Category talk:American writers

subcategories
some subcategories are sovrapposing : an afro american novelist should listed under both afro-american and novelist? --Melaen 17:31, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes. It is normal for articles to be in more than one category. CalJW 17:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * While it may be true that categories are not always hierarchical, it is generally preferred that an article not be both in a category and a subcategory thereof. What has been happening lately is that large categories have been getting subdivided into, to use this category as both a proposal and example, and, two main cats under the supercat American writers. We can then use these categories for categories that already exist, which should accomodate every article at least twice.--Rockero 07:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Many articles should be in both categories and subcategories, especially when the categories get broken up into miniscule sub-categories. Categories are for browsing and there is a point at which categories get less useful for browsing if they are broken up.  So I think it best that all American writers remain in this category as well as being duplicated in any of the subcategories.  This has been discussed quite a bit at Categorization.  Also, I think there could be a value in having Category:English-language writers which would contain ALL writers in English.  If you look at Category:Writers by language, English is missing. -- Samuel Wantman 11:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Responding to old thread: Gendered and ethnic categories are non-diffusing, which means membership in the sub-cat should not remove you from the parent. However, you *can* diffuse on other criteria - for example, writers-by-state is diffusing for now. We need to start a broader conversation on how to categorize writers in this tree, which has now grown and has lots of possible sub-cats and lots of inconsistent categorization.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Piping categories
Some entries under C are being placed there because of first name, not last - Chet Day, for example. I have no idea how to fix this, as I'm new to editing - maybe someone more knowledgeable can? 5dots 21:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I just figured it out. 5dots 22:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm also seeing this behavior, not sure how to fix it. Hyachts 22:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Michael Ridpath
Michael Ridpath is English, not American. Millbanks 22:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)