Category talk:Lists of people

As i note in a comment visible when editing Category:Lists of people, a list is not a person. However, arguably a categ. is a list; perhaps
 * Category:Lists of people

should have
 * Category:People

as a subcat, even tho the reverse is impossible. --Jerzy(t) 16:59, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)


 * How about adding, the asterisk as sortkey being generally used for this type of category? -- User:Docu


 * IMO, Category:People is for articles about people. Articles about individuals certainly fit this definition.  However, articles about classes of people (including lists of people) also fit.  Is it written somewhere that category:people must not contain anything other than individuals?  If so, I think we should perhaps suggest changing this rule. -- Rick Block 19:40, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I always thot it was clear from the Cat page's annotation that essentially "people = bios"; my only interest in it was because of its potential for taking over a major current function of List of people by name, and i repeatedly acted on that belief & surely stated it in edit summaries. But i'm not so sure i was ever justified in that belief.
 * I care not at all what its name is, except that hopefully Category:Biographies would reduce the frequency of the question.
 * Note the following reasons for believing "people = bios"
 * Category:Biographies's non-existence
 * the inclusion of Category:People stubs in Template:Bio-stub
 * the absence of other Cats there
 * the following text from Category:People stubs (warning: big page, listing 4523 stubs):
 * Categories: People | Stub categories
 * This category is for stub biographies of people. You can help wikipedia by expanding them.
 * IMO, tho, the current meaning and function of Category:People, and the meanings and functions of Cats that seem reasonable competitors to use that name, are so significant that changes are likely to change the structure of the whole few top levels of the Cat structure; in particular, in my mind and i think those of the designers of the system, that structure must be a DAG (not a tree, but like a tree utterly unambiguous about nothing being both an ancestor and a descendant of the same thing), and narrowly focused changes are likely to break that. I think nothing visible happens at present when you break that rule, so changes near the top require great care.
 * In particular, no one should think about changes affecting Category:People w/o thinking about what to do with Category:Human (e.g., boldly demolishing it in my un-thought-through opinion).
 * In summary: IMO this discussion is pointless, unless it moves into suspension while the top few levels of the Cat system are completely thought through and agreed upon, and then is resumed in the light of a grand design that that agreement embodies.

--Jerzy(t) 16:32, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)

Wait a minute: articles have singular titles outside of exceptional cases; categories have plural titles outside of exceptional cases. "Why?", i rhetorically ask.

Category:Opera has articles about the field of opera, one of the exceptional cases; Category:Operas has articles that are each about one opera. Unless specifically stated, a Cat with a plural title collects articles that are each about one instance of the things that plural noun refers to. (If the original definition doesn't specifically state an exception to that, then adding it later is a fundamental change requiring justification & IMO wide consensus, both for making a change and for undercutting the general thrust of category naming.) I It doesn't need to be "written" specifically about Category:People; it is an obvious case of an established general principle.

So don't ask whether it's written somewhere, tell us why you need to steal this name, that is the natural name for the category of articles on individual people, for some other purpose? What are the other names you've considered and rejected. Is the title you are looking for Category:Human, or some sub-Cat of it? --Jerzy(t) 16:58, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)[& typos fixed Jerzy(t) 17:09, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)]


 * I certainly have no intention of stealing any category names. I'm really not interested in arguing about it, but I believe the general practice for articles and categories with names like " in " is to categorize them both under  and .  Since this seems to upset you in this case, to make category:lists of people visible from category:people I'll add a See also from category:people to category:lists of people (vice versa is already there). -- Rick Block 20:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)