Category talk:Events by month

Scope
I am seeking others' perspectives on the appropriate scope of this category tree. Since categories are not usually watched, I am pinging editors with a vested interest ( and ) as well as some of the active WT:CFD regulars.

Should one-time historical events by categorized by the year and month they occurred, instead of just the year?
 * Summary

Until this month, this category tree mainly (perhaps even exclusively) housed and organized content on periodic events such as public holidays (e.g. Category:Observances by month‎). In the past two weeks, the category tree has been fully intersected with Category:Events by year. The current structure is:
 * Background
 * Category:Events by month
 * A. — Events by year and month – e.g. Category:1897 events by month
 * A.1. — Events by month-year – e.g. Category:April 1897 events
 * A.1.a. — Events by topic and month-year – e.g. Category:April 1897 sports events (also listed below)
 * A.2. — Events by topic, year and month – e.g. Category:1897 sports events by month‎
 * A.2.a. — Events by topic and month-year – e.g. Category:April 1897 sports events (also listed above)


 * Pros and cons of the recent change
 * Pros
 * Diffusion of categories such as Category:1917 events and Category:1917 in sports.
 * Cons
 * Month is typically non-defining for historical events. To be sure, certain events are seasonal (e.g. weather), but month is not a core, defining characteristic of events—e.g. it is largely inconsequential whether that hurricane hit Galveston in August or September 1900 or that building was bombed in February or March 1993.
 * Category clutter—imagine 50+ events by month categories on Battle of Aleppo (2012–16).
 * Completing and maintaining the scheme would require tremendous effort (for little/no/negative value to navigation). Level A represents potentially a few thousand categories (conservatively, let's say 2,000). Level A.1 multiplies this by 12 (24,000) and level A.2 multiplies it by perhaps 40 (80,000) based on Category:Events by topic. Level A.1.a/A.2.a, in turn, represents about 960,000 more subcategories.


 * Options
 * 1) Do not categorize historical events by month. Restrict this category tree's scope to recurring events that always take place in a particular month (e.g. Christmas). (At a glance, it appears the new categories were added without replacing previous categorization, and so could be removed without any concern for upmerging.)
 * 2) Categorize historical events by month. Continue to intersect this category tree with Category:Events by year.
 * 3) Something else.

-- Black Falcon (talk) 18:48, 30 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised this discussion never got any engagement despite all the pings. For what it's worth, I think this is a no-brainer for 1, per WP:NONDEF. I stumbled on this after seeing this edit on my watchlist, which I don't think served any useful navigational purpose. The issue with an example like that is that there's no particular reason that a reader of One, Inc. v. Olesen would be interested in, say, Battle of Hayes Pond, just because it also happened in the US in January 1958. But I can imagine there being exceptions for certain topic-specific categorizations. For example, someone reading about a WWII battle that occurred in January 1941 might legitimately be interested in navigating to other WWII events that happened during that month (or the months immediately following/preceding). Colin M (talk) 17:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

CfD Notice - Merging old events by month to events by year
Hello, please note a discussion is open at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_May_26 regarding merging ~2000 older events by month to the associated events by year pages. Please see the CfD discussion for more information. Thank you, — xaosflux  Talk 15:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

1800s sports events categories have also been merged, see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_April_16. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:42, 15 May 2023 (UTC)