Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 5

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Contents

Category - Images "OF" People should not mean "WITH" people, should it?

Are too many images merely with a person somewhere in the picture being included in the category "images OF people"? Wikityke 22:15, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC) Discussion at Category_talk:Images_of_people

Super Categories

This category/supcategory thing needs some rethinking. As I see it, the general rule that "if something is in a subcategory, it shouldn't also be in the supercategory" often does not make sense. Sometimes the subcategories mark clear distinctions between things, but sometimes the subcategories are just unimportant attributes imposed on the category. I'll give you some examples that make sense:

Category:Musical theatre has two subcategories; Category:Operettas and Category:Musicals, both of which have all the articles about individual works of Musical theatre. This makes sense because:

  • There is very little overlap between Operattas and Musicals, they are almost distinct categories
  • Most people looking for a list of works would find this distinction helpful.
  • The distinction that makes the subcategory is intrinsic to the category, not just a randomly chosen attribute. For instance, the works could be in subcategories that intead of using Operetta and Musicals could have used the year they were composed. This would not be very helpful for someone looking for a list of musicals.

Category:Musicals has the subcategory Category:Musical films. This is a trickier situation. Some of the articles in Musicals are in both categories. For some titles there are seperate articles for both the movies and the theatre productions. This makes sense because:

  • If Wikipedia were complete there would be seperate articles for both
  • The films almost always come after the theatre productions

An argument could be made for making Musical Films a subcategory of Musical Theatre instead of Musicals but it doesn't really matter.

Some categories do not work so neatly. An example which is really bothersome is Category:Film directors which has the subcategory Category:Film directors by nationality which has 28 subcategories. It does not make sense to have each director only listed in a subcategory by nationality. The nationality of the director is interesting, but not all that important. Some directors start in one country and move to another. I have no problem with there being categories for directors by nationality, but I think ALL of them should also be in the directors category. The reason for this is:

  • Having them in both categories makes it easier to find a director if you know his nationality, and MUCH easier if you don't know his nationality.

Which brings me to Category:Bridges in New York City. This category has the subcategory Toll bridges in New York City. Whether a bridge has a toll or not is not all that important, and the attribute does not instruct the reader to notice something important about bridges. If you want to see the articles about the bridges in New York City, why should you have to look in two places?

The notion that articles should not be listed in categories and subcategories strikes me as an artifact left over from libraries. The beauty of hypertext is that things can be linked many ways, not just organized on shelves. Why can't things be in multiple categories? I'd like to see ALL the bridges in New York State listed in Category:Bridges in New York. This makes it easy to see a list of all the bridges in a geographical region, and also the subregion.

I made the change for all the bridges in New York City. But within a day they were all reverted. I'd like to do it for bridges the rest of the world, film directors and some other categories, but I know I need the consensus of everyone else. I've read most of the discussion relevant above, and I don't see a good argument for keeping things the way they are. The important thing is to make Wikipedia USEFULL. Samuel Wantman

Yes, I quite agree. I made a similar point when User:SPUI moved Indiana Toll Road and Ohio Turnpike from Category:Transportation in Indiana and Category:Transportation in Ohio into Category:Toll roads in Indiana and Category:Toll roads in Ohio. I objected that both roads are very prominent fixtures of the transportation systems in both states, and are, as far as I know having lived in both states for many years, the only toll roads in either state. While it is quite possible that there may indeed be some other toll roads in those states, those have nowhere near the recognition of the ones mentioned above. It makes no sense to me to place these roads into what are currently (and as far as I can tell, for the forseeable future) single-item subcategories. I don't really see the point of the toll road sub-categories in these states where toll roads are relatively uncommon, if not singular entities. But while I'm willing to leave these subcategories be, it seems ridiculous to me to only categorize such prominent features of the transportation systems of those states in minor subcategories. I might note that many of the other by-state subcategories under Category:Toll roads in the United States are also single-item categories--though since I'm not familiar with those states I can't really say anything about the relative prominence of the roads in those states. older≠wiser 02:31, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, the Ohio Turnpike is really only relevant if you live in northern Ohio, but I see your point. I think the point of putting it in its own subcategory is to make navigation via Category:Toll roads in the United States more consistent. However, there is no clear policy on whether it makes any sense to have one-member categories for navigational purposes. (Though the current trend is to say that yes, it does. See Category:Albums by artist.) Anyway, with the toll roads, I would just about go as far as saying that there is little point in having individual state subcategories; there aren't that many toll roads.
For film directors, it is against current policy to put them in both a specific nationality category and the parent Category:Film directors. All members of subcategories are supposed to be considered members of the supercategory. The current wiki software doesn't allow that, but that doesn't make it any more useful to throw all the film directors into one unorganized mess. (Also, huge supercategories make it harder to find the subcategories with the current system. If there are more than 200 members, you start having to go through pages to find the children categories.) Ideally, of course, we could put an article in Category:Film directors and a nationality category and look up the intersection of the two, but at the moment that isn't possible.
(Note: If you know the name of the director, you're not going to be looking up the article via categories, anyway. Huge categories are not helpful to casual browsers.)
Category:Musical films is a special case. (There are actually musical films that were not ever stage musicals. See for instance Moulin Rouge!.) Ideally, we would come up with some term for musicals that appear on stage and make that a sibling. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:07, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Samuel that the category/subcategory thing is a problem. I've been thinking about it for a while, and here's what I decided: The reason for the difficulty with Category:Film directors vs. Category:Film directors by nationality is that Category:Film directors by nationality is fundamentally flawed. We shouldn't have subcats for "randomly chosen attributes", as Samuel put it. Instead, have

and other random things like

  • Category:People by height with a subcat for each, say, centimeter
  • Category:People by handedness with left and right subcats

etc. Then we need a software feature that allows a page to represent the intersection of some categories. So, for example, if I decide I want to see all left-handed Hungarian film directors, I can just request the intersection of Category:Left-handed people, Category:Film directors, and Category:Hungarian people. I don't have to explicitly put people into Category:Left-handed Hungarian film directors, as now.

Under this scheme, it would be possible to categorize a person with all their attributes (height, handedness, occupation, etc.) without having to worry about explicitly making intersection categories. The category organization would become flatter, with many current subcats replaced by the new software feature.

I think this proposal would neatly solve the problem that Samuel described above. dbenbenn | talk 04:13, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another example: the proposed intersection feature would allow you to find people who were born in 1850 and died in 1950 as the intersection of Category:1850 births with Category:1950 deaths. As it is now, you'd need a Category:1850 births, 1950 deaths, which would just be silly. dbenbenn | talk 04:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's quite a good idea. I wonder if it's feasible performance-wise. The other problem I forsee is there's no obvious user interface. – flamuraiTM 04:19, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Thank you :). I haven't really thought about how the user interface would work yet. You would definitely want to be able to link to the intersection of two categories. One possibility: you could, for example, simply make a page IntersectionCategory:Left-handed Hungarian film directors with the content
#intersection [[:Category:Left-handed people]] [[:Category:Hungarian people]] [[:Category:Film directors]]
dbenbenn | talk 04:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't think performance should be an issue. Getting the intersection of three categories is simply a matter of getting the members of the three categories, and seeing which articles are in all three. dbenbenn | talk 05:34, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the whole category/subcategory criterion as it is now formulated is seriously flawed. From previous discussions, I have concluded that the rational for the "no listing in both a category and also in a sub/super category rule" goes something like this. "We want to impose order in our data base system. If we don't the resulting chaos will make the system unworkable." But this is nothing more than fear mongering based on faulty reasoning and a psychological predisposition for structure. Infact, abandoning the "not in adjacent categories rule" will make the system more user friendly. The criterion we use in deciding what categories articles should be placed in should be user driven. We should ask ourself in which categories the user would expect to see an article listed. We cannot forget that the purpose of the category system is to make it easy for users to find articles, not to create an elegant database free from duplications or overlaps. By abandoning such rules of structure we will create a database that matches the real world and the expectations of real people. Rather than forcing reality to fit into our preconceived notion of what an ideal database structure looks like by using such rules, we should let reality shape the structure of the database. Some specific examples will illustrate. I started to append category tags to the business articles. Of the 1600 business articles about 700 would go in the business category and between 300 - 100 in each of the 20 main subcategories. Obviously there was overlap. This is beceause an article like income statement, for example, while it is primarily an accounting and finance term, is also a general business term. It is used by marketers and other business people as part of their discipline, not in an accounting context. It is a general business term applicable to all of business and as such belongs both in the accounting category and the business category. Since I started working on the Business category, most of the edits have been reversed, by those claiming that an article cannot be in both a category and a subcategory. I am certaining not going to waste any more time working on such a dysfunctional system. The "no listing in both a category and also in a sub/super category rule" is not the only structural criterion that plagues the category system. There is also the "Too much overlap rule". The International trade category is currently listed for deletion and the reason given is that there is too much overlap with the International economics category. Well, news flash . . . in the real world there is conciderable overlap between the two subjects. There is also the "categories must be structured only along one dimension rule". I discovered this one in regards to the busiess law category that someone wanted to deleate. The rational given is that the other law subcategories are structured on theortical grounds rather than practical ones. On this argument, practicle subtopics like business law, maritine law, and real estate law should not have their own categories because it would be out of step with the system of legal subcategories based on legal theory. I say stamp out all of these structural criteria and let there be only one criteria, a user driven one. (If, for some reason, you want to hear more, the section "Inconsistant criteria" earlier on this page has more of my rantings on this topic) mydogategodshat 17:23, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with user:mydogategodshat. Zocky 17:59, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So can you provide examples of articles that, in your opinion, would belong in a category but not in its supercategory? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:07, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

There are many examples of articles that are specific in nature and therefore only belong in a subcategory. There are also many examples of articles that are general in nature and therefore only belong in a supercategory. But this is irrelevant. The question is whether there are articles that are both general and specific, and therefore belong in both a category and a subcategy. The answer is yes. Income statement mentioned above is an example. There are many more. Take the focus group article. In a business context, a focus group is primarily a marketing term and belongs in the marketing category. However, the focus group technique is used in virtualy all of business. It belongs in the business category as well. The real world tells us to put the article in both tha marketing and business category. Wikirules tell us to decide which one to put it in because we are not allowed to put it in both. mydogategodshat 18:52, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I too would love to have a properly normalized database structure for categorizing wikipedia, but the current software simply isn't meant for that. For that we would need something like [[category:People|born=6 June 1666"|died=1 July 1717]]. But that just raises additional questions (what when categories overlap? how to produce a good UI for that? would we need to invent or implement a query language? But categorization also has another important function, that of providing a table of contents, and that is completely achievable with the current system. The user should find articles easily through categories, without having to go deeper than necessary. Ideally, a category should include all articles that fall into it. If there are too many theoretical members of a category (as is usually true for supercategories), it should list the most notable and representative members. Imagine a two-frame UI where you can browse categories on the left and view articles on the right and you may see what I mean.

Here are several examples (some with non-existent categories):

Zocky 19:15, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This looks to me like a recipe for diverting massive effort from writing, or even usefully categorizing, articles into endless disputes about how broad is the importance of a particular article (or its subject). I can imagine bunches of people trying to promote (or demote) the importance of particular colleges and universities, moderately sized towns, people from particular countries. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:54, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I definitely agree. I can see someone going through and putting every minor war into Category:History, then someone have to go back and revert every article and explain things. With a community project like this, it's much easier to have black-and-white rules rather than gray rules. Importance is so subjective, it'd be very difficult for something like this to converge, much more so than a regular article. – flamuraiTM 20:00, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
If you look over this page you can't help but notice that the CURRENT situation is "diverting massive effort from writing, or even usefully categorizing, articles into endless disputes about how broad is the importance of a particular article (or its subject)." With the current rules most of the categories make sense, but some of them don't. I think the important rule should be "Categories should be organized to make it easy to browse through related articles". This rule can be applied to every category. In some categories the "no sub/super category duplication" rule will make the categorys more useful. But sometimes it will make sense to break the rule. Take the example of bridges. There is a hierachy under Category:Toll bridges in the United States. Down that hierarcy it makes sense to keep the entries for Category:Toll bridges in New York City from also being in the Supercategories. But there is also a hirearchy under Category:Bridges in the United States. Putting the toll bridge categories as subcategories is really just putting a related category as a subcategory because that subcategy is already part of a different hierarchy. Because of this, it would make sense for ALL the bridges to be listed in Category:Bridges in New York City, and have some entries duplicated in Category:Toll bridges in New York City. These decisions could happen in the talk pages of the categories whenever consistancy gets in the way of useability. Samuel Wantman 04:22, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lots of good reasons to change the rules. I was skeptical about the value of categories when they first appeared. But I have found them to be a great way to BROWSE through wikipedia. If I find an interesting page, I check the categories to find other interesting related pages. This is one reason why I am frustrated with the current system. When I want to browse through the articles on film directors, I don't want to have to look at 28 different categories! Likewise, If I'm looking to see what articles might be missing about film directors, how will I know if something is missing if I have to browse through numerous categories. One comment was that the directors category would be much too long if all the film directors were in it. To this I say, that it is easier to browse through 2 or 3 lists broken alphabetically, than combine 28 lists in my head. With the current system, if I want to browse through just French film directors, I can. But, if I want to browse through ALL the directors, I can't. Why not both?

There is also a bigger philosophical issue here. By having the current rules, it forces people into making categories based on a single "world view" of what is important, and how things should be organized. That world view comes from the first people who set up the categories, and then everyone else is forced to accept that world view or have their work reverted. This is what happened to me when I found Category:Bridges in New York City arbitrarily divided between "Toll bridges" and "Toll free bridges". But who is to say that that is important? Perhaps I think that it is NOT important. I can't change it because the world view is set. What we should encourage is MULTIPLE world views. This would make Wikipedia MORE interesting, MORE usable, and (perhaps best of all), get rid of countless discussions about what the PROPER category distinctions are. Samuel Wantman 20:14, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The current system does allow multiple world views. If instead of dividing New York's bridges based on toll/non-toll you want to divide them based on whether they've got rail roads on them or not, create two new subcategories for Bridges of New York City called "Rail bridges of New York City" and "Rail-free bridges of New York City" and go nuts categorizing the various bridges into them. The toll categories will still exist, and now the rail categories will too. Articles can belong to both of them. Bryan 08:47, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
But look at my concrete example about Category:Bridges in New York City. I think that all the bridges in New York City should be in this category, but they are not. Some of the bridges are in a subcategoryCategory:Toll bridges in New York City. I put the toll bridges in BOTH categories, and my changes were reverted. I am forced to the world view of toll bridges and non-toll bridges. What is wrong with having the toll bridges in both places? I don't think we should get rid of category:Toll bridges in New York City, and there is no way under the current rules for me to add those bridges to category:Bridges in New York City. So I'm stuck with a world view I don't like. Samuel Wantman 03:44, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"But this is nothing more than fear mongering based on faulty reasoning and a psychological predisposition for structure." This was said about by User:mydogategodshat. It's untrue, and also very offensive, intentionally or otherwise. It is perfectly fair and valid to say that enormous categories are not at all useful to browsers. Take a look at Category:Stub. Just to figure out what subcategories there are you have to search through every page of the category. (Actually, there aren't any subcategories in that particular case.) This is not helpful to the casual browser. When I look for articles about film directors, I don't want to have to flip through 20 different pages of unorganized articles any more than someone else wants to look at 20 subcategories.

There are categories that contain thousands of articles. These categories are not particularly useful to anyone at the moment because they are so enormous that you can't reasonably page through them.

The current software does not permit us to view the intersection fo two categories. This has been proposed numerous times and would be a great idea, but we can't always function under the assumption that a feature might exist in the future. We can't pull up "all members of the film directors category who are also in the American people category", so "American film directors" is a useful distinction to make. Get some developers to look at the feasibility of this (and to agree to work on this) before trying to use the current system to do something it can't do. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:36, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The fear mongering continues with talk about "enormous categories". If categories get too large subcategories should be created and some of the articles placed in the new subcategory. Please don't try to use the enormous category argument to try to convince us that those article that belong in both a category and a subcategory must be forced into one or the other. It dosn't wash. mydogategodshat 00:45, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Probably you didn't intend to do so, but I would appreciate it if you didn't question my motives. (But seriously, why would anyone be afraid of "enormous categories"? I don't imagine anyone has ever had a nightmare about being stuck in a huge category, or being chased by a monster category...I'll let you know if I have one tonight.) I'm trying to think practically here.
I don't see the difference between what you propose and the current system. Category:Film directors gets to big, so we divide it into subcategories by nationality (or whatever). The musical theater example above is a good example of a case when the sub- and super-categories convey different shades of meanign and therefore both should be used. However, something like Category:French film directors is not as ambiguous. A person who is a French film director is obvious both a French person and a film director. I don't see that such an article would need to be in the parent category as well as the specific category. -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:53, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The difference is that in the current system, if you put an article in both a category and a subcategory someone will delete it from one of them because we are not allowed to have an article on two adjacent levels. I have had scores of edits reversed for this reason. As for your question "why would anybody be afraid of enormous categories", the answer according to contributors earlier on this page, is that they make the category system difficult to use. The people that use this arguement want us to believe that allowing an article in two adjacent levels will somehow make the system unworkable. mydogategodshat 03:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As people describe their vision of category 'intersections', I think they really mean they would like a keyword type of system rather than the bucket category system like we have now. I did a lot of categorizing after I started here, but eventually gave it up because it felt like I was in quicksand. The more I worked with the current category system, the more I came to dislike it.

In a keyword system, a list of keys could be assigned to an article, and each category would also be assigned a set of keys. For example, back to the film directors, an article could be assigned the keys 'film director' and 'from Germany' (as well as any number of other keys). When the category German film directors is created, it may be assigned only the keys 'film director' and 'from Germany', and only articles containing both of those keys would be listed in that category. One might then ask, Why bother creating categories in that type of system? Because we may want the capability to describe what is being listed with that particular key combination, and also to link categories together in a structure that would be conducive to browsing. —Mike 04:25, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me that a lot of this is less about categorizing than about viewing the categorized information. People could get what they needed if there were an easier way to show a few layers of the category hierarchy at once. -- 07:02, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that a keyword search would be just as problematic as the current search, which is almost always disabled. (Although perhaps not quite as bad. There wouldn't be as much text to search, but there would be just as many articles. I don't know how the search is implemented.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:53, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia already has several categories in which articles are entered in both Supercategories and Subcategories. This happens when an article is entered into the bottom level of two category hierarchies and one hierarchy happens to be a subset of the other (like Bridges and Toll-bridges which I talked about before). For example, Category:Best Actor Oscar is a subset of Category:Cinema actors. Jack Nicholson is in both categories as he should be! Do people really believe that all the Oscar winners should be removed from Category:Cinema actors, this would make the category much, much less usefull for browsing. Can we at least amend the rules to say that Categories can be in sub and supercategories when they are at the bottom of two hierarchies and one hierarchy is a subset of the other? -- Samuel Wantman 07:49, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Does that really make much sense, Samuel? I think that if Nicholson is in a subset of Category:Cinema actors, then he cannot belong to Category:Cinema actors itself. If we were to allow that, then who's to say where to draw the line? Then people would argue that Nicholson equally deserves to be part of Category:Actors. As well as Category:Entertainers. And why not Category:People!
In my mind, the logical way to rephrase your rule would be: Articles can belong to several categories when they are at the bottom of two hierarchies and one hierarchy is not a subset of the other.
--Verdlanco (talk) 09:19, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Verdlanco, it really makes alot of sense! People can make this decision based on what makes a category useful, and it is not useful to remove things from categories just because there happens to be another hierarchy that has a smaller subset of articles. Sometimes it would be a really, really bad thing to do. For example, I just came across Category:African-American actors which is a subcategory of Category:American actors. Thankfully, all the actors are on both lists. According to "the rules" they shouldn't be. Are you an advocate of apartheid? -- Samuel Wantman 09:35, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
No, I just feel that if an article fits equally well in a category and its sub-category, that is a sign that it was a bad idea to create that sub-category. (And that's double true for your apartheid analogy.) Therefore, I think the rule is good the way it is, and that avoiding duplicate category entries will eliminate more dilemmas than it causes. But that's just my opinion.
--Verdlanco (talk) 19:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This is copied from my talk page (with Rick Block's permission):

Samuel Wantman 08:09, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
...I'm getting to the point where I've pretty much had it with categories (too many folks unwilling to budge from absolute positions, particularly the notion that category membership must mean "is a"). I posted some comments last December (see Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Categories vs keywords), which elicited zero response. IMO categories are fundamentally ambiguous and mean both your "related cat" concept as well as the hierarchical "is a" relationship many people seem to insist they are (well, should be). I don't think there will be any category-related software changes any time soon, so this seems like a relatively pointless discussion (the current reality being that category membership has no intrinsic meaning, formal or otherwise, so trying to impose one is doomed to failure). I've spent a fair amount of time categorizing (maybe 3000 edits worth), and I'm starting to think it's basically a waste of time. I suppose it's more worthwhile than playing minesweeper, but in what universe is it reasonable to argue about whether "list of <x>" should or shouldn't be in "category: <x>"? -- Rick Block 02:33, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Guidelines

I have run into this issue a few times in my very short stay (so far) on Wikipedia and did some thinking about the situations where I think an article should be in a category as well as a sub-category. I came up with two guidelines and wanted to see if other people had similar ideas or if I am smoking crack. This seems to be the best place to get opinions on this issue so here I go ....

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

If the articles in a category are fundamentally the same type of article (i.e. about people or places etc.) and the difference between the category and sub-category is fundamentally qualitative then the article should only be listed in the sub-category. This is the example from the main page: Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her. To say it a different way Queen Elizabeth would not be put "Queens of England" just because she was a better/more famous/more notable person. The other side of this is when the difference is primarily quantitative. The example than I ran into that is good here, is the category "Chess grandmasters" and "Chess players". A person DOES go from being 'just' a chess player to being a Chess grandmaster by being a better chess player, so the difference is primarily quantitative and the article should be listed in both. A good way to tell if you are in this situation is: If the sub-category were deleted and all its contents imported into the super-category would it significantly reduce the usefulness of the super category? This brings me to the second guideline.

Navigational utility

In the above example the category "Chess players" could be further subdivided so that there were categories for "Chess International Master", "Chess Masters" etc. so that no people articles are in the super-category. In that case you would not want to include individual articles in both categories. But would this be useful? Categories are fundamentally a navigation aid. What is going to help the user looking for an article by navigating the Category tree (graph) find what they need? Does a specific categorization make it harder or easier for them to find what they are looking for? My example here is also from chess. Category "Chess" is currently in the following three categories: "Chaturanga game family", "Mental-skill games", and "Board games". Based on the rule of not listing an article in a category and a sub-category "Mental-skill games" and "Board games" should be removed since "Chaturanga game family" is already in both of these categories. But, how many end users have ever heard of the Chaturanga family of games? I play chess a lot and I did not know this bit of information. This is the kind of Category that is useful moving up the category hierarchy rather than down. Chess should be in "Board games" and "Mental skill games" because that is where users will look for it when trying to find it. Equally it should be in "Chaturanga game family" because users might learn that and then after they are done reading about chess use the link into the category to learn more about related games.

Summary: I hope this is the right place for this, and as a clueless newbie I hope I am not re-hashing something that has already been discussed into the ground and resolved. If so and there has been some succinct treatment of the issue somewhere a pointer on my talk page would be awesome, even though I put "Proposed guidelines" above I am really just asking since I keep running into this and I am a but of a metadata freak. Dalf | Talk 02:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To anyone who has read this thread to this point, please read the other related entries on this page. Also, note that there is a proposed comromise to this issue further below. -- Samuel Wantman 00:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Category pages should sort by namespace first

Category pages should sort by namespace first. It would make things a lot easier. For example, a lot of templates have categories attached to them. Those templates shouldn't be under "T", but there's no way to pipe them without screwing up the articles that use the template. Main namespace should be listed as-is, then after that section there should be other alphebetized sections for other namespaces. – flamuraiTM 19:05, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Actually I think it would be better if we had a method of making the templates disappear from the categories since the template itself really isn't supposed to be grouped with the articles in the category. —Mike 04:30, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Categories and/or Classification

The controversy and disagreement about categories is due to TWO DIFFERENT understandings about what a category is. I'd like to propose that what we are talking about is really CATEGORIES and CLASSIFICATION. The current system and rules for CATEGORIES is trying to set up a system of CLASSIFICATION; a logic that puts every article in a well organized hierarchy. CATEGORIZATION, on the other hand, tries to associate related articles in many different ways.

So perhaps what is needed is BOTH. So I propose:

  1. Get rid of the constraints on CATEGORIES discussed in sections above.
  2. ADD A NEW FEATURE, that of CLASSIFICATION, which puts each article in just one location in a hierarchy.

How it might work:

You would type something like Class:Bridges in New York City (in brackets), and just like categories, it would end up in the appropriate classification page. Either the system would only allow one classification or editors would limit the classifications. Perhaps the classification would appear at the Top of an article (in small print under the article title). This might become an option that could be turned off.

This might make everyone happy. Samuel Wantman 20:35, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this helps. I could see plenty of room for argument over which single classification is the best to use and whether the classification is too specific or too broad. —Mike 04:38, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, there would be arguments about classification, which is what we often have now with categories (constrained as they are). The people who WANT to argue about classifications could. The rest of us would not have to bother and just add categories. Samuel Wantman 07:21, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Arithmetics

Are here categories Arithmetics that could answer to queries?:

  1. Intersection - what belongs to two categories.
  2. Substraction - what belong to one category, but not other

Conan 20:43, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Related category proposal

I think I've got it...

The problem is that we are doing multiple categorization and then putting subcategories in whatever category is related. This is a good thing, but it creates problems, like the "no super/sub entry duplication" rule. Take the example of bridges. There is a hierachy under Category:Toll bridges in the United States. Down that hierarcy there is Category:Toll bridges in New York City. But there is also a hirearchy under Category:Bridges in the United States. Down that hierarcy there is Category:Bridges in New York City. Putting the toll bridge categories as subcategories of bridges is really just putting a related category and not really a subcategory because that subcategy is already part of a different hierarchy. Because of this, it would make sense for ALL the bridges to be listed in Category:Bridges in New York City, and have some entries duplicated in Category:Toll bridges in New York City. So we really have two different things going on; Subcategories and Related subcategories.

My proposal is to make Subcategories and Related Categories different things. Subcategories could look and work the same as they do now. But perhaps we could add Category:Bridges in New York City#Related and instead of being listed in the subcategory section, it would get listed in a new section called (you guessed it), "Related subcategories". It seems that any given category should be limited to being a subcategory of just one category, so perhaps, this could work by just putting the category first and any following category entries would become "Related subcategories". This might be the simplest way to implement this. Unfortunately, it would mean that many articles would have to be edited to get the correct category on top. Samuel Wantman 04:55, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with the idea of adding "related categories", possibly as an optional thing (not controlled by software) in the same way as zeal.com does it (eg http://www.zeal.com/category/manage.jhtml?cid=560009). But it's not the same as those bridges. The category Category:Toll bridges in New York City should be a subcategory under Category:Bridges in New York City. New York, NY, toll bridge articles will go in the former (ie the bottom level), not in the latter. I DO NOT AGREE that "any given category should be limited to being a subcategory of just one category". Robin Patterson 05:29, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Well, it might be possible that a category could reasonably fit in as subcategories in two different hierarchies, but no examples come to mind right away. I'll think about that one. But, what is wrong with saying that articles should not be listed more than once in any hierarchy? My problem is the unreasonable intersection of the Bridges and Toll Bridges hierarchies that removes all toll bridges from the Bridges hierarchy. Why? What is wrong with them being in both places? Please give me some concrete reason. I don't understand why this is bothersome to so many people.
Let me give you a hypothetical example. Let's say there is a category called "People named Bob" (Perhaps there is one!) I know there are clubs for people named Bob, so it seems legitimate that there be a hierarchy of categories for people named Bob. Perhaps it gets organized geographically. If so, there might be a subcategory called "British writers named Bob". Now, if this becomes a subcategory of Category:British writers does that mean that all the British writers named Bob should be removed from Category:British writers? Samuel Wantman 07:30, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
To answer your last question, under the current system the answer is more often than not yes. —Mike 08:04, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Category and Template specificity?

I didn't notice clear guidelines on the project page about how microscopic Cats and Templates should be--anybody know if such guidelines exist or have been discussed? Or am I the only person that finds Category:Unincorporated community in Seminole County, Florida with a state road passing through it stubs and Template:Unincorporated-community-in-Seminole-County-Florida-with-a-state-road-passing-through-it-stub a bit over-the-top? Niteowlneils 22:47, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suspect that the category and template in question were created specifically to be over-the-top. People are not generally creating such categories and seriously using them. (But if you find that such categories exist, please do nominate them for deletion. We discussion too-specific catgories all the time at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion.)
Guidelines regarding specificity of categories depend somewhat on the number of articles involved. (A very general subject that we don't write much about obviously does not need specific subcategories. A specific subject that is written about constantly may require more specific subcategories.) I did find this under "Category membership and creation": "A few categories do only merely subdivide their parent category, but unless the parent category has many potential articles under it, or many potential subdivisions, if you can't think of a second parent category, it might be a better idea to fold your smaller category into the parent" (emphasis added). -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:34, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Help requested with Category:Albums by artist

This category is huge, hundreds and hundreds of subcategories. Because of this, only about 3 letters at a time are shown. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the end of the alphabet. I'm wondering how big categories should be handled. The guidelines say to divide things into new subcategories. Since this is a huge category of subcategories, that means adding another layer of hierarchy.

I gave that a try: I created a new subcategory Category:Albums by artist: A-Z, but it would take forever to move everything into new subcategories. Can this process be automated? If so how? Is there a better solution?

Since the issue of large categories has come up in previous discussions, and seems to be controversial, Is there any way to make a table of contents for a category? It seems that this would be really usefull, and would ease people's dislike of large categories. I tried making a TOC by typing [[:Category:Albums by artist&from=First "A" entry|A]] which resulted in A, etc... but that didn't work. Is there any way to do this?

It seems that any category that is too big to be shown on one page should AUTOMATICALLY have a table of contents. This should be in the software. Has this been discussed?

Thanks, Samuel Wantman 07:36, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just did a quicky (maunual) A,B,C,... index using URLs the software seems to interpret correctly. I agree it would be nicer if there was a wiki reference (perhaps something similar to [:Category:Albums by artist#A]) or if the software did this automatically, but for what you seem to want I think this is an adequate workaround. -- Rick Block 14:55, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've played with this a bit to try to get rid of the external link indicator (present with the default skin, but not the "classic" skin which I usually use), and as far as I can tell there is simply no way. Seems like a link of the form [http:/w/index.php?anything] should NOT be presented as an external link (since it is by definition a link served by the same web server). I suspect a more elegant looking solution for the standard skin will require some sort of software change (sigh). -- Rick Block 21:01, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Category Table of Contents now possible

Based on Rick Block's work above, I created a template for adding Table of Contents to large categories. To use, type {{CompactCatTOC}} whenever a category is getting too long. To see an example, check out Category:Albums by artist. Perhaps this will help people get over their fear of long categories! -- Samuel Wantman 00:19, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This has since been renamed to {{CategoryTOC}} --Samuel Wantman 00:28, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh, thank you. I was just thinking that someone should do that. (It doesn't help if you are just randomly browsing a category or trying to figure out what subcategories there are, but it sure makes a difference if you have some idea what you're looking for.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:38, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wow, that's very nice Samuel. older≠wiser 13:55, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

With which browser does this work? It doesn't work on mine (Safari). —Mike 03:17, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

I just fixed this (works for my Safari). The previous version worked with IE and Mozilla. -- Rick Block 05:08, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Although the downside is the fixed version displays the external link arrow with the standard skin (with Safari, IE, and Mozilla). -- Rick Block 05:20, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This seems to be due to what I'd call a bug in mediawiki, i.e. a relative URL reference must start with "http:". IE and Mozilla both treat this as a link relative to the current page but Safari treats this as a page on localhost. I haven't looked this up, but I suspect HTML doesn't specify the meaning of "http:/relativepath". IMO, mediawiki should treat [/relativepath] (and variants) as legitimate (relative) URLs and not generate external link indicators (regardless of user's skin choice). -- Rick Block 05:35, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
According to Angela on the Wikipedia:Help desk recently, you can use class="plainlinks". <span class="plainlinks">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia]</span> is shown as Wikipedia rather than Wikipedia. (Note that in some browsers it still leaves a space the size of the extlink indicator; not ideal, but better than nothing. HTH!) — Catherine\talk 12:05, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Catherine! -- Rick Block 14:39, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

User:Henrygb Created a varient of which he named {{CatAz}} which does the same thing without the numbers and "top". He's using it for categories which are lists of names. I updated it to the changes discussed above (it was a day old!). For an example, see Category:British MPs. -- Samuel Wantman 18:26, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Category proposal with examples

There's been quite a bit of discussion about the way we've been setting up categories. There are several problems that need to be addressed somehow. But I think most of this stems from three conflicting attributes of categories:

  1. Multiple hierarchies of categories exist and some categories become subcategories in several hierarchies.
  2. Current policy states that articles should not be put in both sub and super categories.
  3. Categories get removed because of "too much overlap".

If the three of these continue, many categories will become fragmented to the point of being unusable, and in some cases some very unwanted side-effects will be created.

Here's an example of a side effect: Category:African-American actors is a subcategory of Category:American actors. Thankfully, all the actors are on both lists. But, according to "the rules" they shouldn't be. The reason for this is because there are really two hierarchies here: There is a hierarchy below category:African Americans that is then broken down by professions, which leads to Category:African-American actors. There is also the hierarchy of Category:Actors which is broken down by nationality to Category:American actors. When someone decided that Category:African-American actors was a subcategory of Category:American actors then according to the rules, all the African-American actors should have been removed from Category:American actors.

As I see it, because our system does not distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are "related", whenever categories "collide" problems like this occur. I think three things could be done to alleviate this problem:

1) At the top of each category, I propose that we add links that maps out the hierarchies that include the category. I'm calling this CLASSIFICATION. This is possible now without any need for a software enhancement. I've created an example, in Category:Bridges in New York City right at the top it has:
Classification: Bridges: by country: United States: New York: New York City
Classification: Transportation: by country: United States: New York:New York City: Bridges
This example shows that there are two hierarchies that converge. Putting the classification on the category page makes it very easy to jump to the top of the hierarchy. Notice I did not include Science, Applied science, engineering, etc... in the 'Bridge' hierarchy. I think there is a natural starting and stopping point for each hierarchy.
Showing the classification also helps make it clearer which categories are RELATED categories and which are part of the hierarchy. In the example above: Category:Toll bridges in New York City is a related category because it is part of a different hierarchy.
2) I'd propose that the software be changed so that when users are looking at a category page, they could distinguish which sub-categories are part of the hierarchy and which are just "related" categories. This could be accomplished by making something like [[CategoryR:xxx]] to designate the category is a related category. The subcategories would be displayed in two groups: SUB-CATEGORIES and RELATED CATEGORIES. (There might also be a need for "Related article" entries in categories, but that is another discussion.)
3) I propose that we change the rules. I would first propose that the "no duplication of articles being entered in both super and sub category" rule be amended to say "... in the same hierarchy." The reality is that the status quo is constantly broken, and for good reason. Look at the acting categories mentioned above, and also look at Category:Bridges in New York City. I've added all the toll bridges into this category. They are still in Category:Toll bridges in New York City, but it is now clearer that they are part of a different hierarchy.
Categories are still evolving. By loosening the rules further, some creative changes are possible. I'd like to amend the rule above to say "no duplication of articles should be entered in both super and sub categories in the same hierarchy UNLESS THERE IS A GOOD REASON."

One reason, perhaps, why there was a move to make more and more subcategories, and to remove articles from a category whenever they could be found in a subcategory is because only 200 entries can be shown on a category page. Recently, we have found a way to make templates that create a table of contents for large categories that make this a little less of a problem. Perhaps we can work out some other ways to make categories more useful and easier to use. I'm offering this as a start. -- Samuel Wantman 08:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problems you mention are real, but I don't think the proposed solution is advisable. I believe the developers intend to eventually introduce the ability to list all of the articles in a user defined hierarchy. If someone is interested in all the bridges of New York City they will be able to automatically generate a single alphabetized list. If they are only interested in those without tolls they will also be able to find a list of those. It is far better to wait for this feature to be introduced than it is to manually overhaul the entire categorization system. Especially since once the software is improved these changes would all have to be reversed. - SimonP 16:55, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
Can you reference the proposed change, and the discussion around it? --Samuel Wantman 20:18, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
That's what I posted on your user talk. I think there are a few more bugs about this in zilla, though. I do think, however, that category breadcrumbs would be a great feature to add to the software. – flamurai (t) 08:21, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the references, which I had read. But, Both of these appear to be just proposals, and it doesn't seem certain that they will be implemented. The discussion should be happening here to decide what is needed, how much should be software, and how much done by editing. Perhaps there was discussions in the archives about this. Was there a clear consensus about what should happen? I do not get the sense from the discussions on this page that there was a clear consensus. If there was an agreed upon plan for a future upgrade, it should be spelled out clearly on the categorization page. If there wasn't, let's do it now. -- Samuel Wantman 08:49, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

categorizing user pages

I'm starting to see a disturbing trend of people categorizing other user's pages, usually in a non-beneficial and sometimes negative way (ex. Category:Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets, Category:User:Vacuum:Comments). I'd like to propose rewording the Wikipedia:Categorization#User namespace section to make it clear that only self-categorization of user page is appropriate. I'd also like to make the distinction to specifically mention that categorizing Talk page is not appropriate either. I think the intent here is to keep the category space from being needlessly cluttered with user pages (since that is of little value, yet hinders system performance), and only to allow them if the user "self-identifies" in a particular category. Without such wording, needless categories like the above examples are just going to grow more prevalent, since we can only fall back on the WP:CFD process to get rid of them. -- Netoholic @ 18:09, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

Keying "by blank" categories

Should "by blank" (e.g. "by country") categories be keyed as "by blank" or just "blank"? Concrete example for Category:Music by continent: should it be listed as [[Category:Music|By continent]] or [[Category:Music|Continent]]? My preference is for the former, as it keeps all the related "by" subcategories together. – flamurai (t) 02:07, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer [[Category:Music|By continent]]. I might even put it in the first section with [[Category:Music|*By continent]], but that might be overkill... - dcljr 22:47, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Noted drug users: how to categorize?

It would be useful to have a category that tied together people who are notable in large part for their use or advocacy of pyschoactive drugs. People like Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, Castenada, Huxley etc. Problem is, I'm not sure what to call it or where to put it. It could go under Category:Drug culture (although I'm not terribly fond of the phrase 'drug culture') but my main question is, what's a good NPOV and focused cat (one that hopefully won't be used to label people like George Bush whose drug use is incidental to their reason for notability). All I've come up with so far is 'Noted drug users'. Aside from being too broad (it could be applied to GWB and Dean Martin) the word 'drug' itself can be pretty ambiguous. The best description would be 'Noted experimenters with psychoactive substantives' but of course it's much too long. Any suggestions? Or do you think it's just a bad idea. --Lee Hunter 20:06, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not everything needs to be a category - this strikes me as something that might be more appropriately dealt with in a list article or an article about the history of popularization of drug use (if that's what you're really getting at). -- Rick Block 00:34, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. I've create a list for now. I still see some value in using a category, but perhaps I'll leave that for a later date. --Lee Hunter 14:10, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In any event, if you do this via a category, do make sure to write a clear explanatory note in the category page, because no name is going to be crystal clear. So to speak. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:58, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Category

Could it be done by changing the text of the stub template to [[Category:Stubs (start with {{{1}}})]]. When the tag {{stub}} is added to an article start with the letter A, it should be added as {{stub|A}}. This will link articles with the stub template to the corresponding stubs categories according the first letter of the title. — Instantnood 07:30 Feb 26 2005 (UTC) (copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#What links here versus stub category ) — Instantnood 11:39 Mar 1 2005 (UTC)

What is the problem to which this is a proposed solution? -- Jmabel | Talk 17:03, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Classification: See Wikipedia:Classification

I've started classifying categories. Take a look at Category:Altos and move up and down the hierarchy about Opera. I've written a page about this at Wikipedia:Classification. Feedback would be appreciated. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 10:47, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but it won't work so well if people change the categorization of the subcategories. In other words, the Category feature is a bottom-up solution and you seem to be imposing a top-down (not to mention "by hand") approach with your "Classification" system. The two approaches would seem to be fundamentally at odds with each other. - dcljr 01:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but it isn't hard to fix. And I wouldn't do this unless the categories looked to be stable.
There's an advantage to doing it "by hand". Some subcategory associations are what I call "related" sub-categories, meaning not part of the hierarchy.
Bottom-down and top-up aren't at odds. People want to move in both directions. -- Samuel Wantman 06:20, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As a user, I often start from an article, find a relevant category, navigate up the hierarchy a level or two, then navigate down. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:29, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Categories: A compromise?

The conversation has been quiet for a while. I'm wondering if the advent of Category TOC's has changed anyone's view on the Super/Sub category issue?

Re-reading all the discussions, I'd say that there was no clear consensus as far as I could tell. Can we agree to let things evolve and see what happens? I'm thinking of the following:

1) Ease up on the no Super/Sub-Category duplication rule. Duplications seem to arise naturally. We should agree to allow duplication when it makes the categories more complete, less confusing or in other ways more useful. I think the rule of thumb could be:

If there aren't subcategories for every member of a category, there can be duplication. Thus, Oscar winners could duplicate film actors, Film musicals could duplicate musicals, Toll bridges could duplicate Bridges, Actors could duplicate African-American actors, etc... This would also hold if the subcategories are more than one level below. So since the entries for Directors by Nationality are two levels below Directors (and many directors are multi-national), there could be duplication.

2) When entries are duplicated, the duplication should be noted. See: Category:Bridges in New York City for an example of how this could be done.

3) Only bend "the rule" with restraint. We're not agreeing to include articles at more than two levels of a hierarchy. There should be a good reason for any duplication. Duplications should only happen if they make categories easier to use. Exceptions of a type that we haven't discussed should be brought up at this page for discussion.

4) A policy on exceptions should be added to the category page if we can reach a consensus.

Can we live with this as a compromise?

--Samuel Wantman 11:14, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I won't oppose it, but I will point out that looser rules are harder to enforce. Can we at least limit firmly how many levels in a hierarchy may be used for a given page? Otherwise, I can imagine the same item being put (for example) at six different levels of a hierarchy. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:21, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
I suggested two levels (see #3 above). I think this could be all spelled out so that pandemonium doesn't become the norm. Do you think #1-#3 above (with # 3 stating examples which have been discussed) is enough of a guideline for exceptions, or is more needed? -- Samuel Wantman 19:58, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ah, hadn't noticed that. I'd be open to this as long as a reasonably large group is willing to commit to monitoring this: it's a more difficult criterion to monitor than the current one. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:27, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

nominations for trivial deletion/moves?

I've been trying to find where I should list a mispelled category I created. I may be going blind because, despite WP:CFD stating: Read and understand Wikipedia:Categorization before using this page. Nominate categories that violate policies there, or are misspelled, mis-capitalized, redundant/need to be merged, not NPOV, small without potential for growth, or are generally bad ideas., I can't find a nomination list. Would somebody who knows what is going on, please make the nomination list more prominent or change the text at CFD? Oh, and if anybody wants to move Category:Coup d'états to Category:Coups d'état, I would appreciate it. (Foreign language conjugations... bah!) - BanyanTree 14:21, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I changed it to "Nominate categories that violate policies here". dbenbenn | talk 14:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. - BanyanTree 23:56, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Namespace and VFD

This paragraph, headed Wikipedia namespace:

Categories relating to the Wikipedia namespace should be added only to the talk page of articles. For example, tags suggesting the article is needs work, or is listed on VfD would be placed on the talk page as they are relevant to editors, not an aid to browsing in the way ordinary categories are. Please use {{wpcat}} on the Category description page to show that it is a Wikipedia-namespace category.

is in conflict with the instructions on the VFD page, which says the {{subst:vfd}} should be placed on the article page. —Wahoofive | Talk 17:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there are several exceptions to that: VfD, copyvio, notenglish, and the various stub and cleanup tags. Note, however, that these are all done via templates, not via categories put directly into the text. We probably should clarify that here. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:55, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)


These tags should go on the article page, not stashed away in the Talk page, where they would not be noticed as quickly: whether an article is up for consideration to be deleted soon should be of great interest to both readers and editors. Plus appearing on the article will provide more attention to the Vfd and therefore better allow for input in the Vfd process. --Mysidia 21:05, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Dispute resolution
Negotiation
Article talk pages
Editor assistance
Third opinion
Requests for comment
Wikiquette alerts
Mediation
Mediation Cabal
Mediation Committee
Requests for mediation
Arbitration
Arbitration Committee
Requests for arbitration
Arbitration clarifications
Request Arbitration enforcement
Remedies
Editing restrictions
General sanctions
Mentorship
That's your bias, but not everyone agrees with you, do they? How will you go about trying to get the current policy changed? Won't that require principled negotiation, at the top of the list in dispute resolution? --172.194.206.204 17:44, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, let's start. Why do you feel that VfD notices should be hidden away on talk pages instead of at the top of the article? Rhobite 18:10, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Renaming redirected articles on category pages - can it be done?

Problem: St. Ides was an Irish saint also known as Ita. St. Ides also lent her name to a brand of malt liquor. Currently, the St. Ides page redirects to Ita, which discusses both. Splitting the page would result in two rather small stubs, as well as depriving folks of an edifying lesson in the vicissitudes of fame. But the Ita page belongs in two categories: Category:Saints and Category:Brands of beer. It now shows up on Brands of beer as Ita, which is wrong.

Is there a way to force the Brands of beer category to display the name of the article as St. Ides? -- Smerdis of Tlön 20:53, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seems like the real problem here is having an article about a brand of beer on a page that is not named for that beer. Why talk about a beer named St. Ides on a page called Ita? What about having Ita redirect instead to St. Ides? At least having St. Ides in two categories does not introduce a logical inconsistency. It appears that come MediaWiki 1.5, redirect pages will be able to have categories, at which point you could also put Ita in the Saints category. -Rholton 03:17, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I went ahead and moved Ita to Saint Ides, and turned Ita into a disambig page based on the disambig notice that formerly went there. The resulting page is reasonably at home among both the saints and the beers. -- Smerdis of Tlön 14:57, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have a similar issue with several operas. For example, because of naming conventions, The Flying Dutchman page name is titled with its popular English name, but it is still a member of Category:German-language operas. It would be great if it showed up in that list with its German name "Der fliegende Holländer," like a piped label. --DrG 23:37, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the best we can do at this point is to use a soft redirect, i.e. an actual article at the alternate name in whatever category you'd like that basically says "For this article, please see actual article". If you do this, you might want to put a comment in the source explaining why the article is a soft redirect rather than a hard redirect so some well meaning user doesn't come along later and turn the article into a hard redirect. -- Rick Block 02:58, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
That is very clever! Thank-you so much for the info. I read the policy statement, but it doesn't address that particular use of soft directs. Will I be violating any rules if I do this?? --DrG 03:59, 2005 May 27 (UTC)
Seems to me this is perfectly legal, so be bold. -- Rick Block 04:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Some really bad sub-categorization

I don't do a lot of categorization work myself, but the recent subcategorization of Category:French Revolution figures is, in my view, disastrously misguided. I've put my comments on Category talk:French Revolution figures. I'd really appreciate it if someone experienced in this area would have a look. Basically, my feeling is that someone has been zealously imposing a bad set of subcategories, which effectively remove information from anywhere one would sanely look for it. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:49, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Another subcategorization worry

So, I am usually watching Category:Latvia. It used to have several subcategories and about 40 or so articles in the main category. That was, IMO, good, giving a nice overview of the topics related to Latvia. Now, I open the category today and see that it has been split into a ton of subcategories. Worries are:

  • Category:Latvian stubs is now empty, and Category:Latvia-related stubs exists
  • For instance, Category:Geography of Latvia has six further subcategories, of which some are to empty, say Category:Craters of Latvia has one entry and won't have any more. Category:Lakes of Latvia also only has one entry, with Category:Rivers of Latvia being at two.
  • Also, Category:Daina has for some reason been created to hold the article on Daina.
  • Category:Latvian aircraft is ridicilous. It has one subcat. Which, in turn, has two subcats. Where one of those subcats leads to the other. In total, there are two(!) articles under Category:Latvian aircraft and its subcats. More subcats than articles.

I must ask, is this really so neccessary? Why the extremely detailed subcategorization? Worst of all is that we can't get a good overview of articles about a topic then. No longer I can go to Category:Latvia and see all the articles on that topic. Since reaching a consesnsus on subcategorization seems very hard, can we implement a MediaWiki feauture where you could, when looking at a category, choose to see ALL the articles in that category AND its subcategories? That would at least simplify looking at all articles about whatever you want. Something's definitely wrong with this subcategorization, as has been said before on talk, too. Solver 21:29, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

The Latvian subcategorization sounds like overkill, but a category does not to have many members to be useful. Even a one-member category can be useful if it links in properly. For example, Category:Lakes of Latvia is useful because it is a subcategory of both "Lakes of Europe" and "Geography of Latvia". It sits at the intersection of those two subjects, and people coming from both of those subjects will be interested in that category.
- Pioneer-12 22:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Agreed on that, but my real complaint is the inability to oversee the category as a whole. In that sense, every subcat makes it harder, because I'd have to click on each of them. I maintain that we still need a feauture to enable one to see all members of a category and all its subcategories. Is there perhaps a place on Meta that such software feauture additions should be requested? Solver 22:41, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree--such a feature would be very useful. Perhaps even treat subcats as a graphical file browser does, with expandable tree branches. Several people have proposed a similar feature already.
As for discussion of new features, it WOULD be nice to have a central page on meta. However, a couple of the developers decided to destroy the central feature discussion page: m:MediaWiki feature request and bug report discussion. They want to try to make everyone to use all Bugzilla all the time. Not very considerate to other people, is it?
Since the meta discussion page is currently destroyed (until a group of get motivated enough to resurrect it--or make another one), you can discuss new features at the Village pump (technical) for the time being. And Bugzilla can be used for officially making a new feature request, if you feel like doing that.
- Pioneer-12 05:27, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

LGBT people sub-categories

Recently, after a decision was made on CfD to delete all the LGBT people subcategories and move the entries into Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people. They were all de-populated and deleted using a bot. I am appalled that this happened. I hope it can be easily undone. This destroyed a good deal of my and others' work. I did not know it was being discussed until after it happened. It seems obvious that this was going to be controversial, and there should have been outreach to the people that did all the original categorization. The only way we'd notice is if we were closely watching the CfD or if we had done some work to the actual category pages. Since I didn't set up the categories, and only worked to put articles into the categories, I only noticed after your robot deleted everything. I am extremely upset that this happened and even more upset that it COULD happen in Wikipedia. I think there should be MUCH more rigorous standards for deleting categories than what happened. It is too easy for things like this to happen. -- Samuel Wantman 09:03, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Me too. With VfD, at least your watchlist informs you of a pending deletion. With CfD, you have no chance of catching it unless you spend time on CfD. A lot of us spend very little to no time on any Wikipedia:* pages. TreyHarris 17:41, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

As the result of the outcry of several individuals, a vote to reinstate the categories is currently in process at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 7#Gay, lesbian, and bisexual / LGBT occupational categories.

There should be some discussion to formalize the process for getting categories reinstated. I also get the impression that a supermajority of as little as 60% can vote to delete categories. I believe this is a bad policy. I think one person should be able to block consensus if they feel strongly enough about their position. Blocking consensus is not something that people should take lightly, and it is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. People that block frequently and frivolously will loose their credibility. What I am describing is a normal part of formal consensus decision making. Perhaps, considering the number of people involved in Wikipedia, we should require 5 people to block consensus. This would mean that there are 5 people that are willing to put their reputation on the line because of a position they feel strongly about. BTW, in my years of experience in groups that operated using formal consensus decision making I have yet to experience someone blocking consensus more than temporarily. Usually, an intelligent compromise is quickly reached. -- Samuel Wantman 23:15, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I shall also point editors at Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_deletion#LGBT_subcategories where further discussion on this matter has taken place. I also note there that the original deletion appears to have taken place without a majority in favour of deletion. --Vamp:Willow 23:26, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe that part of the genesis for the conflict with LGBT subcategories is because of the problems we have been discussing above about that the duplication of articles in subcategories and supercategories. I believe this problem comes about because there are multiple category hierarchies in Wikipedia and sometimes the subcategories of one hierarchy can also be thought of as subcategories of another. In this case, those of us working on LGBT categories were not attempting to ghettoize LGBT people, but just trying to create categories we find useful. Others think this makes the supercategories LESS useful. I don't believe the solution is to remove subcategories. The solution is to make clear guidelines for when there can be duplication. Please see the compromise proposed above. -- Samuel Wantman 05:55, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Destroyed (historical) Buildings

I apologize if this is not the right place to ask it, but I have been looking for a category on buildings or structures that are no longer extant. I have looked under Category:Architecture (andt the appropriate subcategories) and there does not seem to be a distinction between current buildings and those that no longer exist. In the last few weeks, I have created articles for Ishiyama Honganji, Nagashima, and Hojujiden, all of which have been destroyed. I don't think they belong in the regular categories, such as Category:Buddhist temples, as that is not a historical category and implies, to my mind at least, that the buildings contained within it are still standing. Any thoughts? Thanks. LordAmeth 17:56, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Looking under World Trade Center, I have discovered categories for Demolished buildings and Destroyed landmarks. Guess I'll see what categories are related to those. LordAmeth 17:59, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'll rework the hierarchy appropriately. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:55, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • I appreciate it, but I think the issue is more that I don't think the proper category exists. I should probably create one, but the work it would take to find and categorize every building or structure that no longer exists would be insane. Well, I could always get it started... thanks for the help. LordAmeth 21:06, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Ah, somehow I did not see/find that category (Category:Former buildings and structures). Excellent. I shall use that, and create sub-categories as appropriate. Thanks again. LordAmeth 21:48, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
    • You didn't find it previously because I added in response to your questions! If you encounter poorly structured hierarchies of categories, don't hesitate to interpose categories that make the necessary abstractions, like I just did. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:44, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Category-Defining Articles

Currently:

An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, for example Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software. Note: An exception would be an article that defines a category, and so is itself a parent article of subtopics as well as one in a series of like topics - for instance,

I propose this exception be removed, and the "note" text replaced:

An article that defines a category should usually be in that category only.

This seems to follow actual practice. —Ashley Y 00:15, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

Um, no. The note is followed by a few examples. This is not that unusual. older≠wiser 02:53, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
But preferable, surely? It's simpler. —Ashley Y 07:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
Not necessarily. For example, Category:U.S. states would somewhat disingenuously contain the state categories rather than the state articles. It would make navigating such a hierarchy considerably more difficult. older≠wiser 11:56, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
Right now Category:U.S. states lists them all twice, once as sub-category and once as article, which strikes me as cluttered and confusing. Surely it's simpler and no more difficult to navigate to have them listed just as sub-category?
Sure, you can navigate more directly if you put articles into all the supercategories in their hierarchy. I mean, one could list Alabama in Category:U.S. states, Category:Political divisions of the United States, Category:United States etc. But it's accepted that this is a bad idea, why may an exception for the article-category? —Ashley Y 23:16, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
So, um, given that, do you have any objection to removing the exception? —Ashley Y 23:20, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with removing the exception. In fact, the exception should be used more often. How useful is it for General Motors just to be in Category:General Motors? Why not just include all the categories it should be in? The fact that it's duplicated shouldn't be a problem. If someone goes to Category:General Motors it is not to find out what categories General Motors is in, it is to find out what articles are in that category. The exception is a good one, and should be preserved. john k 04:40, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let me add that an article doesn't technically belong in the article-defining category - it is their by courtesy, to make things a bit easier. But Microsoft isn't a kind of thing done by Microsoft, so technically, it shouldn't really be part of the Microsoft category. I have no problem with having it there, since it makes it easier, but the idea that because it is included there, by courtesy, it should not be included in any other categories is stupid. john k 05:07, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Currently General Motors is in Category:General Motors as well as six other categories. In my view it should not be in the others. Category:General Motors itself has eight parent categories: which of these eight should be in General Motors? And each would have two entries: one for General Motors and one for Category:General Motors.
Clearly it's a bad idea to put an article directly in all the categories that apply to it. General Motors, for instance, would belong to about twenty categories, such as Category:Michigan (since General Motors is based in Michigan) and Category:Companies of the United States (since it is one), etc. The whole point of sub-categories is that you take articles out of the parent category. Why not take General Motors out of all the parent categories of Category:General Motors? —Ashley Y 09:22, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

If you include General Motors in Category:Car companies of the United States and if you want to select all articles about Car companies of the United States, you can just load Category:Car companies of the United States and get all articles, not all except a few that have their own category. -- User:Docu

This only happens to work for those categories that have no other subcategories. If someone decides to create Category:Car companies of Michigan, then this would no longer work (unless you start putting General Motors directly in all of its ancestor categories). —Ashley Y 06:48, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
Which is why Category:Car companies of Michigan would be a pointless category. john k 01:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, Category:Car companies of Michigan might be a useful category (including General Motors and Ford I believe) if it were worth breaking down car companies by state. —Ashley Y 02:07, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)
But it's not worth breaking down car companies by state, because all the major American car companies (except the marginal case of American Motors) are from Michigan (Chrysler was, too, until it got bought out by Daimler-Benz), and there are only a tiny number of American car companies, anyway. john k 04:08, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It sounds from this that Category:Car companies of Michigan might actually be a useful category, especially as it would also be a sub-category of Category:Companies based in Michigan and thus help organise that category. —Ashley Y 04:49, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)
No, it wouldn't be a very useful category because there would not be comparable categories for the other states. older≠wiser 00:45, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
That's not necessary to make the category useful. A similar example would be Category:Pretenders, where there are sub-categories for certain thrones but not comparable categories for other thrones. —Ashley Y 01:27, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)
No, that's really not comparable. There are many subcats under that category. But name a single other state that would have enough car companies to warrant a subcategory of its own. It's not that there would have to be a similar category for EVERY state, but it would be silly to create such a subcategory for a single state. older≠wiser 01:45, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
I don't see why, if enough articles can be moved into it. This sort of thing happens in the category tree all the time. For a long time there was only one subcategory (Jacobites, I think) of Category:Pretenders, until enough articles were added to the category that others could be identified.
Another example would be Category:Felines having only one sub-category, Category:Cats, even though there are no comparable categories for other species in the family. Or there's Category:Shinto shrines, which has only Category:Temples and Shrines of Kyoto, and not shrines for other cities, and so on. —Ashley Y 03:09, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I agree with Ashley in this argument. Unfortunately, he picked a bad example: US car companies are pretty well established and the need for a major categories adjustment is unlikely for the next decade or so. But there are plenty of categories that are moving quickly. In designing this, we should value the principle of not duplicating information that needs to be maintained. If an article belongs in the same categories as its category page then this should only be stored and changed in one place. The way it is displayed can easily be changed; it should not dictate the way we edit WikiPedia. I'd be all for a change request like this: If an article contains an entry [[Category:SomeName|=]] then the article will be displayed appropriately along with Category:SomeName. — Sebastian (talk) 02:08, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

I have found an easy solution to this. Do not put the category-defining article in the category, but do manually put it on the category page. It has the convienence of being close at hand, and the purity of not being in the category. See Category:German-language operas for an example. --DrG 04:35, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)
But it should be in the category, surely? It's a bit odd to be reading the article and not see the category as a category... —Ashley Y 06:23, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't, since it doesn't fit into the category's definition. You could place a link to the category in the article's "See also" section. ··gracefool |☺ 10:13, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Because not all German opera is German-language opera? —Ashley Y 00:44, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

I think I have a solution: follow the guideline for years: The category-defining article is listed first with a *, eg Master's degrees uses [[Category:Master's degrees|*]]. This way it's clear that the article defines/gives info about the category rather than being part of it. ··gracefool |☺ 05:54, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I do that anyway, except I use a space instead (as it doesn't generate a "letter heading" in the category but does put the article first). —Ashley Y 10:50, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, that's much better. ··gracefool |☺ 13:27, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with category-defining articles being in that category, even though it doesn't strictly belong. What I do have a problem with is then taking the category-defining article out of all the categories it does strictly belong in, because it is in its category-defining article. This is why there is already an exception for this. And this is why we should maintain that exception, and, furthermore, enforce it by putting category-defining articles into all the categories they should be in. john k 19:16, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Surely goat does strictly belong in Category:Goats? I don't see how it can't belong even in the strictest sense: indeed it's the most pertinent and obvious article in the category. And by and large it doesn't belong in any other category, it doesn't belong in Category:Caprids or Category:Bovids or Category:Even-toed ungulates or Category:Mammals, even though a goat is all these things. It doesn't belong in them, indeed, for the same reason, because it defeats the purpose of subcategories.
What I'm failing to see is any justification for making a special exception. Sure, a goat is a caprid, one might argue, so why not put it in that category? But by that argument, we should put it in all the other categories in its hierarchy. Goat obviously does belong in Category:Goats, why not leave it at that and let the category hierarchy suffice for the rest of its inclusion? —Ashley Y 04:30, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)
It is a special exception because that means that every time somebody decides to create a category which has an article, that article has to stop being in all the categories it was in before. This is stupid, and it makes categories less useful. Going from the category view, I suppose it makes sense, but it's stupid to do it from the article view. If I'm looking at General Motors, and I want to see the category for all U.S. automobile companies, I have to click twice in your model, and for no good reason except for your dislike of repetition. And even from the category view, this kind of thing can be irritating. For instance, imagine, if you will, Category:Provinces of Butofistan, with Butofistan being an imaginary country in central Asia. Now imagine that Butofistan has 25 provinces. Of these, 8 have their own categories, and 17 do not. All have their own articles. Given that we can't expect the reader to know which provinces of Butofistan have their own articles, and which do not, your way forces the reader to look at both lists to see where the particular province he is looking for is to be found. And what is the advantage of all this? It seems to me that it is very slight, and that this is a clear and very limited exception. john k 22:59, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
But it's the same thing for any subcategory. Supposing the provinces are organised into five regions, and there are categories for two of the regions. If you are looking for Fatbut Province in the Eastern region, you must first check whether or not Category:Provinces of Eastern Butofistan region exists before looking for the province article ...unless of course you put Fatbut Province in both Category:Provinces of Eastern Butofistan region and in Category:Provinces of Butofistan, which clearly defeats the point of subcategorisation.
It's the same in each case, and therefore can't justify a special exception. You can make things very slightly easier to find by putting articles in their entire ancestry of categories. But the end result is messy and hard to maintain. —Ashley Y 02:00, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)
You keep saying a special exception can't be justified, but I think it can. For one thing, it's a very limited exception - it is very clear when exactly it applies. It is also at the very extreme of the subcategory issue. While the creation of subcategories can often be unsatisfactory (especially when it's badly done), it can certainly be agreed that excluding larger categories can become excessive. This provides a bright line test for it. I certainly don't see any consensus here for removing the exception. john k 05:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Ashley Y. Both plans have flaws, but I think Ashley's is more consistent and maintainable. The example you gave is only a problem because some categories which should be created at some point haven't yet been made—ie the problem will fix itself over time. ··gracefool |☺ 13:27, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The problem may fix itself over time. And "over time" could be years. At any rate, here's my basic point: the rule saying that articles shouldn't be in a category which is the parent category of another category they're in is basically a good one. But as categories get to be more and more detailed, this rule begins to have disadvantages as well as advantages. At the point where you get to the article having its own category, it makes sense to draw a bright line in the sand and say "In this case, at least, the rule becomes absurd to follow." Of course it's true that there are other instances where it is nearly as absurd - especially when we have stupid categories like Category:Guillotined French Revolution figures - but it gets complicated to maintain at this point. At any rate, it's clear there is no consensus to change - of those who have commented, three (Docu, Bkonrad, and myself) have supported the continuation of the exception, while Ashley and Gracefool are the only ones who have supported removal. I suggest we table discussion for the moment. john k 15:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't see why the rule is absurd to follow just because an article has its own category. There's nothing absurd about an article existing only in its own category. The alternative complicates maintainability: you have to figure out exactly which supercategories of the category should also appear as categories of the article, and they inevitably become wrong as categorisation is updated. I quite frequently come across articles in their own category that are also in categories that are way up in the ancestry. Of course I simply delete these.
If you wish to bow out that's up to you. I will happily continue to respond to any points made. —Ashley Y 06:30, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)

Sorry I'm joining this conversation late. I've had to take a break from categorization for a while to give myself some distance and lower my level of wikistress. Categorization is giving everyone headaches. It seems to be one of the main sources of conflict at Wikipedia. This is because we don't have a common vision about what categories are. Many of the people who get involved in adding categories to articles see them as a classification system. Many others see them as a navigation system. Some use them to browse through articles, other use them to see what articles are missing.

Perhaps we could take a step back and talk about WHY we have categories. I think we can all agree that categories make it easy to find articles. However most of the discussions on this page seem to be about where things belong. I'd like to make the decisions about where things belong based on where it would be the most help for people looking for articles and browsing through categories.

If we do not put a category defining article in the category of the same name, that means that the category will not appear with the article. If I've just read the article on Film, I am also very likely to want to look at the film category. The same is true if I go to Category:Film, The article named Film is probably the first one I should read. Certainly the article can be added to the category manually at the top, and the category could be added to the article manually also, but this seems like alot of extra work just to keep things pure. Why not just put them in both categories? It's easy and it makes it easier for people to navigate.

As discussed in many places further up this page, there are many good reasons for having articles duplicated in subcategories and supercategories. This is one of them.

Other reasons for having duplicates are; when there are not subcategories for every member of the category; when people want to browse through a complete list of something (check out the recent discussion at WP:CFD about Category:Operas; when multiple hierarchies intersect (like Actors and Academy Awards); etc... Instead of a hard and fast rule, we should formulate guidelines about making things useful. -- Samuel Wantman 07:18, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

category: x by name

A newcomer interested in opera has just created the category Category:Operas by title and added it last night to all our opera articles (~200). This seems a misuse of the category scheme since it isn't a genuine taxonomic classification. Taken to the logical extreme, we would then have a categories like "people by name" or "books by title". Does this serve a purpose? Is there any precedent or solid arguments in favor of such a scheme? It would be helpful if commentary could be directed towards Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera#Category:Operas_by_title, where a discussion about this is taking place. -- Viajero | Talk 10:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Country musicians AND country singers?

I was starting to categorize country music related articles and noticed there were two similar categories: Category:Country_musicians and a subcategory called Category:Country_singers. Are both categories really necessary? If so, what's the difference? If not, is there any way to merge the two? Columbia 23:58, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

Cycles?

There should never be cycles in the categories, should there? —Ashley Y 07:55, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

I'll change it to say that cycles should be avoided unless someone can come up with a good reason otherwise. —Ashley Y 23:06, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

I'm not sure I quite understand. Are you objecting to "usually" in "usually should be avoided"? -- Rick Block (talk) 00:14, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
Yes. I'm objecting to this edit. —Ashley Y 00:32, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
I made that edit. Cycles are necessary for duplicate / alternative categories. See #Categories: A compromise? above. It's a useful aid and stops people trying to create hierarchies, which are by always POV. ··gracefool |☺ 01:37, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't see how the discussion above related to cycles? Do you have any examples of existing category cycles? I think that duplicate categories should be merged, and alternative categories should refer to each other in body text only, unless one is clearly a subcategory of the other. —Ashley Y 02:32, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
I agree with Ashley Y. The linked discussion was about categorization of articles, not categorization of categories. Also, it's never sufficient to add the qualifier "usually" to a policy: you need to specify when the exception applies, or at least give illustrative examples. It can't simply be relegated to the Talk page. Joestynes 03:57, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
OK, I've reverted the change. There don't seem to be any existing cycles or good reasons why they should exist. —Ashley Y 23:32, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
The categories are full of cycles. This cannot be avoided nor should it. Keep in mind that all categories come from the fundamental category. As the cat-tree develops branchs on a topic like Canada or music, a cycle will naturally be created by a topic like "Canadian music". Why only let that cat be in one branch. Cycles are good and reflect reality. --DrG 23:47, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
It doesn't sound like we're all using the same terminology. I believe Ashley Y is using cycle to mean a category that via "higher level" categories ultimately belongs to itself (e.g. category:a in category:b which in turn is in category:a), not upward forks that recombine at a higher node (e.g. category:a in both category:b and category:c where both b and c are in category:d). Viewing category membership as a directed graph (where the connections have an arrow pointing in one and only one direction) the difference is directed graph vs. directed acyclic graph. I don't know of any instances of cycles in this sense, but there's nothing in the software that prevents them. In a graph with cycles, "higher level" is not transitive and it makes writing an algorithm for visiting all the nodes more interesting. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:38, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)
Right now wikipedia is full of both kinds. I picked Category:Apes at random and found this:
Apes->Primates->Mammals->Animals->Tree of life->
Biology->Science->Human societies->Humans->Apes. I don't think you will ever come close to elmating these cycles. Why try? --DrG 04:43, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)
This is a bizarre attitude for a Wikipedian to take. I don't think you will ever come close to eliminating factual errors (for instance) from Wikipedia, so why try? In the mean time, I shall go and be bold and fix this cycle. —Ashley Y 09:25, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)
Or at least I would, if Category:Science were editable... —Ashley Y 09:31, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)
It was silently protected a while back, and not done properly according to protection policy. I've unprotected it. Bryan 07:19, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Please eliminate factual errors. I didn't mean to say don't do that. What I meant was that the writers here don't think in lines of sub-categories. They think in circles. The human brain is organized like a network. When an interesting connection between two ideas is found, it doesn't stop and deny the connection because it creates a cyclic graph. Neither should we. Here's another: sound->acotsitcs->sound. --DrG 10:18, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)
But putting a category in another category doesn't just mean "see also". It suggests that one thing is a subset of another. —Ashley Y 05:17, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
Who said it means "see also"? I don't think it contributes to a rational discussion if you (1) repeatedly put words into people's mouths; (2) threaten to "fix" things while they're under discussion and (3) distort factual statements, such as categories form directed graph --> directed acyclic graph. — Sebastian (talk) 21:27, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
The problem is that this view of what categories mean is not universally shared, and it's certainly not enforced by the software. Confusion about what categories mean leads to many arguments, for example whether "list of x" should be in category:x (it's a list, not an x say some people), or whether any "subcategory" of category:people should include any category that might include anything other than articles about individual people. The alternative to "subset" is that categories are simply a navigational convenience, used to group related articles, and including one category in another is effectively the same as making a wikilink from one article to another. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:41, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)
Your alternative of parent categories as mere wikilinks is not represented in Wikipedia, as the categories are clearly close to a directed acyclic graph. This suggests more than mere linking. —Ashley Y 06:43, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
I agree that categories are usually used as subsets (the parent terminology used on WP:CG no doubt reinforces this) and all categories are supposed to be reachable from category:fundamental. I don't think this means categories have to be a DAG and I would strenuously object to any rule that restricts category membership to mean subset of (John Lennon is by transitivity a member of category:Rock music groups but he's not a group, oh no!). I was fine with usually. I'm fine without it, too. In practice, I don't think they're effectively different. We could analyze the category structure and actively stamp out all cycles, but why bother? And, just because no one has offered up an example of a cycle that exists for a good reason doesn't mean none exist. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:35, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)
Well said! We should focus on what Wikipedia actually needs, not on what the word "category" means to some of us. — Sebastian (talk) 21:27, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
Sure, there might be a good reason for a cycle, but no-one seems to have come up with one (regardless of whether such a cycle actually exists). I don't think it's appropriate to suggest merely "usually" without outlining guidelines for deviation.
I propose that my edit stand unless and until a good reason can be shown here for a cycle to exist, and for the guideline not to suggest that cycles are acceptable without explaining when and why. —Ashley Y 01:30, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)
  • The only guideline about cycles is the one we are discussing here. I agree with Rick, and after reading his speil I've realised that sets is not a sufficient analogy. Categories are intended to be an aid to browsing, rather than a general taxonomy (which would be POV and destined to fail). They are a directed graph, with possible cycles, like the folders in your computer (if using a later OS like Windows NT or XP which allows you folder shortcuts). I think cycles could be useful for this purpose, but I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head. In any case, why should "no cycles" be the default? The software allows it, so the actual default is "cycles allowed" - you should be showing us why cycles should not exist, why the status quo should be changed. What benefit is there of hunting down and eliminating cycles? What purpose would it serve? ··gracefool |☺ 18:36, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Cycles should not exist because there's no good reason for them. If you can come up with a good reason for them, then I'll change my position. —Ashley Y 02:09, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)
I don't think anyone who adds a subcategory can reasonably be expected to check thoroughly whether this creates a cycle somewhere in the scheme: it could be complicated (maybe that's the reason the software doesn't do it automatically?). However, I think it is a useful guideline to say "if you come across a cycle in the categorization, it's probably a sign that something has been miscategorized and could benefit from reclassification" . Joestynes 02:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
That's more or less my attitude. —Ashley Y 02:53, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)
I'm okay with that. The only problem is, if someone does find a need for cycles, they may look at the policy and think "they're not allowed"... by making it policy, we're saying that there is no good reason for them and there never will be... I just don't see any particular harm in having them (apart from the issue of miscategorization). ··gracefool |☺ 08:28, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"X" and "study of X" categories

When you have two categories of the form "X" and "study of X", what should the relationship be? Should one be a subcategory of the other? Should they be merged? And which articles should be in which? Examples:

For the first two, the study is a subcat of the subject. In the second two, the subject is a subcat of the study. Which is better? And if it shouldn't necessarily be consistent, how should one decide in each case? And how should one decide whether an article belongs in each? —Ashley Y 02:51, 2005 Jun 18 (UTC)

Good question! Another example:

Sebastian (talk) 03:06, 2005 Jun 18 (UTC)

  • I'd assume the "study of X" category should be a subcategory of "X". They shouldn't generally be merged - "study of X" is about the study itself, while "X" is about X itself... eg. Category:Music includes bands, songs etc and is of interest to anyone interested in music, while Category:Musicology is about the study and includes terminology, famous musicologists etc. and is of interest only to people interested in the study of music. ··gracefool |☺ 06:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • That's not always the case, though. For example, Category:Parasitology includes a bunch of people that study parasites, and it doesn't make much sense to put them in Category:Parasites because they're humans. Likewise for some of the medicines and methods parasitologists use: fumagilin isn't a parasite, even though it's used to treat them. If parasites were the subcategory, then people interested in them and uninterested in parasitology could weed out the study of stuff by going right to category:parasites. It's probably best to do it on a case-by-case basis. Dave (talk) 12:16, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • Good example. ··gracefool |☺ 12:21, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How do we decide in each case? —Ashley Y 07:45, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)
We'd have to look at whether the members of the subcategory fit in the larger category. For example, Tubifex tubifex is important in parasitology without itself being a parasite (it's an important vector), while Myxobolus cerebralis, the organism it carries, is important in both. Anything that's a parasite will be important in parasitology, but not everything relevant to parasitology is a parasite. Thus, since parasites are one of several things parasitologists study, it should be the subcategory. An example from another field might be putting fossils as a subcategory of palaeontology (as is currently done). Dave (talk) 15:44, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
OK, that's fair enough, let's make "parasites" a subcat of "parasitology" as it was before I changed it. But how can we generalise this? Should we say "all articles in A are of interest to B, therefore A should be a subcat of B"? Should we make "music" a subcat of "musicology"? After all, music generally is of interest to musicology, isn't it? —Ashley Y 01:01, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)
True, but I don't think that the article on the Spice Girls is exactly a musicological work. Dave (talk) 01:06, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
Are you saying that music by the Spice Girls is somehow excluded from the general purview of musicology? —Ashley Y 04:33, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)
No, I'm saying that the article is not particularly musicological--it's about the group, not about the artistic merits of their work--and musicologists don't bother to study it (see the criticism section of the Musicology article). But then again I'm not a musicologist. Dave (talk) 12:12, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Note also that Category:History might also be a "study of" category for Category:The past if it existed. Actually Category:History by period comes close, though it includes present and future times too. I might rename it "Periods of time" or somesuch. —Ashley Y 10:46, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

I've been busily making the science the subcat of the subject, in the process treading on Dave's parasitological toe (above). But what if we had the subject the subcat of the science generally? Would it be acceptable for music to be a subcat of musicology? —Ashley Y 10:55, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Putting parasitology (or mammalogy, or herpetology, etc.) as a subject within science makes sense to me, though maybe it would fit better as a category of biology, which should itself be a category of science. I'm not sure how this relates to
There seem to be two sets of categories, the "science" or "study of" articles and the "subject" articles. I'm not so much worried about the organisation of each, it's the connection between the two that I'm interested in. —Ashley Y 01:01, 2005 Jun 20 (UTC)

Category:Music should be a parent of Category:Musicology, and Category:Parasitology should be a parent of Category:Parasites. There is no generalisation, you have to use your own judgment in each instance. ··gracefool |☺ 13:31, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's not good enough, though: to come to a consensus in any particular case we need to know what the rules are. Otherwise we end up in disputes where each person appeals to their own judgement. —Ashley Y 21:53, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)
I agree: Not having a principle leads to numerous unnecessary circles, such as in Category:Acoustics <--> Category:Sound, which Ashley fixed last week. — Sebastian (talk) 08:07, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)

It seems to me that, as a rule, "study of X" should be a subcategory of "X". That doesn't mean they can't also fall within Category:Science. For example, I'd expect something like:

Science->Biology->Zoology
Science->Biology->Botany
Science->Biology->Parasitology
Living things->Biology
Living things->Animals->Zoology
Living things->Plants->Botany
Living things->Parasites->Parasitology

-- Jmabel | Talk 22:44, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

I think some confusion arises because there are two kinds of "X" categories - one kind is "everything related to X", and "subtypes of X". The first is exemplified by Category:Belgium, which includes people and cities and holidays and anything somehow connected to the country, and the second by Category:Ray-finned fish, which has only articles describing subtypes of fish. For subtype categories, it would be misleading to include articles that are not actually subtypes, while such categories would sensibly be subcategories of a "everything related to X" category. Some categories are very confused in this respect; for instance Category:Plants is an "everything related" category that overlaps heavily with Category:Botany, which almost by definition is "everything related to plants", while subcat Category:Magnoliophyta is generally agreed to be a "subtypes of Magnoliophyta" category. Until we agree on the definition of each category, it's going to be hard to come to agreement on how they should relate to each other. Stan 23:32, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Hear, hear. -- Jmabel | Talk June 29, 2005 02:02 (UTC)
    • That makes a lot of sense, actually. I hadn't thought of it that way. How do we implement it? Dave (talk) June 29, 2005 03:01 (UTC)
      • I think it would have to be case-by-case. There's no intrinsic reason why Category:Magnoliophyta is a subtaxa collection for instance, could just as easily include articles about flower anatomy and bios of botanists who specialize in flowering plants. ToL convention seems to have settled on subtaxa though, probably don't want to change that now. I always want to add a lead line to the category's page saying what I think it should include, so it's at least a starting point for argument. It looks like Wikipedia:Categorisation_FAQ#What_is_the_purpose_of_categories? addresses the distinction, and Wikipedia:Categorisation_FAQ#What goes on a category page? suggests describing category purpose on its page, so I guess all that's left is to fan out and add proposed descriptions to categories lacking them, then argue on their talk pages. :-) Stan 29 June 2005 05:36 (UTC)

Disturbing category trend

I've noticed a disturbing trend of splitting off categories by month when doing so IMO makes the category system harder to use. For example, recently I've nominated Category:2001 by month and Category:2000 by month for deletion and, as you can see, gotten them deleted. They only existed to hold articles such as January 2001, which are properly categorized in the first section of categories like Category:2001. Now I see Category:2005 news and Category:2004 news. This can't be right... Am I the only one who finds this distinction between, say, Category:2005 news and Category:2005 singularly unhelpful? - dcljr (talk) 07:56, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Just vote them for deletion. ··gracefool |☺ 09:35, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've done so. Haven't yet gotten any votes one way or the other, though... - dcljr (talk) 23:03, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I believe some people who participate regularly in the various for-deletion articles tend to vote on nominations that are one day old, so they can go through the list of that day's nominations voting on them without having to keep track of new additions later. Bryan 23:29, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
(For the record, my nominations were almost three days old at the time I made the comment above. - dcljr (talk) 2 July 2005 07:10 (UTC))
I think it's rather rude to nominate a category for deletion without letting the creator know. Yes, the CFD tag was put on but I've been very busy and not able to monitor by (3,500 article) watchlist as closely as usual. Would've been nice to have been asked for my view and reasons for its creation. violet/riga (t) 29 June 2005 16:43 (UTC)
Okay, what's your argument for having these categories? BTW, I'm wondering, is it the responsibility of the administrator who deletes the categories to empty them (i.e., recategorize the articles and any subcategories)? How would one check that this has actually been done? - dcljr (talk) 2 July 2005 00:24 (UTC)
I believe most category-deletion grunt work is actually done by User:Pearle, which is a bot that automatically goes through the articles removing the category tags beforehand. To find out whether a nonexistant category has articles in it just go to the non-existant category page, for example Category:American werewolves by location doesn't exist but if you go there and then click "cancel" to get out of the edit window or just go straight to [1] you'll see that my sandbox subpage is categorized there at the moment (this is just a temporary thing for illustration purposes). Bryan 2 July 2005 06:47 (UTC)
Of course, I should have known that... - dcljr (talk) 2 July 2005 07:04 (UTC)
Some articles have no place in virtually any category and only exist because they were in the news. Abhilasha Jeyarajah, for example. I therefore created the news category structure in order to include such articles. The intention was that something relating to one month only was in, for example, Category:December 2004 news, and one relating to several was in the year category. Category:2004 and the like look badly organise when they contains random articles that are not obvious as to their contents. As a note, SimonP went around and remove these categories from various articles (without explanaion) and I've not had time to repopulate them. violet/riga (t) 2 July 2005 09:58 (UTC)
Hmm. I disagree. I just don't think we need to go down to individual months. BTW, Abhilasha Jeyarajah might belong in Category:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, along with much of the current contents of Category:December 2004 news. - dcljr (talk) 3 July 2005 05:47 (UTC)
By all means you can disagree. What I'm saying is that it is much more polite to talk to the person that spent ages creating the category system before you CFD part of it. Perhaps, given my description, there would've been support to keep them. As it was it was just a small handful of people that didn't see the reasoning. Also, I hardly see it as a "disturbing category trend". violet/riga (t) 3 July 2005 09:21 (UTC)

Three too many?

Hi there! I just found out that there are three categories used in the Soviet history section, which kind of overlap: Executed revolutionaries, Murdered revolutionaries, and Pre-Soviet executions. The latter category sounds especially weird, because it should then include anybody in Russia who was executed before 1917. Can we do something about it, or is it meant to be this way? KNewman 17:27, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

CategoryTOC

Is there anyway that I can make the index more then 1 letter, in particular 4 digits for the year so a timeline can auto generate itself?

And also:

extended catalog pipetrick syntax

I was looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander, and it occured to me that a Category with extended "pipetrick" could be used to generate an index table, not just a catagory with 1 char index.

eg: by putting (maybe in a template) the following into Mount Everest: [[Category:Peak|Name=Mount Everest|8850|Height=8850||region=NP|First Ascent|[[May 29]], [[1953]]|First ascensionist=[[Edmund Hillary]] and [[Tenzing Norgay]] ]] . It could/would generate a table, instead of just a (1 char) alphabetical list. And by using a second field, then table could be sorted into ascending height. This would encourage the growth of consistent indexes.

And where two table are desired, eg ordered by date climbed, and also ordered by height, then a template could be used to generate both/two catagories. But have a different name (date & height), put this value after the first pipe.

Also the column titles can be derived, eg: Height=8850. would be a column.

This would reduce the hand editing to create indices, and also improve over all consistency.

And it fits in nicely with existing syntax. NevilleDNZ 13:19, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Category request

Maybe this category would be huge, but I think it would be useful to have a category for languages which are not the primary official language of any country; many would probably have some official status (Basque, Breton, etc), but are not the primary language of state. I'm not sure what to name this category to be precise. Category:Minority languages is not sufficient because the term minority has a different connotation; some "minority languages" may be the dominant (or near-exclusive) daily language in certain region, or may be the language of state (e.g. Irish). ~ Dpr 22:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Kind of an odd category: all languages, minus those that have official status somewhere. And "primary" and "official" are two entirely different matters. For example, the U.S. has no official language, though English is clearly primary, and many of the usual aspects of "official language" (even use on ballots) are accorded in various states or counties to various languages, obviously including Spanish, but even including Chinese. On the other hand, India has 15 official langauges; obviously, most of them are not primary. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:07, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
    • Seems like what you're suggesting, Dpr, would work better as a list. - dcljr (talk) 19:32, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

An article with the same name as a category should usually belong only to that category?

Are there exceptions to the following rule?

For instance, many film, book, and author/artist articles have dedicated topic categories (e.g., Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion), yet it makes sense to have both the main article and the topic category appear in a given larger category (for instance, it makes sense to me to have both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion in Category:Anime). Category pages seem like they're built exactly for this purpose: they contain a pool of subcategories in their top half, and a pool of relevant topic articles in the bottom half, and so it seems natural to me that, for instance, Category:Anime would have both the catch-all subcat Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion in its top half and a reference to the specific main article Neon Genesis Evangelion in its bottom half.

It just looks like the topic article under the current policy (Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example, again) lacks categorization at first glance: as they are now, topic articles with topic categories are categorized mostly according to how their topic categories are categorized, and it seems confusing to create that dependency between the two. Was what I'm talking about doing seen as too redundant, and that's why it isn't advocated, or can film articles, for example, be special cases? —Tarnas 23:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

This has been a long ongoing topic of discussion. It seems to me that there are some very good reasons to ENCOURAGE putting an article in both the category with the same name and the category above it. The double listing makes perfect sense to me.
  1. The double category listing sends the message to the user that there is an article about the topic, and there are also more articles to be found in the subcategory.
  2. It makes it easier to find main topic articles (by eliminating having to go to the subcategory)
  3. It puts both articles in the list of categories for the article. There would be the normal higher level listing that all other articles get put into now when they don't have their own category. There would also be the subdirectory with the same name which is the natural jumping off point that people will look for if they want more information about the subject.
  4. It makes more intuitive sense for editors. The natural inclination is to put things into categories, not to take them out of categories.
  5. It creates a complete listing of articles at the higher level category. It is confusing to have to look at the subdirectories and the list of articles to get a complete list of topics.
As an alternative if people want to be really consistent about the no duplication rule, a better way to do it would be to only put an article in the HIGHER level subdirectory. Then both the article and the subdirectory would be listed. In the lower level category, the one with the same name as the article, there would be a link which would be entered manually (e.g. "This topic is about motion pictures. For an introduction to the topic see film".) You would also have to do the same thing in the film article (e.g. "For more film topics see: Category:Film). This would actually probably be a more consistent and user-friendly way to do things than have duplicates, but harder to set up. Either system would be an improvement to just putting the article in the category with the same name. I would like to add some text to the project page about this if there is consensus. Could we take a straw poll to see where people stand? I've added one below. -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Whoa! I just read through most of this dicussion page, and realized that my question here has been debated A LOT! One theory put forth above is that there's a disconnect between the impulse to categorize and to classify, but I think the biggest problem of all is that there's two competing notions of hierarchy: one that there is a "tree", in which it's possible to have "sub-categories", and the other that there is a web of interconnected articles and categories. This is noted on Wikipedia:Categorization ("Categories do not form a tree"), but the whole Wikipedia:Categorization policy page seems to be riddled with uncertainty about how to apply the notion of a relatively tree-less hierarchy.
     The overwhelming problem, I think, is that there is this concept of "sub-category": there should be no true "subordinate category" when the hierarchy of categories is not a strict tree, there can only be related categories, some more or less subordinate to others. This becomes most counter-intuitive when the idea of "subordinate category" leaks into "subordinate article", where the policy becomes one of including an article only in one category: Deism only in Category:Deism rather than in Category:Religious faiths, traditions, and movements as well. This policy ignores the dual nature of categorization: to organize both related categories and related articles in readily available fashion, not to nest articles deep in hidden categories. To dictate that a given article should not be further categorized is to miss a strong point of relating a topic to others directly on its page.
     The impulse to manage and prune categories has become too counter-productive in this way: there is, for instance, room for all African-American actors in Category:Film actors, Category:American actors, and Category:African-American actors. I think redundancy is okay and desired: it makes things easier to find and reflects the true multi-categorizable nature of most topics. —Tarnas 01:54, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes it has been debated quite a bit. I can't say we've reached a consensus. I agree with what you are saying (I made many of the same points higher in the page), and I'm trying to keep an open mind and come up with creative solutions. -- Samuel Wantman 07:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Topic article straw poll

Please read the section above, and respond below. This is non-binding, just a starting place for the discussion to see where people stand. Thanks -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

How should an article be categorized if it is the topic article of a category? Add your name to any of the following options that you find acceptable (Short comments welcome):

A. The article should only be in the category with the same name. That category will be in the higher level category and will appear as a subdirectory. For an example see Film

B. The article should be in both the category with the same name and the higher level category. The category with the same name will also be in the higher level category. Both the article and the category will be listed in the higher level category. This seems to be the current norm. For an example see Musical theatre

  • Easy and functional -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The most natural solution, already widely used. —Tarnas 00:45, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

C. The article should only be in the higher level category. The category with the same name will also appear as a subdirectory in the higher level category. There should be a link entered in the directory with the same name directing users to the topic article. There should be a link in the article directing users to the topic directory. For an example see Suspension bridge

  • Consistent and user-friendly, but more work to maintain. -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The best format so far... don't think it would be hard to do. —Tarnas 00:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Plan C. would be best, I think, if we're thinking of the same thing, and I don't think it would be hard to implement. It's consistent with the idea of categories including brief self-descriptions: in the description, the main topic article could be mentioned/linked, and thereby omitted from the actual category. —Tarnas 00:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I think you and I are thinking of the same thing. Yes it isn't that hard to implement and it exists already on many categories and articles. The more I think about it the more I think there are advantages. It does make the notion of what should be in a category clearer, and it might get more people looking in categories. I have come across many new users who don't understand what categories are and how they work. If all the main topic articles had text that said "For more articles about about this subject see: Category:Foo", that helps makes it very clear. Category:Suspension bridges is a good example of how a category would look (notice that Suspension bridge is not be listed under articles.) Take a look at Suspension bridge and notice that there is a link and description to Category:Suspension bridges listed under "See also" but Category:Bridges is the only category the article is in. -- Samuel Wantman 02:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, rereading your idea, we aren't thinking of the same thing: since it's impossible put a topic cat in a topic article without the topic article appearing in the topic cat listing (e.g., can't categorize Hunter S. Thompson as Category:Hunter S. Thompson and somehow leave the former out of the latter), the precedent is, I think, to re-list the topic cat so that it appears as the first article in the topic cat listing, under an asterisk or something similar (e.g., [[Category:Hunter S. Thompson|*]]). I think it's nice to actually have the topic cat in the topic article at the bottom, and in the history of wikipedia categorization I think cats used to be at the top, but the format became clumbsy and got in the way of immediate information. —Tarnas 02:08, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It sounds like you are describing plan B. It is possible to put a topic category in a topic without the topic article appearing in the topic cat listing. You just put it in the article like so: [[:Category:Hunter S. Thompson]] Better yet if it was made the first item in the See Also section:
See all the articles in the Hunter S. Thopson category...
Perhaps I'm not understanding you. I don't want to move where categories display. I still want them at the bottom except for the topic article which would only be in the top section in plan C. Take a look at Category:Hunter S. Thompson. It now looks like it would in plan A and B. In plan C the only change would be that Hunter S. Thompson would not be in the category listings on the bottom, but it would be linked as it is now, on the top of the page. -- Samuel Wantman 07:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Plan C would remove the HST cat from the blue-boxed bottom of the HST topic article. I'm not into that, in which case I'm for plan B. Having one (very relevant) cat exist in the "See also" section fragments the whole unity of the category-article structure and requires users to learn a new process: topic cats don't show up on topic article bottoms, but somewhere in the end linking text. Now something I like s much. —Tarnas 18:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)