization. If an editor wants to see a list of all the pages in a category and its subcats then there are tools that can do that. DexDor (talk) 06:49, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for your initiative in starting a discussion on this. I think it would be better to post notifications also on the India and Military History WikiProject talk pages. I concur with you that multiple categories should be avoided as the page becomes cluttered, however, from a naive user point of view -- many visits Wikipedia for information sake -- a broader category helps. For example a military enthusiast who is not tech savvy would find it easier to click a category link to see all related content -- all Indian Air Force Officers -- in this case. Since there are only few profiles the reader may easily identify the Air Marshals, remember Air Marshal is just a designation they all are Air Force officer. So I think we can discard Air Marshal category otherwise some may demand creation of categories for each rank like, Flying Officer, Flight Lieutenant,... , Air Vice Marshal, Air Marshal till Air Chief Marshal who is the chief of Indian Air Force. Thanks again for the initiative.Vinod 07:07, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Hang on. There is a clear convention across many military officer categories. General officers (or Air Marshals) are in a separate category under Air Force officers. This is a practice widely used and from what I can see is used correctly here. Air force chiefs of staff also have a convention - Chiefs of Staff of the United States Air Force sits under US Air Force generals for example, which is the case here. I would suggest leaving as is. The issue of pages being in parent and subcategories should be fixed separately. Gbawden (talk) 10:05, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Rather than leaving things as they are, which is evidently confusing to some people, I suggest marking the non-diffusing categories with {{Non-diffusing parent category}} and {{Non-diffusing subcategory}} since this is the exception to WP:SUBCAT and WP:DUPCAT. We can't all be expected to understand that certain subject areas have their own "clear convention", after all. Being explicit helps avoid confusion. giso6150 (talk) 04:07, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: prolong period of postponing deletion of empty categories from 4 days to 14 days

Not sure whether this is the right platform to propose this, please let me know if not.

The risk of deleting empty categories (per C1) is that they were merely emptied in order to bypass CfD, there aren't any checks on this that I know of. Proposal is postponing the actual deletion of an empty category to 14 days after tagging it as empty, instead of 4 days after tagging, so that editors of articles will have more time to revert a category removal from their article in case the deletion is controversial.

On the side I would also propose more clearly splitting the page Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion in three sections, one part for CfD explanation (current section 2 and 3 combined), one for C1 explanation (current 4.1.1 and 5 combined) and a third separate part for listing speedy renaming/merging (remainder of current section 4). Marcocapelle (talk) 06:42, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

C1 is one of the criteria for speedy deletion, and those are discussed at WT:CSD, not on the talk page of a WikiProject. Similarly, reorganising WP:CFD is a matter for WT:CFD although WP:VPR would also be suitable. Note that CFD does not at present consider C1 deletions; a category is normally deleted under C1 if it's borne {{db-catempty}} for four days during which time no pages have been added to the category. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:43, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Ok thanks! Discussion is continued here and here. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:14, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Concerning the presentation of categories a page belongs to when the list is humongous

Look at the messy list of categories at the end of Go_(game) and Talk:Go_(game). It would look much better if it were presented in columns, don't you agree? — TentaclesTalk or ✉ mailto:Tentacles 18:19, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

I see 1 line of categories at the end of Go_(game), but then there are 7 lines of hidden categories. Now, I see 8 lines of categories (not counting the 1 line of hidden categories) at the end of Talk:Go_(game). — TentaclesTalk or ✉ mailto:Tentacles 18:42, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

  • I was thinking about that for a long time. Angelina Jolie has 32 parent categories - the box has eleven rows on my screen. To sort them alphabetically is a no brainer, but additionally a presentation would be nice, where the parent categories are in a rigid matrix, like the presentation of the subcategories in a normal category page in three collumns. There is no need to display the starting letter of the alphabet I think. Can we start a proposal for this? CN1 (talk) 22:02, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
See Pages with the most categories.—Wavelength (talk) 22:12, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I left a message at the technical board of "Wikipedi:Village Pump" and asked about the technical possibilities. CN1 (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
There is no consensus for alpha sorting, see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. However, if you want the cat list to be sorted for yourself, that thread describes a JavaScript that will amend the display order. It should also be possible to present a category list in columns, again for yourself only, by means of suitable CSS rules involving the display: property, to be placed in Special:MyPage/common.css. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:31, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Here it is: 
div#catlinks {
  -moz-column-count: 3;
  -webkit-column-count: 3;
  column-count: 3;
}
div#catlinks li::before {
  content: normal;
}
div#catlinks li {
  display: list-item;
}
This shows the cats as three columns. For a different number of columns, just amend the three values in the first rule from 3 to another positive non-zero integer value. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:21, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I think that we should have categories sorted more by topic than alphabetically. To take some examples from the discussion RedRose mentioned, the sequence "Communication ministers - Culture ministers - Democratic socialists - Education ministers" mixes political opinions (Democratic socialists) with positions one had in government; a science fiction writer from Austin, Texas should have Category:American science-fiction writers and Category:Writers from Austin, Texas together, assuming both exist; Category:20th-century American male actors should be near Category:Male actors from New Jersey and Category:Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners. Categories should be sorted by "thematic cluster" (as worded by Dodger67). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:39, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
This would make the most sense. – CN1 (talk) 22:37, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
There was a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways/Archive 35#Categories order where I pointed out that the most usual order for the cats of UK railway stations is basically one of descending order of relevance; in the same thread it was pointed out that alphabetic order could give rise to some very minor cats appearing early in the list. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:41, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Absolutely. Od Mishehu has phrased it well. Alphabetical is little better than random given the different naming schemes among different category structures; topical is the only sensible way to organize them. postdlf (talk) 16:02, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Problematic categorization editing by IP

If we can get some categories-experts to chime in at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Persistent_abuse_of_categorization_by_IP that would be great. Trying to get a bearing on the extent of the problem and if it justifies a temporary block. Thanks. -- Ϫ 08:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Spanish Filipinos, etc.

We have something of a mess with the following: Category:Filipino people of Spanish descent, Category:Spanish Filipino, Category:Spanish Filipinos, Category:Spanish Philippines. I can't work out what the intention is - I have observed that:

  • some of these categories contain pages but are themselves uncategorised;
  • some are in categories that they don't belong in;
  • some are categories that were previously moved but the category redirect has been repurposed;
  • some apparently duplicate the purpose of others;
  • some were apparently moved without going through either WP:CFD or WP:CFD/S.

They could do with a thorough sortout. Notifying people who have edited those pages recently: Arius1988 (talk · contribs), General Ization (talk · contribs), Josephsolis (talk · contribs), PatTag2659 (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 10:34, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Idea

 – Redrose64 (talk) 20:02, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Category order

Is there a reason why Birth year and living people categories have been placed at the top of category lists rather than in normal alphabetical position.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:47, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

@TonyTheTiger: First, there is no consensus for alpha sorting, see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Second, those two cats are mandatory for living people, it's easy to spot that they're present if they are given first. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:24, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
For a person who is no longer living, it makes sense to have birth and death categories together. Then for living people, as there is no death category, IMHO the best place for "Living persons" is in the corresponding place after the birth category. – Fayenatic London 21:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Hi, TonyTheTiger. Since most category sections in articles are completely unsorted, putting Living person in the Ls makes it easy to find every time. If it is not on top, then you have to go hunt for it and it might be just about anywhere. As for date of birth or death, with alphasort, those are right at or near the top of the list every time and easy to spot. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 13:27, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia categories named after awards has been nominated for discussion

Category:Wikipedia categories named after awards, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion as a trial balloon to see if there is support for deleting other "Wikipedia categories named after..." categories. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 04:34, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia categories named after ...

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2016_May_30#Category:Wikipedia_categories_named_after_awards in its entirety is worth a read. Pinging the participants of that discussion @RevelationDirect, Good Olfactory, Marcocapelle, DexDor, Oculi, and Johnpacklambert:, but it's worth a read from others as well. I'm holding off on actually deleting the category for a day or two to allow editors to voice disagreement with my close if they wish to. I declined to interpret how this particular deletion affects the "Wikipedia categories named after ..." categories at large, but I don't think it should encourage a mass-nomination of all such categories. It depends a lot on what plausible parent categories exist, based on how this discussion went. ~ RobTalk 17:57, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

  • Still oppose deletion This is a horrible decision. These "named after" categories help us avoid horrible parenting of categories. There are lots of categories that should not have sub-categories except ones that reflect the same style. For example I think any year establishment category, such as say Category:1875 establishments should only have sub-categories, whether directly or inderectly that are in the style of say Category:1875 establishments in England or Category:Educational institutions established in 1875. not a category for an institution that was established that year, since for example while the origin of Brigham Young University is in that year, virtually none of the other things in Category:Brigham Young University date back that early, a few such as the law school and graduate school of business were formed in the early 1970s, and even the college of education can not be traced back before the 1890s, so the parenting of the category this way would make no sense.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:11, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
    • @Johnpacklambert: the category for a university would not need to go in an "establishments" category. It would not need to go in most of the categories that are placed on the article. But the category could go in a more general one, such as Category:Universities and colleges in Utah or Category:Provo, Utah. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:27, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
    • I don't think anyone is arguing against what you just said. I routinely remove establishments categories placed on topic category pages, since they make no sense in that category tree and are more properly categorized elsewhere. Right now, though, our guidelines don't allow for categories just to hold content categories. It's not a real administrative category if it's just a hidden category being used to pseudo-categorize topic categories and it doesn't help our average reader who may want to see a parent category there, since it's hidden from them. We need some other solution that (a) isn't hidden and (b) preserves category trees. ~ RobTalk 00:49, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
      • They were not hidden categories in the first place. They became hidden after a cfd as a sop to those who have not grasped their importance and wish to delete them altogether. Oculi (talk) 11:12, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
        • @Oculi: citation for that (the CfD in question)? It's not impossible, but things are not typically implemented as a "sop" to users, but rather because there is consensus that it is a change that is needed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:15, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
  • After thinking quite a bit about this close, I'm reclosing this one as "no consensus". Please see my full rationale on the discussion page. This was a very close call, but I think it's the right one. ~ RobTalk 07:42, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
    • The ability to change one's mind after thinking things through is a skill that is too often lacking among Wikipedians. Well done. Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:31, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

add categories to this project

Hi, so i should be adding this project to category talkpages? Coolabahapple (talk) 12:44, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

@Coolabahapple: No, because then you'd be adding it to every category talk page, and if we wanted that, we'd have sent in a bot to do it. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
thanks, i was just wondering.... Coolabahapple (talk) 15:49, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

ANI discussion on User:Stefanomione

Due to the fact that in closing CFDs I have lately come across multiple complaints about the editing patterns of User:Stefanomione, I have re-opened his case at the Administrator's Noticeboard. The link is here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:27, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

For the record, this was archived here, and resulted in an indefinite topic ban on Stefanomione from participation at WP:CFD and from creating or changing categories. – Fayenatic London 16:14, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Meta proposal for merging of establishment categories

Copied from Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2016_June_8#Roman_Empire_establishments_.281st_century_and_earlier.29:

    • @Marcocapelle: I've nominated a few of these category trees within establishments over the past couple days, but this is getting to be too much to handle without clogging up CfD. I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to post a single discussion that aims at establishing some criteria by which we could delete categories within the establishments tree. It seems like a waste to keep nominating these and discussing over and over again when there's obviously consensus to merge beyond these year articles. Do you think that type of discussion would be appropriate? I was thinking something to the effect of:
      "If there's no more than 5 pages in any one year of a decade, all years can be merged up to the century of establishments in the country (Category:Xth-century establishments in COUNTRY), the specific year of the country (Category:Y in COUNTRY), and the specific year of establishments in the continent (Category:Y establishments in CONTINENT). If the requested merge target is not exactly these three categories, a new CfD is required. All resulting empty categories can be deleted."
    ~ RobTalk 00:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Copied until here

  • Undoubtedly a discussion like that would be appropriate but I'm not sure what the proper procedure would be (what is the right platform etc). @Fayenatic london, Good Olfactory, and Ricky81682: What's your thought about this? Marcocapelle (talk) 05:45, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean by appropriate. We could call it a CfD discussion that doesn't specifically enumerate all categories being discussed, but you could squint a bit and say that constitutes a criteria for speedy deletion, which would require a big community-wide hubbub that likely lasts over a month. ~ RobTalk 06:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
      • As a side note, if there's any editors who doubt the need to clean up this category tree, feast your eyes on this category tree. Stunning. ~ RobTalk 05:51, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment. Oy, this tree is a real mess. I've tried working in it before, but there are users who have chosen to develop it in ways that aren't always terribly helpful (like the Tuvan Republic ones, above). (Added to the small category problems are the ones with users resisting "anachronistic" naming, which seem to me to also not have been fully resolved.) I would like it if something could be done along these lines of having a general discussion about the tree. Probably a CfD could be used. Maybe if we did a good job with promoting it in various wikiprojects and notifying editors who have been involved in editing the tree, we could get away with it. ... Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
    • I wrote an essay at User:BU Rob13/SMALLCAT is not a suicide pact a couple days back especially for those editors who develop these sorts of trees for the sake of uniformity. I figured I would eventually wind up using it at several discussions related to this tree. ~ RobTalk 06:33, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Related Discussion There has been a side-conversation at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 May 30#Category:Wikipedia categories named after awards about placing eponymous categories in establishment by year categories. (This isn't really a problem with the award cats but I invited a broader discussion with that nomination.) The consensus has been that the United States article should be included in Category:1776 establishments but Category:United States should not. RevelationDirect (talk) 09:19, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
  • SMALLCAT I think the underlying problem here is that WP:SMALLCAT is a vague and contradictory and confuses well-meaning editors (including me). I'm not opposed to a more specific fix to the year categories but I'd rather also fix this mess. I proposed an across-the-board definition of small categories as less than 5 articles at this discussion. While most editors felt 5 was a good rule of thumb, some thought making that official would be too rigid.
Maybe different changes based on @BU Rob13:'s essay would bring us to consensus on a change. RevelationDirect (talk) 16:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
@RevelationDirect: I agree with the well-meaning editors that five pages as an absolute minimum is inflexible, actually. Imagine a categorization scheme where all subcategories have 6 pages but one has four pages. Do we delete the one? Obviously, no. Perhaps we could clarify the guideline by saying that 5 articles per sub-category is the guideline, but 3 articles per sub-category is required. A 1-2 article subcategory is useless, even within an existing categorization scheme. ~ RobTalk 16:57, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Not to get too far into the weeds, but that old proposal was that a majority of subcategories had to have 5 or more articles so Category:Science museums in the United States by state would be fine but Category:College softball coaches in the United States by university would not. I'm open to any change that makes small cat less subjective including the thresholds you laid out above. If you can only find a consensus with the date categories, I would support that as a partial fix too. RevelationDirect (talk) 20:36, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, I like that suggestion too. The problem is that any guideline will be interpreted as a rule. For instance, I'm guessing that at least a majority (possibly a supermajority) of by year categories in the establishments tree have less than five articles in them. So do we delete all by year categories? No, since we need to look at the different countries and even centuries within a country at a more granular level. It's very tricky. ~ RobTalk 18:01, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment I have been trying to at least get every article in a category for establishment by year from 1500 on (I skipped a few years, and am now to 1622) into a category by either country or continent by year for establishment. I think we should apply the categories in a way that respects the political realities of the time. The one messy one I have not figured out is how to reflect the political reality that Wales was under the full control of England, but never viewed at all as a colony. After 1707 Great Britain and then the UK allows grouping, but I am not sure of before 1707. Especially since some years there are so few Wales articles, it almost seems that they could just be grouped under England. I am also trying to do a general search for say 1622, and find all articles on something established that year and categorize them. However such searches end up being 10% about things were 1622 shows up for reasons not related to the year at all, 20% for people who died or were born that year, 20% for events happening that year or artistic works created that year, 10% for articles that only show up because they have the year in an embeded related works listing, 25% for people who did something in 1622 or had their status change in 1622 so it gets mentioned in the article, 5% for articles on an office that has a list of holders where there was a change in 1622, and only about 10% for things that were actually established that year. The percentages may be a little off, but at times it feels like trying to find a needle in a hay stack.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:25, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment One help would be if there were easier way to create by year organization categories without creating all the possible parents as red links. On the other hand, some of the discussion of small cats in the case of establishments by year needs to bear in mind that the issue is not how many articles are currently in the category, but how many can reasonably thought to come to be in the category. The later tends to be a larger number.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:29, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Upmerge all the softball coach articles to their respective college or university coaches category and just directly in the college softball coach category. Assuming there is no one who is in more than one subcategory, which is probably a false assumption, there are about 110 articles, so this is a category with no good reason to split it, especially in a schema with humdreds of potential sub-categories. I know it has not been formally nominated and will need to be but I wanted to make it clear that there was support for this approach.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:34, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment - i think that lately the WP:SMALLCAT argument has become an overkill to merge infant category trees, without much consideration whether those could or couldn't be developed into mature trees. One example is Abbasid Caliphate categorization, which obviously can be expanded into a full useful tree, but still nominated for deletion. Another is Tuvan People's Republic categorization, which indeed might not become a fully developed tree. WP:SMALLCAT should avoid overkill and thus i tend to agree that "under five" should be a rule of thumb for discussion, but not always resulting in deletion. The Abbasid categories can be expanded easily for instance into a dozen more.GreyShark (dibra) 05:28, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
    • If that is indeed the case, then maybe those who create categories should put more thought into properly populating them when they create them. A lot of users put one item in a new category and leave others to do the populating, but that hardly ever happens with many of these super-specific categories. Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:47, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Category:Philosophy of economics

User:Meclee is against having Category:Philosophy of economics within the tree of Category:Economics. Per this discussion he suggests instead to have it as a parent of Category:Economics. Personally I think it is a weird way of categorizing, as Philosophy of Economics clearly is a sub-discipline of Economics. What do other editors think of this? Marcocapelle (talk) 19:41, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

The category tree goes from the more general to the more specific. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:54, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
  • @Redrose64: Meclee is apparently convinced that Philosophy of Economics is the most general. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:06, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Category:Terrorism committed by country what is this category?

The naming of this category is confusing. It should be renamed and its scope clarified.

I see five possibilities for its scope and name.

1: "State terrorism" (controversial for example the Iraq war could be label as State terrorism. As could the dropping of the atomic bomb, many events in WW2, the destruction of Carthage etc. By its nature a POV tag.)

2: It is the same as Category:State-sponsored terrorism and should be deleted.

3: It is the same as Category:Terrorism by country and should be deleted.

4: "Terrorism committed by a state" same as option 1 POV problems.

5: "State terrorism theory" A more limited category.Jonney2000 (talk) 05:03, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I moved some stuff out of Category:Terrorism committed by country and into Category:State-sponsored terrorism.
Category:State-sponsored terrorism should not be a sub cat of State terrorism.Jonney2000 (talk) 18:43, 1 July 2016 (UTC)


Moderator proposal

A Request for Comment on a proposal to create a new user group with an abbreviated set of administrator user-rights, as an option for editors to request instead of requesting the entire sysop user-right package. I welcome everyone's thoughts on this. - jc37 21:15, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Antisemitism, Racism and Discrimination

Editors interested in categorizing are invited to comment at Category talk:Antisemitism#Racism and Discrimination. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:12, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Categories are not articles

Editors interested in categories are invited to comment at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Categories are not articles. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:00, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Special:UnusedCategories

Interested editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Special:UnusedCategories. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 13:17, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Guideline for content on page supporting categories

I seem to remember someone citing this months ago but can't remember what it was called. It was a policy where if you included a category for the article, the subject of the category had to be mentioned on the page, ideally with a supporting reference.

The closest I could find was WP:CATDEF but I thought there was something more specific than that to do with sourcing. Ranze (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Administrator instructions listed at Requested moves

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Category:Truck drivers

I glanced at Category:Truck drivers via the awfully blatant WP:NOTMEMORIAL/WP:NOTNEWS violation that is Darrell Ward in its present state. Anyway, in this category page, the W's are sorting in between R and S. I didn't dig any deeper to see if there was a reason for this or if it's some sort of software screwup, but I felt that it may warrant mention. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 18:14, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Sorting in categories unreliable for a few days. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:30, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion about categories, navboxes etc on Mobile...

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Showing_related_articles.2C_especially_on_Mobile Jytdog (talk) 22:06, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

A category that may need some cleanup

Category:Animal rights advocates properly specifies that it should be applied only to persons for whom it is a defining characteristic, and not to celebrities who just happen to be supporters. However, I've been noticing that editors have been adding the category rather indiscriminately to celebrity pages. It might be a good idea to go through the category and do some cleanup. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:28, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Template adding supercats to cats question

There is a discussion involving sports categories, their parent groups, and templates to populate both sets at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates#Continents_from_countries. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Primefac (talk) 02:53, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

New tracking categories created

I have created, and requested template changes to populate, two new tracking categories. Like Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability, these categories combine all the entries from corresponding month-by-month tracking categories in one category. One use for this is to allow the use of Special:RandomInCategory across all tracked months at once, though there are certainly other uses. The new categories are:

—swpbT 13:00, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Please weigh in at Template_talk:BLP_sources#New_comments—this uncontroversial change is being scuttled by lack of attention. —swpbT

Tracking tracking categories?

While finishing up a few TFD mergers I came across some tracking categories used by the templates I was working on. I noticed that while both categories are tracking categories, they are neither named similarly nor listed under a "unknown parameter" supercat. The cats in question are Category:Articles with unknown parameter in Infobox rail line and Category:Pages using infobox tennis tournament with unsupported parameters. I created the IB tennis cat, modeling it after the {{infobox company}} tracking cat, but I have two questions.

  1. Is there a way to find all of these "unknown/unsupported params" categories and place them all into a category of their own?
  2. Is it reasonable to create some sort of standardized name for these templates?

If #1 isn't possible/feasible, then I guess I won't worry about it, but the thought of getting #2 going is rather tempting. Primefac (talk) 04:41, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Category:People with multiple disabilities

Please create. Pe-ga-sos (talk) 14:05, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Why? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:21, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
Isn't there any? I find it hard to believe. Pe-ga-sos (talk) 12:33, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Well, yes, there are articles about people with multiple disabilities. But why do they need to be categorised separately from Category:People with disabilities? See WP:CAT/GRS. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:55, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
This would be a category for people with several diagnoses. It would be more exact. Pe-ga-sos (talk) 12:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
I think you may be looking for a WikiData query instead. WaggersTALK 12:56, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Countries and sub-categories

Hello, folks. I'm interested in learning to what extent, if any, the general rules on parent/child categorization are applied to articles on countries. For example, is the article on Mongolia really supposed to be categorized as a country in Northeast Asia AND as a country in East Asia AND as a country in Asia?

I will greatly appreciate any guidance that you can provide. NewYorkActuary (talk) 15:57, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

See guideline on non-diffusing subcategories. postdlf (talk) 16:03, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
@Postdlf: Thank you for the prompt response. I was aware of the notion of non-diffusing categories, but perhaps my question wasn't as clear as it could have been. It seems to me that virtually any sub-category can be viewed as consisting of those members of the parent that possess a certain characteristic. In turn then, it would be possible to justify placing any article in both the parent and child categories, simply by declaring "non-diffusion". But this way of looking at the question renders the general rule moot (i.e., why bother having a general rule if it can be disregarded at will?).
My understanding was that the general rule (no articles in both a parent and a child, other than for eponymous categories) should be followed unless the community has decided that an exception applies. And that the existence of a community-decided exception would be evidenced by a {{Non-diffusing subcategory}} or an {{All included}} template. Am I misunderstanding this? NewYorkActuary (talk) 18:26, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
@Wwikix and Largoplazo: Are you aware of this discussion? It seems to be closely related to that at User talk:Wwikix#Categorization of countries in Polynesia. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:41, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) NewYorkActuary, from the perspective of someone who's just stalking this project for the moment (I have sections above), I see absolutely no reason why Mongolia should be put anything other than Category:Northeast Asian countries. There is nothing "special" about a NE Asian country that would not-diffuse upward. It's in the East (Northeastern) and it's in Asia, so putting it in both of those parent categories seems redundant. Primefac (talk) 18:44, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for drawing my attention to this. I gather that "non-diffusing category" refers, for example, to the category of Actors who have won Academy Awards. It isn't that there is a breakdown of all Actors into Awards They Have Won, with some of them being Academy Award winners, some of them being BAFTA winners, etc., with most or all of them being in one of the subcategories. It's that having won an academy award is a characteristic shared by some actors, so it's a subcategory, but it isn't part of a scheme of subcategorization of the category of Actors. Whereas, if we're breaking the world down into Polynesia and Eastern Europe and so forth, then that is a further breakdown that goes beyond Oceania and Europe, also yielding Melanesia, Australia, and New Zealand in one case, and Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, and Southern Europe in the other case. So these are diffusing subcategories of Oceania and Europe, respectively. If my understanding is correct. Largoplazo (talk) 18:57, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I think it's better to maintain a categorization of the countries in both the parent category and the sub category for reasons of an overall view. For example, the Category:East African countries shows the countries belonging to this region, the Category:Countries in Africa shows the countries of entire Africa. I guess this will be very convenient to the users. Wwikix (talk) 10:30, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I have seen nothing from this editor as to any clear understanding of what categorization is about, the guidelines or policies - and simply the mantra of overall view and convenient to the users - which raises concerns as to whether there is a clear understanding of how wikipedia works... JarrahTree 10:43, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I know how the English Wikipedia works but there is also something like common sense. A rigid application of the guidelines can be counterproductive. Wwikix (talk) 10:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Let that stand as it is, and for others to consider the issues, as your personal common sense is noted in your edits JarrahTree 10:58, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
There is a vast difference between having the flexibility to accommodate special circumstances and completely ignoring the rules and doing what you want instead when there are no special circumstances to accommodate. Largoplazo (talk) 11:12, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
And this is a special circumstance worth while accommodating. Wwikix (talk) 11:17, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
You have yet to explain, despite having been asked, what you think is special about this circumstance, that distinguishes it from multi-level categorization in general. You just keep telling us what you think. Meanwhile, we have you on one side, and everyone else disagreeing with you. So why do you think that you prevail in this situation? Largoplazo (talk) 11:24, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
An example, when the countries are removed from the Category:Countries in Africa, you can only find these countries by clicking on the Category:Countries in Africa by region and succeedingly you have to search in one of the sub categories concerning the various regions of Africa. That isn't a very convenient way of looking for African countries. Wwikix (talk) 11:50, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
The most convenient, and the most obvious, way of looking for a list of African countries is by going to the article on Africa. NewYorkActuary (talk) 12:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
No, when you are surfing through the categories, the most convenient and obvious way is the Category:Countries in Africa. Wwikix (talk) 12:31, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Category surfing ? once again a very personal view of how to approach subjects categorization, 'convenient' and 'obvious' - has nothing to do with how wikipedia works in its core category trees to maintain a universally accepted format that editors abide by to sustain a commonly agreed form - consensus built structure. JarrahTree 12:37, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
I understand thoroughly what your grievance is. What you have failed to do is show why Africa, or countries, are a special case that cause them to merit treatment different from that accorded to every category hierarchy on Wikipedia, all of which present the same shortcoming that you have described with respect to Africa: that the members and submembers of a category aren't all visible on the top-level category page. Largoplazo (talk) 15:42, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


This is the structure:

In these circumstances it is reasonable to categorize the North African countries both in the Category:Countries in Africa and in the Category:North African countries. Wwikix (talk) 13:50, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Lets face it - you have been basically re-arranging the whole of english Wikipedia category structure without consultation or consensus. You have gone no-where before, to discuss the changes you have created in any way before implementing things that you have initiated, and are simply responding after over 40k edits with the reasonable, I think to change the whole way that categories are found on english wkipedia, and you seem in no way capable of explaining yourself in terms other than I think, common sense, and convenient and obvious. That is not how wikipedia works. JarrahTree 13:57, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Nonsense, very exaggerated. Wwikix (talk) 14:16, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

@Wwikix: it might help if you were to frame you suggestions by reference to the existing guidelines under WP:CAT. For example, one or more of the following:

Other editors might not agree with you, but at least it would be clear that you understood the existing guidelines, and we would have some common ground to base the discussion on. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

There is an ANI going on located at User:Wwikix and categories Pyrusca (talk) 16:59, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Moving on

We now have a legacy of a system of category creation and usage that has been left us by the blocked user. Is there anyone who watches this page, willing and able to distinguish between the ok edits by the blocked user. That is - those edits that were in process of creating category overlap, or multiple cat/subcat confusion? It would be good to clarify where the experienced category editors might be able to help on this.

At the ANI page where I lodged my concern I used as an example:


The questions that arise from that happy little collection could take up a big space, the 'by country' tree sitting with the continent, and the cat/subcat combination(s), as well as other issues, but I use it here simply as an illustration/example that I believe we have to grapple with in the reviewing the set of edits.

It is clear there were more watchers than involved, and at this point if someone wants to go in - I think it would be a very good handle if there was a systematic appraisal or breakdown of the edits:

  • Acceptable and not harmful to category structure integrity
  • Acceptable if modified
  • Deletable

I do not think there should be blanket reverting unless a good case can be made to do so. JarrahTree 00:25, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

JarrahTree, you've chosen a relatively rare example of a country that resides in two different continents. Was that deliberate? If not, do you agree that we can explore the categorization issues more easily by using a country that resides in just one continent? If so, I propose Tonga, for which we have relevant categories at both the regional level (Polynesia) and the continent level (Oceania). NewYorkActuary (talk) 15:57, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Category:Vietnam veteran

Is there an alternate name to the category for what in the US is referred to as a Category:Vietnam veteran? It was surprising to me that this category (or the redirect to the appropriate category) does not exist. Is there something I'm missing? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:28, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

It's just Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War, regardless whether they survived the war. We don't make separate categories with names indicating the subject did something in the past. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Possible disruption of categories

I came across RockNRollWiki (talk · contribs) who is removing a ton of cats from articles (cats that look valid to me), plus blanking and creating a bunch of categories. Given the long string of cats they've created that have been deleted, and my lack of familiarity with the category system, I thought I would bring it to your attention. Cheers, Primefac (talk) 16:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@Primefac: I looked at his most recent contributions, which appear to be correcting the creation of Category:Mortification albums, which duplicated entirely Category:Mortification (band) albums. Could you point to any other specific disruption? The amount of deleted categories is troubling, but I'm not seeing malicious addition/removal of categories in their most recent contributions. (As an aside, this might be more suited to WP:ANI if there is disruption.) ~ Rob13Talk 20:20, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
Well, I wanted a second set of eyes before I just jumped straight into ANI. I saw the removal of cats from a dozen pages and the cat blanking, but I wasn't sure if it would fall into the "malicious" or "well intentioned" categories. Thanks. Primefac (talk) 20:26, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
I could find only two instances of category blanking. One of them (Category:Bullettrain albums) was a category page which they had created themselves, and which had no members, so I deleted it under WP:CSD#G7; the other was not created by them, so I did a simple revert. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:03, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
I just did a check of 3 or 4 recent article edits picked at random - the category removals appear to be correct removal of parent categories per WP:SUBCAT. I've suggested on User talk:RockNRollWiki that edit summaries would be helpful. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:37, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Category:Film posters by Reynold Brown

Just was wondering if it's acceptable or even necessary to add content and citations to category pages like is done for this category. WP:CAT#Creating category pages suggests that it's not, but not sure what should be done is such a case. Just delete the text? Move it to the talk page? Something else? It seems like somebody might have mistaken the page for an article based upon this edit sum. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:59, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:CAT#Creating category pages says unambiguously that "category pages should not contain either citations to reliable sources or external links". Personally, I don't think that "content" should added to categories, but I know other editors disagree. @Marchjuly: - and other editors - feel free to contribute to the discussion of my proposal at WT:CAT#Categories are not articles. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:21, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Alphabetic sorting for categories

FYI - I have made a proposal for an alphabetical sort function to be added to the category section of articles as part of the m:2016 Community Wishlist Survey. SFB 00:38, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Here are some related links to archived discussions.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:07, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

SORTKEY and definition of "key article"

Hi, I don't normally ask for help but I really need some for a category-related issue. I've been having a bit of a slow-but-now-speeding-up edit war with a user who is intent on categorizing certain articles about coats of arms with a "key sort" that looks like this: for the article "Coat of arms of FOO", he would like it to be categorized like this

[[Category:FOO| ]]

See, for example, his recent edit on Coat of arms of Whitehorse, Yukon.

In other words, he wants to categorize coats of arms articles as "key articles". The guideline #8 of WP:SORTKEY states: "Use a space as the sort key for a key article for the category."

Shortly after I pointed this guideline out to the user, suggesting that this sorting was inappropriate, he changed the definition of "key article" in the Wikipedia:Glossary (!) to state that a heraldic coat of arms in an example of a key article (which is clearly is not, in my opinion). There was no proposal of this edit to the definition made beforehand or contemporaneous with the edit, so I have been repeatedly removing it while trying to have it discussed on the Glossary talk page, but only this user is participating in that discussion, and he has repeatedly reverted my removals of it.

I thought about an RFC, but my patience on the issue is all but spent and this is the most I can muster.

Could some users who are familiar with categories please take a look at the discussion here and weigh in?

Thanks, Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

This category makes sense? Murdered activists

I noticed that Category:Murdered activists was deleted in 2007, and I understand it was deleted because the murdered activists actually belong to Category:Murdered politicians. Also because there is a category named Category:Assassinated activists.

I think that's wrong for two reasons:

You've misread the CFD, which doesn't even mention the murdered politicians category. The discussion was entirely about whether it made sense to have a category for people who were murdered for reasons unrelated to their activism, as distinct from people who were killed because of their activism and thus are categorized as "assassinated activists". postdlf (talk) 14:31, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
That's good to know, thanks. I think such things should be mentioned at Category talk:Assassinated people and Category talk:Murder victims to make it easier for editors to find this relevant info. —  Ark25  (talk) 22:04, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
Mari Gilbert was an activist and was murdered in a family violence episode. Ken Gorman, Helen Hill - looks like robbery-related deaths. Unclear motives for murder: Rudy Lozano —  Ark25  (talk) 23:56, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Murdered scholars or Murdered academics?

I've already found four murdered historians and I'm not sure what category to create: Category:Murdered scholars or Category:Murdered academics or maybe Category:Murdered scholars and academics (as a sub-category of Category:Scholars and academics)? These are the persons: John Holmes Jenkins, Adrian Greenwood, David Rattray, Nicolae Iorga. —  Ark25  (talk) 13:52, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

  • I wonder what being murdered has to do with being a historian, i.e. I wonder if it's a good idea to create this intersection category at all. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:32, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Ditto. I don't think the intersection category is meaningful. Pichpich (talk) 14:59, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
Well, categories like Category:Murdered writers, Category:Murdered students, Category:Murdered scientists already exist, most of them (I think) were murdered in robberies and rape cases, not for being writers, scientists or students. Although historians can be killed for their views history (especially of ethnic groups), just like the scientists can be killed for their views on religion for example. But I'm not going to create that category, I will just mention such murdered academics somewhere.
And how about Category:Murdered slaves, by the way? Slave George, Bow Kum, Zong massacre, Crispus Attucks, Iqbal Masih and probably many others. —  Ark25  (talk) 15:14, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Biographical article sorting for Thailand

Hi. I have a question at Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people#Country-specific WP:NAMESORT cases (Thailand). It's about how Thailand-specific category sorting should apply for biographical articles. Please share your thoughts if you're interested. Thanks. --Paul_012 (talk) 05:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Television programs/series

A user has recently populated the country subcats under Category:Television programs by country and Category:Television series by country. However, these two by-country categories are hopelessly overlapping, and the parents Category:Television programs and Category:Television series are problematic as well. Merging is probably in order, but given the large number of involved categories, I'd like to hear some more opinions first. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:45, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

After looking a bit more at the situation, it seems that for the majority of countries, the programs category is only an empty layer. I've started a CfD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 December 16#Category:Television series by country. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:57, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Political science by country

Category:Political science by country is currently categorised under Category:Science and technology by country, but this is clearly incorrect. "Science and technology" in this sense isn't meant to include social sciences in general. Would Category:Academia by country be an appropriate category, or should Category:Social sciences by country be created? --Paul_012 (talk) 18:51, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I've recategorised the political science cats under Academia. I haven't added the Science and technology cats, though, as the membership didn't seem obvious to me. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:57, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Categorisation of user pages

It would be very helpful if people could contribute to the discussions at Categories for discussion about joke categorisation on user pages.Rathfelder (talk) 12:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Empty red categories

I have recently noticed in my trawling through the categories that there are a few red categories which don't seem to actually exist - like Category:Winter Olympic competitors by sport and year. It's empty. So, I wondered if anyone could explain what is going on. They are mostly marked "A page with this title has previously been moved or deleted". If it has been deleted, how does it exist?Rathfelder (talk) 12:57, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't exist as such, but its entry lingers in the database, I have seen cats that have been created 10+ times although they end up getting salted. Can't remember the best ones, but see eg Category:Biography for an example.Le Deluge (talk) 13:12, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Red links

If anyone's got some time over Christmas, Wikipedia:Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links and Wikipedia:Database reports/Categories categorized in red-linked categories (Quarry for latest version) can always do with some attention. I've cleaned out the former at times in the past, I've been grinding down the latter from ~7000 to 1900 or so with some help from User:Rathfelder and others, but won't get it done by year-end as I'd hoped. Creating red-linked categories isn't my idea of fun, I've plenty of better things to be getting on with, but building the category network feels important for bots and Hotcat alike. Can I gently suggest that when people add a red-link category they actually create the cat rather than assuming that the category fairies will look after it? The date category folks seem to be the worst for that, about 80% of that first report are dates and I cleaned out all the dates from the second report a few weeks ago and it's now back up in the hundreds.Le Deluge (talk) 11:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  • I didn't even know there were such reports.Rathfelder (talk) 12:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
    • Fun for all the family. You've ended up doing quite a few - if you go back a month or two in the history of rlcwil you'll see a bunch of familiar categories that your browser has visited. Thanks for all your work, however unwitting! Le Deluge (talk) 13:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Category:Commons category with page title same as on Wikidata has been nominated for discussion

Category:Commons category with page title same as on Wikidata, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion by another editor. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:02, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Gibberish paragraph in Template talk:Category see also

Please see Template talk:Category see also § Gibberish needs fixing about the "sentence"

|project=: Any valid interwiki or interproject prefix from de:, fr:, es: access to other language Wikipedias to cross-sister wiki's using sister projects abbreviations such as B:, Q:, S:, v: etc., and, where applicable, both interlingual and cross-project links can be rendered as follows:

--Thnidu (talk) 06:56, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:State establishment category

Proposal, for Template:State establishment category, to remove "Category:YYYY in international relations". A state (dis)establishment generally has little do with international relations. Besides hundreds of international relations categories only contain state (dis)establishment child categories, which makes these categories quite redundant, since the content is already in "Category:YYYY in politics" as well. (Question: is this a right platform for a discussion about this proposal?) Marcocapelle (talk) 08:23, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Category needing expert attention

So far I've never encountered a category like this: Category:Russian history articles needing expert attention. It doesn't have a "needing expert attention" parent. Shall we just leave it alone or should we discuss it at CfD? Marcocapelle (talk) 18:35, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at the various subcategories of Category:All expert subject categories. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:09, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
I have added {{Expert subject category}} with parameters which add categories.[4] PrimeHunter (talk) 19:10, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! Marcocapelle (talk) 17:40, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Duplicate categories?

I just left a question on Category talk:People of Bosniak descent, can anyone take a look? Thanks. —  Ark25  (talk) 20:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Problem with Category:Historical plays

You have Category:Historical plays. This would mean, I assume, plays about actual events. But subcats for that are like Category:Plays set in the Middle Ages. Set in does not mean it's about real events, at all. This matters IMO.

You end up with Jekyll & Hyde (musical) in Category:Plays set in the 19th century which is in Category:Plays by century of setting which is in Category:Plays by period of setting which is in Category:Historical plays. But Jekyll & Hyde are not historical figures.

It's late and I'm not a category maven, so untangling all this looks really hard to me. It's fine to have categories "Plays set in the X century", but the subcats of Category:Historical plays ought to be categories like "Historical plays about the X century", which is a different thing, although (with very rare exceptions) they would intersect... "Historical plays about the X century" being a subcat of "plays set in the X century" as well as of "Historical plays by century".

Right? I'm afraid if I tried to fix this I'd make a dog's breakfast of it... maybe some category maven here can figure this out? Herostratus (talk) 07:57, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

The simplest way to untangle the correctly identified problem is by reverting the most recent edit on 20 November 2015 by User:Kjell Knudde on that category page, Category:Plays by period of setting, which added Category:Historical plays as a subcategory. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:21, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Oh, OK, done, thanks. Thought it would be harder than that. Thanks! Herostratus (talk) 04:30, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Nazism subcat disagreement

Editors interested in categorization are invited to comment at Talk:Strasserism#Category:Nazism, where there is a disagreement about inclusion of articles in both parent and child categories. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:54, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Similarly at Talk:White pride#Category:White supremacy. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:40, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

SUBCAT - Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908

The same editor who thinks that WP:SUBCAT ought not apply to White Pride apparently also thinks that WP:SUBCAT is "nonsense" when applied to Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908.

Editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at Talk:Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908#Category:Albany, Western Australia. (I use the term "discussion" loosely here, because the editors who don't like SUBCAT haven't yet indicated why). Mitch Ames (talk) 09:21, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Category loop: Colonization of the Americas

I've found this category loop: Category:English colonization of the Americas → Category:History of the Thirteen Colonies → Category:Colonization of the Americas → Category:English colonization of the Americas but I'm not sure at which point to break it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:17, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

13 colonies are a small part of the Americas, so shouldn't be parent to two continents.Le Deluge (talk) 14:46, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Le Deluge. Colonization of the Americas correctly contains articles such as Colonial Brazil and should not be a subcategory of History of the Thirteen Colonies. Certes (talk) 15:22, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
OK,  Done with this edit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Recent category edits

Hello. I see that blocked IP 5.69.225.209 has made several hundred edits over the last few days, many of which are adding and deleting categories. Some of these edits are positive, some negative and others show signs of good faith but need tidying. Many edits follow a pattern of replacing Category: English (type of person) by the less precise Category: British (type of person). I think the changes could benefit from a review by someone familiar with WP categorisation, especially of British people. I'm willing to help out but I'm no category expert and there are quite a few articles affected, so it may need to be a team effort. Any advice please? Certes (talk) 19:33, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted or changed many of the edits he made. He seems to be under the impression that you can only be English if you are of white 'English' descent (whatever that means, given we've been receiving immigrants for our entire history) and that English can only therefore be an ethnicity (again, highly questionable given the multi-ethnic makeup of even almost all white people in England) and not a national identity. I think it's definitely good faith, not vandalism or pointy, and he has made plenty of productive edits as well, but these are certainly misguided. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Necrothesp. I hadn't spotted the ethnic link. It seems an odd idea that a connection to England could qualify someone as British but not English. Certes (talk) 19:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
@Necrothesp and Certes: As a classic mongrel of the British Isles with no immigration in my bloodlines for centuries, I'd be mildly upset if someone tried to pin me down to one side or other of Hadrian's Wall - call me British, or Anglo-Scots; but I'm neither English nor Scottish. Personally I think editors are rather too quick to split the UK into the home nations - it's relevant for some things like sport, politics and legal systems - but it's hardly WP:DEFINING for eg Category:English chiropractors or Category:English beekeepers. One issue is that editors tend to do it without seeing how the person concerned defines themselves, there's lots who share my problem of links to more than one home nation - Gordon Ramsay for instance. One can't claim it's to make UK categories more manageable when England has ~84% of the population (I can't remember the other splits off-hand, it's something like 8%/5%/3% for Scotland/Wales/NI) - if it was really about that then one would split England into counties or NUTS1 regions or something. My final problem is the lingering suspicion that it's driven by nationalist dogma rather than Wikipedia policy, although obviously that can be hard to prove. So I've not looked in detail at the edits in question, but I do think it's an area where editors tend to WP:OVERCAT, and more attention should be paid to how British people define their own nationality.Le Deluge (talk) 00:41, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Le Deluge. For what it's worth I'm in a similar position: definitely British; borderline English, Scottish, both or neither. In the articles I looked at, the subject moved to England from overseas and has no connection to Scotland, Wales or NI. To my mind they're either naturalised as both British and English, or not yet qualified as either. Certes (talk) 09:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
@Certes: That's where I'd disagree. There's three stages of immigration 1)In the country on a foreign passport 2)In the country with a British passport and 3)integrated culturally, which may happen within the lifetime of the immigrant or may not happen for generations (Amish, Romani). At stage 2) someone can only be British, as there's no such thing as an English or Scottish (at the moment) or Yorkshire passport. Englishness is more about the acceptance of a common culture (which may stretch in response to immigration - eg chicken tikka - but the emphasis is on commonality), certainly when I've been to England v Pakistan cricket matches there's been a lot of people who presumably have British passports but who haven't got to the stage where they will cheer on England (or more likely mutter into one's warm beer in despair at their performance). That citizenship thing is a pretty black and white test, whereas below that it is far more subjective, and I'd suggest your examples are stage 2 - so the paperwork says they are legally British but they can't be described as English.Le Deluge (talk) 21:24, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm English and happily describe myself as such (although I also have some Scottish and Irish ancestry). However, I would certainly agree with you that we should have a single category or description (i.e. British) if so many editors weren't so quick to categorise or describe people as Scottish or Welsh purely on the basis of their place of birth or long-term residence and scream at and revert any editor who removes those cats or descriptions. Since they do and they do, I think it's only fair that this is applied across the board and includes all people from our island. And trust me, we will never stop Scottish and Welsh editors with a nationalist bent from doing this; it's been proposed and shouted down before. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:35, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
@Necrothesp: I completely recognise that the nats' enthusiasm for subdividing will generally outweigh other people's enthusiasm for reverting them, but at the same time it feels like we could do a bit more to discourage the casual categoriser from overdoing the subcats, I sense a good chunk of it comes from non-Brits who are just going along with what feels like a presumption to subcat. Something like an explicit instruction in the category guidelines to observe the well-established rules on WP:DEFINING-ness and self-identifying? I know there's going to be a big chunk of grey area between sport/government/law and beekeeping, in particular things like musicians and writers will no doubt end up getting split even if there's nothing particularly Scottish about Harry Potter, but it would all help.Le Deluge (talk) 21:24, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Big House categories

Reggie.clever (talk · contribs) has created two categories, Category:Big House Publishing Artists and Category:Big House Companies, which are probably related - but has put them inside themselves, with no true parent categories. What would be suitable parents for these?

Since (what appears to be) a related article, Big House Publishing, has been created and deleted several times (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Big House Publishing), maybe these categories should be deleted too. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:10, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Category:Joe Satriani album covers

I was doing a bit of non-free image clean up when I noticed that the album cover art, etc. for stuff by Joe Satriani is categorized into Category:Album covers. I know that artists/bands often have sub-categories specific to them, so I created Category:Joe Satriani album covers, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly. Also, it seems as there was a Category:Joe Satriani which was CSD way back in 2007, but not sure if that means a category for the cover art shouldn't be created at all. Anyway, any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:48, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

categorization of List of types of killing

Editors interested in categorization are invited to comment at Talk:List of types of killing#Categories: Murder, Homicide as to whether List of types of killing should or should not be listed in the specific categories Category:Murder, Category:Suicide. I suggest that they ought not be, because the categories are far more specific than that article, but Hmains disagrees. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:46, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Request for additional opinions at Talk:Haavara Agreement

There is a question about inclusion of Category:Antisemitism in Haavara Agreement. Additional opinions at Talk:Haavara Agreement#Antisemitism Category would be helpful. VQuakr (talk) 07:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

thank you Igor Berger (talk) 08:21, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

seeking help with CATDEF issue

I hope this is the right place to post this. I'm seeking additional opinions regarding a dispute with another user over the proper categorization of an article, and the correct application (or not) of defining characteristics. If you can help, please weigh in at Talk:Full communion#Categorisation. Thank you in advance, Mathglot (talk) 20:02, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:OCAWARD

See discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Overcategorization#WP:OCAWARD. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Characters by ethnicity and religion question

There are tons of categories relating to fictional characters ethnic background and some ethno-religious categories such as Category:Fictional Jews but the ones only for a characters religion seem to be non-existent. Category:Islam in fiction exists and categories for real life people such as Category:Muslims and Category:Former Muslims exists as well. Why have categories like Category:Fictional Muslims or Category:Fictional Christians been deleted? I don't mean to be argumentative I'm just kind of curious.★Trekker (talk) 22:55, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

The deletion logs at the red links show the reason for the deletions. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 June 13#Fictional characters by religion and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 February 24#Category:Fictional characters by religion. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:14, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
Yeah I know, but I don't really get the arguments. How by comparison are ethnic categories better?★Trekker (talk) 01:24, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
@*Treker: Presumably ethnicity is easier to verify than religion, especially with fictional characters. Ethnicity is (usually) acquired by family relations, religion is acquired by belief. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:36, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
@Marcocapelle: Personally I'd say it's the opposite, characters (just like real people) can be descendant of multiple ethnicities and be very unaware of them, on the other hand most characters who have a religion, (just like real people) usually tent to only subscribe to one in their lifetime. But I guess I'm in the minority with that oppinion. Thanks for answering either way.★Trekker (talk) 08:50, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Meeting facilitation formats

I'd like to see a category for meeting formats. I don't have much experience in categorization, so I thought I would propose it here first. I was prompted by the list I stumbled upon at Unconference#Facilitation styles. I considered Category:Meeting facilitation, but some relevant formats, such as World Café, don't involve a facilitator in the same way as others. How about Category:Meeting formats? Sondra.kinsey (talk) 22:42, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Dispute without discussion

User:Zingvin keeps adding history categories to finance articles, see e.g. the edit history of Stock market since 23 February and see the current content of Category:Economic history of the Netherlands. I've told them on their talk page not to do this, but they don't react and just keep going on. What is the best action to proceed? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:04, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

  • This is no longer applicable, the user has been blocked. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for a Category:Wikipedia stub templates by topic

Hi people. I have just proposed this category creation for stub categories (please refer to that thread in order to avoid reduplications). Best regards, --Fadesga (talk) 11:55, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Template:Main category

The template {{Main category}} is used on both category pages and article pages. In the former, it just duplicates the categorization at the bottom of the page (see, for example, Category:Wikipedia backlog). In the latter, it is generally placed in the body of the article (see, for example, Atlantic Ocean#History), which is contrary to the editing guidelines for categorization: "By convention, category declarations are placed at the end of the wikitext". Can anyone think of a reason why this template should not be deleted? RockMagnetist(talk) 16:09, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing dispute re duplication in child and parent categories

Hmains and I have an ongoing disagreement about categorisation, and I would appreciate other editors' input on the matter. The essence of the disagreement is that I have been removing articles (and categories) from parent and grandparent (etc) categories where the removed article has been duplicated in both a child and parent category. This removal is per WP:SUBCAT, which says, clearly and unambiguously (with my added emphasis here):

... an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it. In other words, a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category (supercategory) of that category ...

In these cases the categories are not marked as {{Non-diffusing subcategory}} or {{All included}}. Hmains disagrees with these edits, and has been reverting them. Basroch refugee camp is a recent example. I removed it from Category:European migrant crisis because that category is a parent of Category:Calais migrant crisis (1999–present), which the article is in directly. Hmains reverted the edit. We have discussed the matter on my talk page [5][6][7] but we seem no closer to resolving the disagreement. In some cases Hmains has added {{All included}} when reverting my edits (see [8]), but has suggested that might not be the case in future [9][10].

Personally I do not think the duplication in child and parent categories is necessary in most cases - as SUBCAT says, they should be exceptions, not the norm - so I don't intend to add the {{Non-diffusing subcategory}} or {{All included}} every time I find duplications. However if an editor (Hmains or other) marks a category with the template then I won't intentionally remove the duplication. It appears though that Hmains is not inclined to add the templates either - only to revert my edits.

I'd like to hear the opinions of other editors, to help resolve this ongoing dispute. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:45, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

You forgot to mention me. I too opposed your edits strongly. We even discussed this on my talkpage from the theoretical side of the issue along the same lines as you mentioned above. I countered your argument with two arguments of my own, and feel that there are more theoretical objections which as to yet I haven't been able to formulate precisely. Debresser (talk) 17:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Your arguments appear to boil down to:
  • I actually agree with you.... — Thank you.
  • the imperfectness of the system shouldn't stop us from making the right decision in any individual case — I agree that WP:IAR exists, but exceptions should be "rare" and better justified. (For the purpose of this disucssion, an appropriate template on the category page would be "better justified".)
  • who am I to decide whether a category should be considered diffusing or non-diffusing — if you don't know whether a particular category should be an exception to the general rule of SUBCAT, then perhaps you should just to follow the general rule of SUBCAT - and not duplicate the categorization.
  • I am perfectly fine ... with categories being both, i.e. partially diffusing and partially non-diffusing ... — I don't think that "I don't care about the guideline" is a very compelling argument.
Mitch Ames (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
You quoted me out of context. I agree with you that there is a problem. One guideline is very clear. The other leaves too much unspecified. WP:DUPCAT is not clear. Never has been. That is why we are here, to improve that guideline. So yes, "I disagree with the guideline" is an argument. Debresser (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
WP:SUBCAT is quite clear that "Apart from certain exceptions [which are well defined] an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication ... a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category"
WP:DUPCAT is quite clear that "Non-diffusing subcategories should be identified with a template on the category page".
What I think is not clear is under what circumstances a category should be non-diffusing. However I don't think that lack of clarity is the problem in this ongoing dispute. Currently if there is no non-diffusing template, I will generally assume that the default SUBCAT guideline of non-duplication applies. If someone adds a non-diffusing template then I won't remove the duplication. The problem is not whether or not a category should be non-diffusing, the problem is that Hmains is treating categories as non-diffusing even when there is nothing (no template) to suggest that they are non-diffusing, and not adding an appropriate template to indicate that the category should be non-diffusing. (As previously mentioned Hmains has added the templates in some cases, but does not appear inclined to do so consistently.) Thus we have one editor (Hmains) treating the category as non-diffusing even though it is not marked as such, and one editor (me) treating the category as diffusing because SUBCAT says that is the general rule (and there's no template marking the exception).
It seems to me that there are several possible solutions to this dispute:
  1. Categories diffuse by default unless they are marked as non-diffusing. This is consistent with the existing SUBCAT and DUPCAT. The onus is on editors who want the category to be non-diffusing to clearly indicate so by using the appropriate templates. This is my preferred option, because it is consistent with the existing guidelines.
  2. All editors are required to analyse all relevant categories and decide whether they should diffuse or not, before adding or removing any category duplication. I don't think this is feasible, because not all editors will reach the same conclusion every time, and it is contrary to DUPCAT's clear statement that "Apart from certain exceptions ... an article should be categorised ... without duplication ... a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category".
  3. We change SUBCAT, DUPCAT so that they do not say "Apart from certain exceptions ... an article should be categorised ... without duplication ... a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category". I don't think this is necessary, but those who feel it is the best solution are free to propose the change.
Other possible improvements (which won't fix the problem as described above, but might address Debresser's comments) that one might propose to the guidelines are:
Mitch Ames (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
"What I think is not clear is under what circumstances a category should be non-diffusing" That is precisely what I meant that WP:DUPCAT is not clear about.
I suddenly understood what the big problem is I have with your edits. The one which I mentioned above I wasn't able to formulate precisely. It is that although WP:DUPCAT says clearly that "Non-diffusing subcategories should be identified with a template on the category page", it does not say the opposite, that the lack of such a template is in itself proof that a category is diffusing. This is precisely the point that you have been pushing, and for which I (and perhaps others) have reverted you. Because such a rule does not exist, and your "I will generally assume" is an unjustified failure to use your head and positively determine from the nature of the categories in question whether they are or are not diffusing. Your claim that "This is consistent with the existing SUBCAT and DUPCAT." is a logical fallacy, with all due respect.
I therefore strongly reject option 1. With the present unclear criteria for "diffusing", only option 2 is a true description of the situation, but it has the problem which you mentioned, that it is hard for the individual editor, especially the less experienced one in the area of categories on Wikipedia, to make that determination. Option 3 simply avoids the issue. I think we should first try and see if we can elucidate the concept of a diffusing category a bit better, perhaps with several examples. If that fails, we can always implement option 3. Debresser (talk) 21:16, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
it does not say ... that the lack of such a template is in itself proof that a category is diffusing
WP:CAT#Categorizing pages says:
"In addition, each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs. ... if a page belongs to a subcategory of C (or a subcategory of a subcategory of C, and so on) then it is not normally placed directly into C."
WP:SUBCAT says:
an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it. In other words, a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category (supercategory) of that category"
WP:DUPCAT says:
Non-diffusing subcategories should be identified with a template on the category page:
The guidelines clearly and definitely say that categories are generally intended to diffuse, and that exceptions to that general rule "should be identified with a template". You say that the lack of a template does not prove that the category is diffusing, but there is no need to "prove" the diffusion - it's the clearly stated default, normal, and thus implied purpose of a category until indicated otherwise.
only option 2 is a true description of the situation, but ... it is hard for the individual editor, ... to make that determination — Those editors who feel that a category should be non-diffusing can easily resolve the problem by putting the appropriate template on the relevant categories, instead of complaining about the editors who pay some attention to the guidelines.
I think we should first try and see if we can elucidate the concept of a diffusing category a bit better, perhaps with several examples. – The concept is already well defined in WP:CAT and I have repeatedly quoted the relevant sections of it. We can discuss some guidelines about how to decide whether a particular category should be non-diffusing or all-included - but in the meantime we have a perfectly good and acceptable method of indicating that intent, by simply applying the appropriate template. Surely it's not so hard to just use that method.
Mitch Ames (talk) 13:49, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't choose to write much, but Debresser has clearly stated the problems with the MOS (which may not be solvable), with Mitch Ames edits, and why such edits are inherently disruptive to the category system and why they should be stopped. This situation involves not only non-diffusing categories but also 'all included' ones--which a reading of the category contents will show all included is the intent of the various editors who populated the category even if no one along the way ever added the 'all included' template. Hmains (talk) 02:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Precisely. The guideline notwithstanding, all these templates were never added systematically, so their absence is not prove of anything. Nor should it be, as I explained above. Debresser (talk) 05:34, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
  • There is little point in having a rule at WP:SUBCAT if editors are free to violate it at will. And so I agree with Mitch Ames -- categories are diffusing unless the community has decided otherwise. And given the potentially large number of articles that might be affected by changing a category's status from "diffusing" to "non-diffusing", those non-diffusion templates shouldn't be added without a community discussion. NewYorkActuary (talk) 14:50, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Thta point of view is not supported by the guideline. To the contrary, the guideline implies to leave that decision up to individual editors. And in general, try to minimize Wikipedia:Rulecruft. Debresser (talk) 14:57, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
  • It looks like it's time to improve the guideline in this respect, to make it less ambiguous. Avoiding rulecruft is good when most people naturally understand the rules in a similar way but not if they understand them differently or even in an opposite way. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  • It looks like I am late to the party and run the risk of not knowing what I am talking about but I remain incredibly frustrated at the removal of categories from the articles I create and edit. My reasoning is simple-minded. I want readers to find the information that they need from the source of 'all human knowledge'. I am not concerned one bit about redundancy. Sometimes the only way an article is related to another is very general in nature-a broad category. The very same article is also part of a very specific category....or two broad categories. I am also concerned that when I have registered my concerns about the whole philosophy of this project, some category editor goes to my editing history (as if it were an invitation) to ream out my categorizations. This has happened more than once: I disagree with the removal of a category from an article and leave a congenial message on the category editor's talk page questioning the deletion. Minutes afterwards I see dozens of categories removed (content deletion and the deletion on my contributions to the encyclopedia) by the editor who probably didn't like my message even though I usually pretty nice. Doggone it! What is the harm in having too many categories?? Because I have left this message here you are all invited to watch almost all the categories removed from my articles by some category editor who doesn't like this post on this discussion page. Here, let me make it easier for you. Here is the list of articles that I have created. Have a go. Slice and dice. Find the parents, delete them and leave the children. You know what to do. What the heck, I'm joining the project and work that way.
Best Regards,
Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 10:38, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Support the interpretation of User talk:Mitch Ames. Diffuse to the lowest where logically possible. Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:20, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Author self-delete

Isn't there a template allowing the creator of an empty category to speedy-delete it? And if so, why has 15 minutes of searching failed to find reference to it? Thanks, Johnbod (talk) 14:47, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Johnbod: We have {{db-author}} and {{db-catempty}}. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:14, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! They should be easier to find though. Johnbod (talk) 20:16, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
They're listed at WP:SPEEDY. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:51, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia category listed at Requested moves

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Some questons and comments

I have just begun delving into the issue of categories. Consequently, I have some generic questions and observations. As a Milhist coordinator, my interest is in how categories can help with curation of the project by identifying categories directly linked to the project and those peripheral to the project, both in the main space and not in the main space.

Compressing the tree and making it more manageable

I have been browsing the category tree.[11] Even the concise view is very large and causing me issues. I noticed at Category:1792 establishments that Category:Kentucky is the first sub category. The tree for Kentucky then fills a page. On the page for Category:Kentucky, I see Category:States of the United States. The category "States of the United States", is the "key" category to which Kentucky belongs.

My observation would be that the size of the category tree could be greatly reduced by displaying the full detail of the tree for Kentucky only at the point in the tree of its "key" category (ie, where it is preceed by its key category). Elsewhere in the tree where Kentucky appears, a flag or tag could be added to indicate that there is much more detail. There is the possibility of an interactive feature - ie (±). The interactive feature could expand or collapse the detail for Kentucky at that point on the tree page.

At places where Category:Kentucky appears, the key category to which it belongs can also be shown eg {Category:States of the United States}. The curly brackets are used to indicate that it is the key category. Of course, this would be redundant at the point in the tree where it is preceded by its key category. This would be at the "main path". An interactive feature might navigate to where Kentucky appears in its "main path" - ie (→).

A "main path" follows a tree of "key categories". For Kentucky, this would be: Category:Countries, Category:Countries by continent, Category:Countries in North America and finally Category:States of the United States. It is at this point in the category tree that the full tree for Category:Kentucky would be displayed with all of its branches. You will appreciate that I have used Kentucky as an example to illustrate a principle.

A better way to deal with stubs as a category

I see a lot of different categories of stubs. Consequently, I see a lot of structure duplicated for stubs (and some other things). However, the path structure does not necessarily mirror the "main" structure. It should (allowing for the absence of branches in stubs that are unpopulated and therefore redundant). I would have thought that "stubs" should be a primary category yet there are many categories of stubs that are primary categories themself - Category:History stubs. I cold suggest a functionality that might obviate such duplication. Instead of a discrete category of Category:Armenian history stubs, instead, it would appear as [[Armenian history|stub]] or {{stub category|[[Armenian history stubs]]}}. The specific syntax is immaterial, it is the effect or concept that is pertinent. The functionality creates a virtual tree. As such, it reduces the "actual" amount of data that must be managed and processed. The functionality used for stubs could then be applied to other Wiki internal categories which also mirror the "main" category tree.

How to diffuse and move to a subcategory?

Under Category:Buildings and structures by type, I noticed fences, gates, gatehouses and walls that (IMO) all fall to a sub category of barriers? At what number of subcategories within a category is it appropriate to diffuse and reduce the number. I also noted: forts, fortifications, castles, barracks, Military buildings and structures, Military installations and camps (in which some subcategories are military). Is there an easy process to group and diffuse categories to a sub category - [[Category:Military Buildings and structures by type]]‎?

I saw another group of categories - it contained a number of different categories of "people" as well as quite a lot of other categories. Within this were "people by occupation" and "sports people", each with a number of subcategories. Technically, not everybody who plays a sport is a sportsperson by occupation. However, the title "people by occupation" could be re-titled "people by occupation or field of endeavour". Alternatively, the category page could "define" what falls within the category, such that the category "occupation" is defined as "an occupation or field of endeavour". Is this how things are intended to work? It would make sense if the category somehow defined its scope and that this was made explict in guides about how categories work. Just a thought.

Key groupings

I am seeing opportunities to categorise in a lot of places through the tree based on broad categories: who, what, when, where and why. These could be applied at the highest level in the first instance. I can also see that they could be applied to branches at any level. So, for the category, Kentucky the subcategories could be broadly categorised as: people, places (localities building geographical features), things from Kentucky (animals or objects), a Kentucky timeline and history, and other things that are more abstract. I would describe these as "key groupings". Not every subcategory following from a particular branch will fall to a "key grouping" but it provides a "conceptual basis" for structuring the category tree.

Furthermore, at any particular branch, "key subgrouping sets" may become apparent which have some commonality for other similar branches in the tree. Applying such a concept would result in a "conceptually consistent" structure. Sets of key groupings. So, I can see that all countries would have a similar subcategory structure based on "key subgrouping sets". In effect, "key subgrouping country" would be a boilerplate for all countries. Such a concept does not restrict the addition of additional subcategories to the set for a particular country. It does not impose a "one size fits all" - rather, it should acknowledge commonality to the extent that there is commonality while also, embracing diversity. "Key subgroupings" would share a common naming convention - eg "people from country XYZ". Of course, the names used in the stem of key subgrouping sets would need to be agreed.

Another key grouping I can identify are those things that relate to Wikipedia as a domain - stubs, hidden categories (as a category) and anything else relating to Wikipedia as a construct as opposed to the collection of encyclopedic articles in the main space.

Key groupings as a boilerplate for similar branches

Another matter would relate to the catergory of occupations and the category of persons from from Country XYZ by occupation. The occupations in the second set should (by definition) be a subset of the first category. Also, "occupations by country" in the first set should exactly equal the second set. The second set should mirror the first set.

The first set may have the occupation, head of state populated by: president, governor, monach etc. However, country XYZ only has presidents. The category of heads of state is redundant in this case. In the second set, heads of state is an implied and omitted category. Because it is omitted, the two sets don't have the same structure. Consequently, they cannot be directly compared. To overcome this, I suggest "transparent category levels" in the second set. This is not to be confused with "hidden categories". By this, I mean that the tree structure in the first set is maintained in the second set but levels of category with only one referent (no branching) are "transparent" (not normally seen) and filtered from the normal tree structure report. The advantage is that it maintains a direct correspondence between the two sets and allows a direct comparison. A new occupation category added to the second set should also appear in the first set. Maintaining the structures transparently allows a direct comparison to reveal such and addition. Also, when attempting to add a new occupation category to the second set, existing occupations in the first set can be revealed. This could facilitate identifying whether this "new category" already exists in the first set (even if it isn't a perfect match.

A browser to better use categories

At present, WP lacks the ability to "browse" by category from the top down. A more defined structure would facilitate this. I can see this being analogous to Windows file explorer. The directory/category structure can be explored as one option or a search made across the main space. An additional feature would be to search by word within a category. Yes, this is already available in Wiki search but not with the degree of ease comparable with Windows file explorer.


Categories are under-exploited.

Just some thoughts, ideas and observations. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 08:56, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:TLDR - I gave up in the paragraph about stubs. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
I think most of the above essay falls apart in two categories: confirming hat we already have (e.g. is key groupings any different than categorizing by defining characteristics?) and wishful thinking for the future. I don't mind the latter, but very people have the capabilities to implement these ideas and (speaking for myself) I don't think they have high priority. Top priority (as far as categories concerned) should be that content of categories becomes visible on mobile phones as well. Wikipedia will lose its relevance altogether if it does not fully adapt to mobile. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:41, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
@Marcocapelle, Thankyou for taking the time to consider what I have written. I have the conceptual capacity to address some of this but lack the "domain" knowledge to implement any change. Yes, key groupings is (in part) a matter of categorising by defining characteristics. It is a template of defined characteristics that is applied across similar domains. The concept is to "guide" category structure between comparable domains. Occupations in country X, Country Y and Country Z will have identical common elements (but with redundant elements being "transparent" and redundant categories implied). By this, the categories for each country will be an "exact" subset of the global set of occupations. This does not mean that "defining characteristics" are a rigid structure but one that evolves. It can accommodate adding a "new" defining characteristic to the set of defining characteristics - a new branch (say, the occupation of underwater arts and crafts).
I can see advantages for users but perhaps, also for server processing. If branches are constructed from sets that have identical "nominal" structures, then navigating the tree can become "intuitive". Imagine every city in the world built to the same plan but they are at different stages of construction and some have suburbs that will never be built in the others but every feature in every city is taken from the master plan. A traveler "dropped" into any city could intuitively navigate their new environment based on the knowledge of their home city (or by reference to the master plan).. Just a thought. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 05:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Establishments by year categories

After closing the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 September 10, I was thinking that it may be helpful to reconsider how templates such as {{EstcatCountryCentury}} (e.g. at Category:5th-century establishments in India) and {{EstcatCountry1stMillennium}} are used. The presence of so many redlinks is just an invitation to recreate these categories for even just one article. I am not sure what the solution is, or even if there is a problem to solve, but thought I would at least mention it. Cheers, -- Black Falcon (talk) 21:52, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the observation, I'll think about it. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
    • @Black Falcon: Great minds think alike! Glad to see others are also thinking about these. I'm intending to revise these templates after the next batch of category merges. I have a few things in mind:
      • for the century templates: only include the big table if century > the relevant threshold number, perhaps also if a new parameter "full=yes" (this would be for rare exceptions such as Roman Empire); before the threshold, display only cat pair and the parent categories; then it would no longer be necessary to make changes like [12]
      • for the year-by-country templates, display a warning along the lines of "categories by country and year should not be created before the 11th century", if used in a range that has been merged.
    • More suggestions welcome! – Fayenatic London 20:11, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Agree really good work here. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:42, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Thanks! It wasn't easy.
  • Well done to Marcocapelle for another thorough nomination.
  • Meanwhile, any help with the categories that were tagged in August (CFD relisted Oct 3), now listed in 4 collapsed sections at WP:CFDWM under "Multiple merge targets", would be very welcome. Take your pick from China, England, France and Japan. There are only one or two members in most categories, so it's best done manually. If they are like the last set, it's less work than may appear, because some of the members are in a sub-category already, or wrongly categorised. – Fayenatic London 15:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

RFC

An RFC has been opened about categorization of events by past or current country, see the link here. Feel free to join the discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:57, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Changing a category name

What is the process for changing the title of a category? I am thinking about this category in particular Category:Royal_Navy_officers_who_were_court-martialed which, as it is about British Royal Navy officers, should more appropriately use the British English spelling of court-martialled.--Ykraps (talk) 14:17, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

You can start a WP:CFD discussion (or possibly WP:CFDS). Should the category be restricted to people convicted by a court martial? DexDor (talk) 20:05, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
@Ykraps: Use WP:CFDS only if one or more of WP:C2A, WP:C2B, WP:C2C, WP:C2D or WP:C2E apply. Otherwise, use WP:CSD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:29, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
Confusingly C2A unequivocally states that differences between American and British spelling aren't errors, and makes no allowance for MOS:TIES. For this reason, I have chosen to open a full discussion. As I have no previous experience in this arena, could one of you check it's been done correctly? DexDor, are you suggesting that all similar categories are renamed, 'Xs convicted by a court-martial'? If so, this would eliminate the American/British spelling problem but not all the people in this category were convicted.--Ykraps (talk) 07:24, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
How about "Xs tried by a court-martial"? NewYorkActuary (talk) 07:32, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that could work.--Ykraps (talk) 08:04, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Category:Kvng RTH

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout#Conflict with Category:Kvng RTH --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:46, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

And see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_December_29#Category:Kvng_RTH: perhaps someone in this project can answer the question "is there a specific policy that says editors are not allowed to create and maintain hidden categories for the purpose of improving workflow?" which, in this context, refers to categories created by an editor for their own personal workflow. @Kvng: to notify of this post - requesting help from the categories enthusiasts. PamD 15:59, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to other editors also using this category if they want to help with this review work. We can rename it if necessary. ~Kvng (talk) 16:14, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

university-people categories; category-defining generally

There seem to be many categories of particular universities' faculty and notable people. But the definition for inclusion is not stated on the category page. Can it be? Should a university faculty category include both current and former faculty? Bo99 (talk) 16:50, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, both current and former should be included as we do not limit categories only to presently occurring membership. Where there is a content-specific reason to make an exception, the name of the category itself will make its scope clear (see Category:Former capitals of the United States, Category:People by former religion, etc.). postdlf (talk) 17:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Thx for that. Bo99 (talk) 17:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Alphabetical-categories: families

Hi-I notice that categories about families that the given name is used instead of going alphabetical by surname. The reason given is that various individuals in these families have the same first name. I always thought the names should be listed alphabetically according to the surname. Clarification is needed about this? Is there something I need to know? Thank you-RFD (talk) 14:32, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Do you mean "...same surname..."? Can you give an example? DexDor (talk) 18:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

William Shakespeare

Category:William Shakespeare is in Category:17th-century writers. Although the Bard himself undoubtedly belongs in that category, many other subjects in Category:William Shakespeare (such as the Thane of Cawdor and the asteroid 2985 Shakespeare) do not. This causes problems: for example, Henry Green (politician, died 1399) comes up in my search for Category:16th-century English people. Should we unlink this category from its parent categories, or have I missed something? Certes (talk) 12:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Another example: Category:Viking Age people. Some of them were 8th-century, but not all. This looks like something I should fix, but I'm not a category expert so I'm reluctant to jump in without getting a second opinion. Certes (talk) 14:36, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
@Certes: Category:William Shakespeare is meant to contain articles about William Shakespeare. The asteroid certainly doesn't belong in the category but on the other hand there can be many articles that are certainly about William Shakespeare that do not belong in a 17th-century tree. My view on this issue is that not Category:William Shakespeare should be in Category:17th-century writers, but only article William Shakespeare should be in Category:17th-century writers. About the other example, it already has subcategories by century, these subcategories are in people by century categories, which means that not the Category:Viking Age people need to be parented to people by century as well, that merely leads to duplication. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:45, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll wait a bit longer then, if no one objects, remove some categories (e.g. take Category:William Shakespeare out of Category:17th-century writers), adding category members instead where appropriate. Certes (talk) 01:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

This type of categorisation seems to be widespread. Category:Charles Dickens is in Category:Victorian novelists, even though Lant Street and The Daily News (UK) shouldn't be. Someone doesn't understand categorisation, and it may be me. Or perhaps no one cares any more now that Wikidata is emerging. I'll leave things alone. Certes (talk) 11:21, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Bloomsbury Group

I'm not sufficiently familiar with categorisation to sort this out this tangle. The Bloomsbury Group was an informal group of people, some painters, some writers, some had other (or no particular) occupation. Barbara Hiles was a painter but her article is categorised in Category:Bloomsbury Group which (ultimately) is a subcat of Category:English artists and so Mitch Ames has removed the latter category from the article. I know this is technically correct but is seems to me it leaves the categorisation here in an unsatisfactory state because no category is now defining her as a painter rather than various other occupations. Perhaps her article should be removed from Category:Bloomsbury Group – she is not included in the Bloomsbury Group article, probably deliberately, and her article only says she was "associated with members of the Bloomsbury Group". However, I feel, subjectively, Bloomsbury is defining for her. Or is it legitimate to include her in a subcat of Category:English artists, say Category:English women painters? An even more difficult situation is for, say, Virginia Woolf. She is canonically "Bloomsbury Group" but should her article therefore be removed from several writers categories? Finally, and going beyond my level of competence, should Category:Bloomsbury Group be non-diffusing? Thincat (talk) 12:33, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm no expert on the Bloomsbury Group but it seems to me that making category A a member of category B can mean one of two things. Sometimes it means that every member of A is a member of B; sometimes it doesn't. It looks as if Mitch Ames quite reasonably assumed the first meaning, whereas whoever quite legitimately put Bloomsbury Group into English artists assumed the second. It's the same general problem that I stumbled upon in the previous section with Shakespeare and the Vikings. The only solution I can see is for us to record a distinction between those meanings, either on a per-link or a per-parent-category basis. Articles which qualify for a child category should be removed from it only if they are in a parent category connected by a link of the first type. Is it true that all links where the parent category is diffusing are of the first type, and other links are not, or is the distinction more complicated? Certes (talk) 12:54, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for this. Before posting I had read your discussion above, wondering whether I was raising a different example of the same issue. In the Bloomsbury case Category:Bloomsbury Group is included in a mish-mash of categories! Reading WP:DUPCAT tells me what I should be doing if I encounter a non-diffusing category but it offers little by way of help in deciding which categories ought to be non-diffusing. I have found serious problems on Wikidata where editors sometimes assume that enwp articles in sub-sub-sub categories are invariably members of the category at the top. This is often simply not the case. Thincat (talk) 13:10, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
making category A a member of category B can mean one of two things. Sometimes it means that every member of A is a member of B; sometimes it doesn't. — It should mean that (most) members of A are members of B. WP:SUBCAT says quite explicitly (with my insertions of A, B for example): "When making one category [A] a subcategory of another [B], ensure that the members of the subcategory [A] really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent [B] also." Mitch Ames (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
You're right about what should happen. Sadly, I fear I may also be right about what does happen. There may be a third type of category: those with no concept of membership. What are the inclusion criteria for Category:William Shakespeare, which includes several groups of people, an insult and an asteroid? Certes (talk) 15:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
It is great fun reading through this category looking for the insult! Educational as well – I discovered a crater on Mercury. By comparison Category:Bloomsbury Group is quite dowdy and lacking such embellishments. Thincat (talk) 09:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
I suggest that Category:Bloomsbury Group would be a good candidate for being a non-diffusing subcategory of 20th-century English writers, English painters, and economists. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:45, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
I have done that quickly to try and preempt any category removals at a higher level. I'll go through gradually populating the supercats (at the lowest level) if necessary. Thank you. Thincat (talk) 15:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Anyhow, removed Hiles from the Bloomsbury Group cat, for reasons stated in the edit summary ([13]). Not too fond of the unsightly collection of "non-diffusing category" banners in the Bloomsbury Group cat. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:09, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
    Well, although I would have kept her in there (as I implied above), there's a perfectly good case for removing her. I don't like the banners either but what would you do for Roger Fry? Remove him from the Bloomsbury category (as you have done for Hiles) or risk him being removed from 20th-century English painters because that is a supercat of Bloomsbury Group, or remove the "occupation" supercats from Bloomsbury Group (the other two supercats could also be reasonably removed)? Thincat (talk) 17:43, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
    Two of the most famous members (John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf) weren't known for their painting skills, so it seems reasonable to remove the category link. Certes (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
    I think the only applicable category for the Bloomsbury category is Category:Literary circles. In that case, diffusion doesn't need to be considered. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:02, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

New incredibly broad racial/gender categories

I have come across two categories, Category:African-American sportsmen and Category:White Americans, which were rather arbitrarily placed on a few articles of individual people while they could theoretically include thousands. I have no idea whether they should continue to exist, be rapidly expanded, be redefined to non-person articles, just left with an arbitrary selection of articles, or whatever else is appropriate, so I would like to bring this to the attention of more category-savvy Wikipedians. 93 21:15, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:African-American sportsmen was created in 2015, Category:White Americans in 2012, so neither are "new". I don't know that we have an issue for a global discussion here rather than just a talk page discussion on the articles you question whether they should have been added. African-American sportsmen seems like part of a rather standard ethnicity/occupation category structure. The White Americans category, by contrast, seems to have been used purely as a container category, until your own addition today of two rather high profile and questionably chosen individual articles. postdlf (talk) 23:03, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
I would say that WP:TRIVIALCAT applies. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:05, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
I've removed Nadeshot, which was there before me, as well as my 2 additions from White Americans. Category:African-American sportsmen will for now consist of most of the Cleveland Browns as well as high-profile athletes, and can probably be filled by someone with more time than me by subtracting Category:African-American sportswomen from Category:African-American sportspeople however that can be done. 93 00:28, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
The categories may qualify for removal as non-notable intersections by ethnicity, per WP:OCEGRS. Certes (talk) 03:36, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
That's the one - just two sections down from TRIVIALCAT. I was thinking in terms of "Red haired kings". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:15, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

2018 Virginia Beach City FC season

Can anyone determine how Category:2018 NPSL season has been added to this article as well as User:Nick40ghs/2018 Virginia Beach City FC season. I can't find the syntax in their respective edit windows. --Marchjuly (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it's transcluded from Template:2018 NPSL Northeast - Mid-Atlantic standings. Transcluding categories from templates is never a good idea, so I suggest either to remove that category from that template or surround it with <noinclude>...</noinclude>. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:15, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look at this Michael, and thanks to JJMC89 for fixing the template. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:33, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Andrew Wakefield

Please see Talk:Andrew Wakefield#Categorization for some ongoing discussion. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 12:59, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Category for shared content templates

I'm looking for a category to put Template:List of publications intro and Template:SI unit lowercase in. I imagine something similar to Category:Documentation shared content templates but for mainspace. Does such a category exist? I know it there are concerns about these kinds of templates in WP:Template namespace#Guidelines, but all the more reason to group them together so we can scrutinize them appropriately. Any ideas? Daask (talk) 22:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Template:Latin intro belongs in such a category as well. Daask (talk) 14:54, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
 Done Found it: Category:Encyclopedic content templates Daask (talk) 14:55, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Category sorting listed at Requested moves

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Comments on this proposal from members of the WikiProject would be helpful. Do you want the pages proposed for moving to be associated with this WikiProject? Dekimasuよ! 02:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

How do we sort drag queens?

Further input is requested at Category talk:RuPaul's Drag Race contestants#Sorting --woodensuperman 09:24, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Further to above, editors have blanketly removed defaultsort keys from all of the articles, so some further input is desperately needed. --woodensuperman 09:30, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in discussion re: how we categorize all songs by an artist by genre(s)

Project members may be interested in this discussion re: whether or not we should categorize all songs by an artist by specific genre(s). Thanks! ---Another Believer (Talk) 23:38, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

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