Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Path on top of page

I was thinking that it would be a very good idea (and very relevant to this project) if all pages had a path that contains all their parents and granparents. Then the page would have a list of subtopics on the side (much like the proposed main page reoganization does) Fresheneesz 03:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Hopelessly large scope

I don't mean to be overly discouraging, but I suspect the scope of this wikproject is hopelessly large. I personally categorized all the articles about towns and villages in Japan (perhaps 3500 articles). This took several months. I have, off and on, also tried to keep up with wikipedia:orphaned categories, which are usually categories created by well meaning editors that either weren't added to any parent category or accidentally duplicate an existing category. This task by itself takes more time than I'm willing to donate to wikipedia. Ensuring consistency? Ensuring all articles are categorized? Laudable goals, but unless you have several dozen (maybe several hundred) people helping, all of whom agree about the overall structure, I highly doubt you will succeed. Perhaps this should start with an attempt to codify some categorization policies and guidelines. I'm trying to increase the usefulness of one such guideline, see wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes (and its talk). As far as I know, we don't even have "a collected wisdom page" reflecting oft-repeated discussions from WP:CFD, e.g. albums should go in a "albums by artist" category, various naming patterns like "<geographical feature> of <country>", etc. Without some sort of written guiding principles, perhaps even official wikipedia policies, behind this effort I predict you'll inevitably run into highly obstreporous editors who will actively undo what you're trying to accomplish. My advice is continue to think big, but start small. -- Rick Block 04:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the advice, and the good work (just had a look at your user page). They are probably unachievable unless everyone spent 80% of their time doing grunt work and maintenance. But I do believe that with a concerted effort we could get a lot closer than we are already. The projects for names of countries/counties and regions have pretty much sorted out Foo in Country. Something I have done in the past two days is create a mind-map showing the first 6 levels of the category system - User:GregRobson/categorymap. You'll find that it's not too badly organised but there are entire branches in the wrong place. I have added your page wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes to the Project as a useful reference. Greg Robson 06:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cat Watch

Hi there! I was thinking about starting a project like this except that I just realized it already existed. I have a herculanean task to propose, and a way to go about it, and I do think that (just like the WikiProject stub sorting) that with a couple of people it can be done.

[1] The category namespace is very large (about 25000 of them...) and very inconsistent. I've asked for a monthly list of new categories added, as well. Now it would be possible to go over this list, alphabetically, and find and fix inconsistencies. This is feasible precisely because large groups of categories, with similar names, can be automatically passed - e.g. (year) births and (country) (profession).

Suppose that we have ten participants, and each gets a list of 100 categories each week, then it would be cleared in a number of months. If, of course, people want to tackle this since it is still a lot of work.

Many categories would fall under the 'speedy renaming' criteria that already exist on WP:CFD. What we would require is a direct way to input these to a bot, so that e.g. a group of misspelled categories can be dropped there and be reclassified by a bot. What we would also need is a bot to remove all references to non-existent categories (i.e. those that don't have a category page). Comments welcome! Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 13:54 (UTC)

  • I like this proposal. We should have a seperate subpage for this type of project, to further explain and detail what needs to be done, and links to the places to complete them. ∞Who?¿? 00:20, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Reworking the project page

The project is a good, and obvious devellopment, however, I find the general wording to be a bit confuse and imprecise. Unless someone sees a problem with it, I will reowrd the page in the next week. 18:31, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Sub pages for projects

Along with Cat Watch proposed by Radiant above, I think we should setup a precise list of topics/projects that will be worked on. These will have their own sub-pages off the main project page, so each project can be discussed and laid out in detail.

One such project, is "General Categorization proposals", or similar name. Where we can raise issues of large category naming structures, and discuss how it be properly named or categorized before bringing it to WP:CFD. This would not work parallel to CFD, but for its benefit. Sometimes a single category is nominted for renaming, and later ends up being an umbrella nomination. This way we can avoid having several similar categories nominated seperately, and keep from bogging down CFD. Also, with proposing it here, we can have comments and discussion on the naming and tree, before placing it on CFD. This may seem redudnant, but I think will make work on CFD much easier. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated. ∞Who?¿? 00:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Good suggestion. I think we should propose certain naming conventions (e.g. no abbreviations in cat names), put them up for discussion to the general public for awhile, and if there is a consensus on them, add them to the speedy renaming criteria so that there will actually be consistency. Radiant_>|< 08:40, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Read this!

Category:Wikipedia_categories_in_need_of_attention contains a lot of material for us to work on. Radiant_>|< 12:19, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Thats a good chunk of stuff, good find. I added it to "Current projects" on the project page, if anyone thinks it needs a better location or title, make necessary adjustments. ∞Who?¿? 21:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

COTW

Is anyone interested in a categories collaboration of the week? Maurreen (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Hm, interesting idea. What do you propose - we find some broad subject area and clean up its categorization? Or something else? Radiant_>|< 17:18, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
That's pretty much what I'm thinking of, especially categories with too many articles in the main cat. Also uncategorized pages. But the work could vary with the needs we see and with our desires. Maurreen (talk) 17:28, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
It could complement the "Cat Watch" you suggested above. But just so you know, I'm generally not keen on renaming categories for the purpose of standardization. Maurreen (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
I think you should be aware if you're not already, that Beland and his bot pearle have compiled a page and some subpages at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization that could be useful. Please have a look. Quinobi 20:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Not the same, but related: I created Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration. Maurreen (talk) 08:21, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

That's very helpful too. Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 09:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

subpages

I have noted two subpages that sounded appropriate to me, /issues and /proposals (where one is already listed) are on the main page now. Circeus 21:23, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

OK. This might be something for an Issues subpage. I've found some rather complex issues relating to Categorizing Occupations within the Construction Industry. Say you're a Painter, that is you make a living painting peoples homes either inside or out. Where and how does one find an article about this occupation on Wikipedia? The Standard Occupational Classification System might work. I would say then from following that, said occupation might be under Category:Construction_and_extraction_occupations which leads to Category:Construction_trades_workers where the painter does not show up, although his co-workers, the electricians, carpenters, and plumbers do. Some highbrow Cooper Union grad might take offense if it did. So my pal the painter would then be called either a decorator, which is only deserving of a Wiktionary entry, or an Interior decorator which might justify a raise for some guys I know. This may constitute some very deep systemic bias as well as a totally spastic categorization scheme. Just something to think about. Quinobi 08:10, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
My father was a painter and decorator, and since he has just gifted me his 1960 something reprint of The Modern Painter and Decorator (1921) I am sourcing it for the Painter and decorator article which I have categorised in Category:Construction trades workers. Note I have listed Category:SOC occupations for deletion as I believe it is a case of sytematic bias. Hiding talk 08:49, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Help categories

I'm thinking that our stub categories could be complemented by "Help" categories. That is, we could have something like "Foo articles that need help" or "... need special help", if they need cleanup or wikification or are disputed, etc.

That way these articles (and possibly categories) might be more likely to get the attention of people who care more and know more about the given subject. Maurreen (talk) 08:13, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Help! California categories

The California and Southern California WikiProjects are working to improve the organization and naming of the various categories under Category:California. Unfortunately, there really isn't a whole lot of guidance that I could find for Wikipedia categories., Especially for naming, all I could find was Wikipedia:Categorization#General naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics). I know, however, that between this WikiProject and WP:CFD there has developed a number of naming and organization conventions that do not seem to be documented anywhere. I would appreciate it if someone could look at the current organization of the California categories (located at Wikipedia:WikiProject California/categories) and then make some recommendations about reorganizing and renaming the categories.

What I see as one of the biggest problems are all the "Los Angeles" categories. One problem is that there are some overlapping or duplicate categories. The other problem is that most of the categories are just "Los Angeles" and do not make it clear if they are for the city, county, or metropolitan area. I think that all of those categories need to be renamed to indicate which Los Angeles they are referring to . BlankVerse ∅ 01:09, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Overpopulated categories

I created template:chem-cat to try to get help subcategorizing chemistry articles from people who know the subject better than I do. The tag is used at the bottom of the articles. The category has 172 articles and has had the template:cleancat since May 1.

But the tag is now listed at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. Maurreen (talk) 23:16, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Users in "article-space" categories?

On occasion I've come across user pages in what seem intended to be categories for the article space (as most of them are), but is there a firm rule (or clear guidance) as to such a distinction? There's no technically separate namespace for "article categories", though it's pretty intuitively obvious in every case that comes to mind. I ask rather than just "being bold" as 'fixing' such things requires either editting other people's user pages, or asking them to 'fix' same themselves, so I'd prefer to be clear where I'm solid ground. Alai 18:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I doubt there's a rule either way; whatever your judgment tells you. Maurreen (talk) 02:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC) I misunderstood the question. I thought you were asking how to fix the problem. Maurreen (talk) 14:42, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
... actually, there's a guideline at Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references#In_the_Template_and_Category_namespaces, which basically prohbits this. Although it doesn't say it this way, I think the intent is that wikipedia articles should not be in a category that contains anything except wikipedia articles (the converse of which implies user pages should not be in categories containing pages from article space). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:23, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • As Rick says. Also, our vanity guidelines are opposed to that. If you see any page in an article category that isn't in article space or a subcategory (e.g. a talk page, template, user page, Wikispace page etc), it should generally be removed. These are generally honest mistakes anyway. Radiant_>|< 08:14, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure they are such, just wanted to be clear about the policy in advance. I just wasn't clear how to determine what an 'article category' actually was (other than majority contents or intuition), but Rick's reference makes this very clear (thanks): the root category makes this evident. Alai 00:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Birth-Death year categorization problems

There is a page ... Wikipedia:People_by_year/Reports/Youngest ... that shows a listing of the youngest persons on which there are articles based on a comparison of their birth and death year categorization. The listing starts at "-1614" years :). Needless to say, this list could be useful in some specific troubleshooting in the area of biographical description through categorization. Just floating this up as a "neat thing found" in case someone is interested in digging into it more deeply. Regards, Courtland 00:56, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Goals are nice, but don't quite work ...

Hi,

Recently, User:SeventyThree reogranized a large number of physics-related categories, many of them incorrectly. The stated reason was cat, as per Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories#Goals, "No category or article is a direct child of one of its grandparents" . After trying to fix some of these errors, which got rather exasperating, since the result was quite tangled, I started realizing that the problem was not the WP categorization, but the goals of this project. This morning, even anonymous editors started reverting SeventyThree's edits. Simply put, that actual, real-life categorizations used by practicing physicists and mathematicians are not heirarchically structured, and in fact frequently do have the kinds of "loops" in them that User:SeventyThree was trying to remove. So 1) Are you folks sure that this is what you want for categories? Since I don't think it makes sense. 2) Could there be a policy such that if an editor is not knowledgable in a particular set of categories, could they refrain from reorganizing them? We have the capable Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics which are staffed with people who know and are capable of performing these edits correctly. linas 14:54, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Personally I think that loops should be discouraged but not eliminated, for exactly the real-life reasons you mentioned. Rather that reorganizing existing categories, loop elimination almost always requires changes in category definitions so the semantics are more hierarchically relatable, not a simple thing for someone outside a knowledge area (which it sounds like this User:SeventyThree was, from outside). Courtland 23:28, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem with redefining categories is we are working with academic disciplines that have their own definitions outside of Wikipedia; we cannot redefine these terms if we want congruence with the real world. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics for our discussion of the problems with eliminating loops in some of the physics categorization, especially for terms that apply to both the experimental and theoretical side of things. — Laura Scudder | Talk 23:01, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Naming conventions for categories

A proposal for conventions for category naming, consolidating existing conventions mostly from WP:CG and including new conventions and rules pertaining to "by country" categories, is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Please read it and discuss on its talk page. The intent is for this new page to be the official policy for category naming (subpage of Wikipedia:Naming conventions). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:18, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Where to discuss categories?

I'm not quite sure where to discuss issues with categories. I have a few comments that should probably go in these talk pages: Wikipedia_talk:Categorization and Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (categories). I haven't finished reading through the first one yet, and the second one seems taken up with a very long discussion of 'of Foo' and 'Fooish' issues, so I'm putting my initial comments somewhere here for now. If anyone wants to move them to the proper pages, please do so. Carcharoth 19:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Topic vs List categories

While reading the Category conventions at Wikipedia:Categorization I noticed that it says

This was pretty much what I came up with when reorganising Category:Disasters which previously consisted of articles on disaster topics mixed in with lists of disasters and types of disasters. I then created Category:Disaster to take the general or topic articles, and then reorganised Category:Disasters on a list basis.

This follows the Opera/Operas example above, as well as the example of Category:Industry and Category:Industries. I'm happy with this distinction, though it only seems to make sense when you have enough articles to populate the 'topic' category.

What I am not clear about is how the category 'tree' structure works for these topic/list categories. Should the 'list' category be a subcategory of the 'topic' category or not? This is what has happened with the Opera and Disaster examples, but Category:Industry is a subcategory of Category:Industries, which seems to be wrong.

I saw some discussion of this on the Wikipedia:Categorization talk page, but haven't had time to read through all the archived discussions yet. Is there a consensus on this? Carcharoth 19:36, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Consensus around nearly anything related to categories is difficult to achieve. I am not aware of a consensus on this specific issue, although I agree that in a logical sense category:list of topic should be categorized under category:topic and not the other way around. I think Wikipedia talk:Categorization is the right spot to propose this as an addition to WP:CG. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:27, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Category descriptions

I've noticed that many categories do not contain any description, while some do. Some even use a template to copy in the 'type' article (kind of like the 'type' species in taxonomy). For an example of this, see Category:Nature. I didn't see this mentioned on Wikipedia:Categorization, which only mentions writing a description very briefly, without any guidelines. Should this templating in of the 'type' article be done?

Tied in with the question of when and how to write a category description, is where to put the 'type' article. I've noticed many category pages using the 'pipe sort trick' to put the 'type' article at the front of the list (using * as a sort key). Some category pages also, or instead, put a link to the 'type' article in the description, as well as some links to parent categories and sub-categories (making such links more prominent than the links in the page and at the bottom of the page), plus links to any other relevant categories. Obviously this should only be done if it helps explain the scope of the category and why it was created or organised the way it was. Plus, it helps to explain what should NOT be put in the category.

For examples of such category descriptions, see Category:Disasters and Category:Natural disasters. For an example of how I dealt with 'type' articles, see Category:Disaster (with 'type' article Disaster) and Category:Disasters (with 'type' article List of disasters). This last trick avoids putting Disaster in both Category:Disasters and Category:Disaster, which is silly. But putting a link to Disaster in the description for Category:Disasters helps redirect people who are lost.

Also, I noticed people putting links to Categories in the "See Also" sections of articles. Is this something that is being encouraged?

I didn't really see this kind of thing mentioned in detail on Wikipedia:Categorization, though it may have been discussed on the talk page or its archives. Does anyone here know if there is any sort of consensus on these issues? (1) What a category description should contain; (2) Using the * pipe sort trick; (3) Where to put the 'type' article; and (4) linking to categories directly from articles. Carcharoth 20:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Repeat from above - consensus on nearly anything related to categories is difficult to achieve. To my knowledge: 1) no, 2) no, 3) no (but see Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Topic article straw poll, 4) no, although I think there may be an argument that this violates Wikipedia:Avoid self-references (which is perhaps where this one should be discussed). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:38, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Categories aren't portals

Many categories have portal material on them (see major examples in the main page template Template:Eight portals links). Portals now have their own namespace and it seems sensible to turn those portal-like categories into normal categories where you only have the articles and subcategories that it includes, pretty much like a disambiguation shouldn't have anything else than the links to where it disambiguates. Please discuss on Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal. Jules LT 18:23, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Categorizing "main articles"

What is the rule on categorization of the "main article" of a category (i.e. the article that often has the same name as the category)? I thought I had read something to the effect that the main article of a category can (or perhaps should) appear in the parent categories of that category, unlike other articles which should not appear both in a category and its parents. I can't find where I read this now, so perhaps I was mistaken or the policy/guideline/whatever has been changed. Any comments on what the rule is or should be? I have been deliberately adding "main articles" to the parent categories of their category, but I ran into another editor who was systematically removing the parent categories from main articles. Now neither of us is sure who is right.--Srleffler 05:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Straight from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)#General naming conventions (first bullet): "For a pre-existing category, the article of the same or similar name and (rarely, or) on the same topic should be added to that category." Clear things up? siafu 05:40, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
No, I read that. The issue is not whether the article of the same name should be added to the matching category. The issue is whether it should then be removed from that category's parent category. As a specific example, Optics obviously belongs in Category:Optics. Should it also be in Category:Atomic, molecular, and optical physics? (Obviously other articles in Category:Optics do not belong in the grandparent category, but I thought the rule was different for the main article of a category.)--Srleffler 06:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Articles should NOT be in both a parent and a child category at the same time. In your example, Optics belongs in Category:Optics and not in its parent. siafu 06:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Although, from Wikipedia:Categorization#When to use categories, Articles with the same name as the category should be in both the category with the same name and the higher level category. This comes up for discussion fairly regularly, see Wikipedia talk:Categorization and its archives. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:08, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
NB. That text seems to have been added to the page only today, although I believe I read something similar to this there months ago. This seems to be an issue that is not entirely settled yet.--Srleffler 02:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, shall we set a clear rule then? siafu 03:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I noticed that it was added today as well. I don't think the issue is the clarity of the rule but gaining the consensus behind what the rule should say. X goes in category-X and not any parents seems strangely artificial in some cases (e.g. category:States of the United States - this would mean, say, Ohio would not be in category:States of the United States). On the other hand, X goes in category-X and its parents seems plainly redundant. Trying to get consensus for a clear rule in either direction is extremely difficult. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Moving Category:History of South East Asia to Category:History of Southeast Asia

Hey, I just wanna ask if there's a way to move Category:History of South East Asia to Category:History of Southeast Asia? On Wikipedia, the term Southeast Asia is more common than South East Asia. So, I just wanna it uniform and less confusing. Thanks. __earth 17:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Uncategorized articles

Lately I've been doing some cleaning up of the category Uncategorized articles. It seems to be neverending. Almost the whole time more are added. Is there a way to automaticly add to all uncategorized articles the uncat tag. So that at least only newer pages will be added. And it will show on every page that an category is needed. Or would that just be unfeasibly large? I know there is Special:Uncategorized pages, but that one is not realtime. Garion96 (talk) 21:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Just thought of something, without redirect pages of course. :) Garion96 (talk) 21:25, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

xxxx births yyyy deaths

What exactly is the use of those categories? I don't mind adding it every time though, just curious. :) Garion96 (talk) 21:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It serves in categorization of people. see Wikipedia:Categorization of people. Circeus 00:54, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
There are too many categorization pages. I missed that one. Tnx, that indeed makes sense. Garion96 (talk) 01:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Found nice Category Tree tool

Found nice CategoryTree tool. Couldn't find it on the project page, so I added it. Carcharoth 07:41, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Category merge

How do I propose a category merge? I'm trying to clean up Category:Computer science and want to propose that Category:Programming language dialects and Category:Programming language families be merged. Thanks! --bmills 16:30, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

On the Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion page, check out the "how to" section for details on how to list categories suggested for merger. Once you do this it goes to a vote and after about a week an admin will take care of it. Best of luck! Semiconscious • talk 17:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Category:People by occupation Category

There is a specific problem and a general problem I'd like to discuss. The specific problem is that this page contains the sub-categories Category:Sports occupations and Category:People known in connection with sports and hobbies which as far as I can tell are the same thing. I think they should be merged under the new name Athletics which I prefer to Athletes because it can include related occupations like Coaching and Officiating. There are only two hobbies listed in the "People in connection..." category, Philatelists and Pranksters, which can be moved back to the main level for now.

The general problem is that I think this Category needs to be organized into groups of occupations. There aren't currently zillions of occupations listed but it is already hard to find a particular occupation since many occupations could be listed under names that may not immediately come to mind. The Standard Occupational Classification System used by the US gov't can be a good place to start (See http://www.bls.gov/soc/), but it will have to be modifed to deal with obsolete occupations and hobbies.

Just posted this on bot requests, but try here too

The category Category:Eurovision Song Contest is a bit of mess, and needs re-categorising into sub-categories. It's a bit too much to do manually on my own, though, so I'm wondering if anyone here with a bot or whatever can help. The following needs doing:

Thanks.. Esteffect 00:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggested category

How about Category:People with Down Syndrome? I keep running across articles which mention them. I don't know whom to ask about it. Cheers, Her Pegship 05:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)