Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organizations/Taskforce-Categorization

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[edit] branched discussion

A branched discussion is at Category talk:Organizations. --Lquilter 00:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Should we discuss this here, or over there? Regardless, I am fully behind a heavy revising of this. I suggest that the umbrella term should be "organization". From there we can separate into non-profit/for-profit. I suspect that almost of these organizations will be non-profit, and that the for-profit will really stick out. A for-profit organization is really a business. From there we can narrow them down efficiently. Then again, we may want to include both forprofit and nonprofit organizations in some categories. We'll see as we go along. OptimistBen (talk) 11:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Let's do it on the category talk page -- this page can help point to discussions. Category talk:Organizations for now, then. --Lquilter (talk) 05:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non profits/NGOs/Charities etc - what a mess!

I am joining this project due to frustrating with the disorganization of categories related to the above. As I posted in Project Human Rights, this is just an example of the myriad places that organizations are thrown into at the moment.

Presently, human rights organizations can be found in:

and I'm sure myriad others. Ideas on where to start or where this problem has been discussed before? Scarykitty 08:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Ideas on where to start? I am concerned that some of the existing trees being proposed perpetuate the unnecessary distinction between NGO and non-profit organization Scarykitty 08:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree - We desperately need to have some clarity about these types of organizations, and not have these largely synonymous (used in different circles) parallel structures. --lquilter 18:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Charities, Non-Profits, etc.

There is a major overlap of organizations within the following categories:

What would a good category structure be like for these? Definitional problems:

  • Charities has at least two common meanings. Part of the problem is that "charitable status" is synonymous with "non-profit status", so that "charities" is sometimes used synonymously with "non-profit organizations". However, charities is also used to mean, more specifically, things like Category:Humanitarian aid organizations, Hospitals, Schools, and other human welfare organizations.
  • NGOs -- The term came, as I understand it, from international organizations (like the UN) that work with NGOs as well as government orgs; so it reflects that perspective. It's a perspective that doesn't specify profit status but is often used synonymously with non-profit organizations.
  • Civic and political organizations - This has just gotten to be a catch-all for all kinds of orgs. "Political orgs" can mean anything from parties to lobbying groups to orgs that have a critical scholarly focus to orgs that do grassroots organizing to orgs that just are involved in community life.

(Anybody else, please note other complicating factors that may affect the organizational structure.)

Just to get started, I'm going to throw out a possible organizational structure.

I realize that Category:Charities is more commonly used in some places than "non-profit organizations" but because Wikipedia is international, the term is ambiguous (internationally speaking). I hope that "non-profit organizations" is sufficiently unambiguous and well-enough understood internationally.

Orgs may be in both the gov/NGO tree and the nonprofit tree. This I think is proper, because governments can (of course) establish or operate for-profit orgs; and because NGOs might be for-profit or non-profit. --Lquilter 18:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts?