Wikipedia talk:Special:WantedCategories

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This is the talk page for the special page at Special:WantedCategories.
For general information on this and other special pages, see Help:Special page.
For recent talk about special pages, see Recentchangeslinked/Specialpages discussion

Before creating categories generated on Special:Wantedcategories, please note:
Some of the redlinked categories have been deleted, but links to them exist on discussion pages or other non-article items, which is why they appear to be wanted. There may be a good reason why they are redlinked. Please check the deletion logs or "What links here" for each category before (re-)creating it. Cheers! Pegship 00:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Purpose

What is the meaning or need of the page? Would like to help, but not sure of need/purpose.

It is basically a cached list of the most populous red categories in the system. Red categories are categories listed on a page somewhere, but that do not exist as an actual category object. Red categories do no great harm that I know of, but they also do no real good. Categories are, for the most part, for navigation. Red categories really do not help much in this, and are thus mostly useless.
So the point is to take the useless red category and figure out what to do with it. Options include:
1) Building out the red category if you think it will make a useful category. This involves figuring out how the new category should be parented, and whether it should have any notes at the top, or should consist only of the partents.
2) Remove red category links from the entries. If you do not see a use for the category, or it is a duplicate of an existing category, clean up the individual entries. In the case of a duplicate category already existing, this simply involves repointing each entry to the appropriate cat. If there is no appropriate real cat, and you do not see much long term use for the category, then just remove the red category from the entries.
3) Do nothing. I personally am very, very hesitant to touch things in the User space, for instance, and will tend to shrug and move on to the next item rather than trying to clean up red cats on other people's user pages. - TexasAndroid 20:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Updates

How often is this page updated? -AMK152 23:33, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Instantly, I believe. Special pages, annotated by the Special:, are created by the Wikipedia software on demand (ie. every time someone accesses it). Click this link for more details. Daniel.Bryant 01:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Less often than that. Weekly if your lucky (it's currently 16 days old). Rich Farmbrough, 12:24 21 December 2006 (GMT).

[edit] B class

There is still an existing request on the Wanted categories cached list for Category:B stubs (#92 on the list). This category was apparently rejected some time ago, according to one of the 3 links to the non-existent category page. Please advise. Badbilltucker 21:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for categories that currently exist

Should category names which currently exist and which match or nearly match currently requested category names be posted here regularly? I've found many already on the first page of the November 3, 2006 Wanted categories list. In particular, they are #'s 4,10,35,50,62,65,83,88,99,100,110,120,171,174,176,177,188,193,195,201 and 203. 4,10,62 & 83 are identical. robertjohnsonrj 02:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think one way to remove them from the list is to go to the redlinked cat, find "what links here" and edit those articles to conform to the existing category, rather than creating (or re-creating) something that has a good reason not to exist. Just a thought. Pegship 12:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please add a disclaimer to this page

Many of the categories listed on this page have been deleted following CFD or SFD processes. This page should either be renamed (or removed) or at least show a warning against simply recreating deleted material. A few months back an editor recreated many hundreds of categories that had already been deleted for good reason simply because he found this page. We need to address this situation. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 15:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Strongly agree. I assume a rename, or a change to the "canned text" to disclaimerify it, would be a matter of asking a dev nicely to do so (though I assume this would be the logical place to discuss it first). Alai 23:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category differentiation?

Would it be possible to filter out the categories with Wikipedian or User in them? They're primarily user-page related, and it'd be nice to have the wanted categories be primarily article-related. Maybe put them on a separate page, so they can be more specfically examined? I think it would be a big help to separate the two kinds of categories, imho. :) -Ebyabe 14:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invisible articles in categories?

At least it seems that way for some of them. The following categories consistently appear on the list, but are always empty:

Could someone figure out what's happening, 'cause it's kinda freaky. -Ebyabe 15:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

They must be linked to from old talk pages. These categories have all be renamed by WP:WSS. The correct category names are:

The links haven't been updated by bot since it will mess up some old logged discussions regarding the category names, so in order to update them, we'd need to check every case by hand to avoid this problem. Valentinian T / C 16:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think I maybe have an idea. I looked at What links here for Category:Stub, since that's the worst (with 41 members). There's mentions of it on a bunch of talk pages. That might be why it's not showing in the category, as the pages aren't categorized with that category, only refer to it. But only certain pages types must be being counted. That would make more sense.
I've been working on these on-and-off for over a week, and seeing those categories keep cropping up with nothing in them was driving me crazy. Well, crazy-er. Now I can maybe fix 'em. :) -Ebyabe 16:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I've made a post to to WP:WSS [1] One of our active members is a bot operator so perhaps he can convert the lot to < code > < nowiki > form. Valentinian T / C 16:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)