Category talk:Main topic classifications/Archive 1

This category
Why does this category belong to category:Wikipedia categorization and not category:categories? --Hillgentleman 05:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * My mistake, it's back. :) --Quiddity 08:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Where is Law?
--Mrg3105 03:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Listed under "Culture→Social institutions→Law". —Quiddity 04:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

machine gun additions
Someone has just been adding a raft of categories here, edits every 8 seconds, no edit summaries. I've reverted a few, but most look wrong to me. See for just now. I've asked him to stop. Johnbod 04:13, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand your legitimate concerns, and I appreciate your input and feedback. i would like to copy and paste our discussion below, which we originally had at my talk page. anyway, I'm more or less finished for now, and I am willing to defer to your understandable concerns, and to give others a chance to weigh in, and provide input if they wish. Appreciate your comments and input. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 04:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Main topics category
Please stop adding things indiscriminately to this category. You should not add anything without considering whether the category structure in that field leads up to that category, which you are plainly not doing. In the cases that came up on my watchlist they certainly did not. In addition you are not using an edit summary, even though each edit is the same so you could easily copy it. Johnbod 04:03, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand your concerns. i appreciate your input. I will try to follow your suggestion. In response to your concerns, I think we need to ask what is the function of this category. Is it strictly hierarchical? I think we already have Category:Fundamental for that. So i think the point of this category was to include a variety of major categories which are topics in their own right, and which seem to stand on their own, regardless of where they appear in the hierarchy. For example, due to our hierarchical categories, "medicine" might appear in several places at once. yet no one would deny that it is an entire field in its own right, which some readers might frquently be looking for. similarly for painting, etc. how about sculpture, biology, etc?


 * one main point of a "main topics" category, it seems to me is to make thing easier for newcomers; since, obviously a topic with a vague title like "main topics" is not itself defined clearly with any specific topic, and is obviously open to some interpretation. the title itself does not imply any intrinsic category whatsoever. So i tried to make some edits which i felt were in keeping with the basic idea here. Obviously, all my edits are subject to change, and the very nature of my effort means it will be seen almost immediately by a wide variety of people. So whatever you may think of my efforts and work, whether you agree or disagree, I hope you can at least try to respect the good-faith nature of my efforts, and my willingness to do it in the open (as I myself frequently try to respect in others, when I find myself in disagreement sometime here and there). thanks again for your useful input and feedback. --Steve, Sm8900 04:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Too much blurb self-referential blurb for editors that would be confusing for readers
This page is clearly intended for readers to browse - but it's prefaced by a whole bunch of blurb that is clearly intended as a notice/warning for editors! Particularly egregious is:


 * Please note that this category need not be kept in a strict hierarchical function, but can be used for any major categories which are topics in their own right, and encompass a major set of topics and categories. For example the "Politics" category appears here, even though it is a subcategory of "Society." So this category can serve as a collection point for many major topics.


 * The main idea is that this category should cover enough main topics so that every single article would fit into at least one of the topics shown here.


 * The top level, in terms of the actual article category hierarchy, is Category:Fundamental.


 * The top level of Wikipedia's category system, in terms of the functional category hierarchy, is Category:Contents.

I think everything in this batch of text, and certainly the stuff in italics, should be moved to the talk page, perhaps at the top, as a note to explain this category for editors, as it is essentially instructions about what to list here. It is not useful for a browsing reader. TwoMightyGodsPersuasionNecessity 23:27, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Standardize categories
User of the Spanish in wikipedia I am, I used the google translator for automatic writing, why not standardize quçe categories like the Spanish Wikipedia? will facilitate navigation, I Cristhian U. the Spanish-language wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.85.50.114 (talk) 18:37, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

API
Why is the category "Matter" missing when requesting with api like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&cmlimit=100&cmtitle=Category:Main_topic_classifications or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&generator=categorymembers&gcmlimit=100&gcmtitle=Category:Main_topic_classifications&prop=info — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.182.5.23 (talk) 23:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Category:Matter is not within this category, it is within Category:Fundamental categories the alternative top-level category. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 03:18, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply though it's more confusing than clearing.
 * I have no experience in using wiki markup and this gives me the feeling, that there is somewhere a bug.
 * The source of this page contains * at the end of the page. Requesting this category with a browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Main_topic_classifications) gives to the result “This category has the following 26 subcategories, out of 26 total.“ with “Matter” listed as subcat of this category. When following the link it's suddenly not subcategory of “Main topic classifications” anymore.


 * An api request returns only 25 subcats without Matter, which seems to be correct.
 * Or are somewhere hidden information, which make the difference between markup and api sense?
 * Oh! I see [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Matter&action=history Category:Matter] was briefly in this category, yesterday. So that partially explains that, though it seems to have happened after your initial query here... (So still confusing)
 * Possibly there are browser cache, or server cache, problems involved? (Try clearing your browser cache, and pressing shift-F5 to do a hard-refresh).
 * If things are still weird, then I'd suggest asking at WP:Help desk where there will be more technically proficient assistance. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 23:12, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the hint with the history!
 * I think it's in the cache of the server and takes a while till replaced.
 * I didn't expect, that the top classifications are being changed often, so that I hadn't a look at it.
 * It can't be my browser cause I checked it with IE, Opera and FF on two different computers.
 * But on smartphones and even on the same computers with the same browsers (as mentioned before) the server of the mobile platform (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Main_topic_classifications) returns the correct result.

More main topics needed
There needs to be at least two new headings here - "Sport" and "Medicine" should definitely be main topics. It doesn't make sense to have to trawl around to find such important and fundamental subjects. Any thoughts?Nozzleberry (talk) 11:58, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 12:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Note re category scope
the purpose of this category is to group major topic classifications in one place, for greater ease and for reference of users and editors of Wikipedia. This category is not intended to adhere to a strictly hierarchical structure. therefore, please do not remove some of the contents of this category merely because they appear in one or more categories that are already included here.

if we needed to, we could group all of Wikipedia into two categories, i.e. "Society" and "Science." the point of this category is to compile a number of top-level classifications into one place, just so editors have a means to get an overview of some of the main topic categories available at Wikipedia. --Sm8900 (talk) 02:04, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Clarification of phrase
The page text says "This category is not intended to adhere to a strictly hierarchical structure." The most sensible interpretation I can put on that is that the subcategories need not be disjoint; overlapping subcategories are permitted. If so, I'd like to clarify the quoted language, using something like the wording from my previous sentence.

Subcategories of any category need not be disjoint, I believe, though they often are designed that way (e.g., subcategorization by year, by country, by sport, etc). But I understand that it makes sense to emphasize that fact for the Main_topic_classifications subcategories, since they are conspicuously overlapping.

I would hope that quoted page text is not intended to mean that it is allowed to violate the categorization principle that "members of the subcategory [are] expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent also" (Categorization). That wouldn't make a lot of sense for this artificial (purely organizational) category anyway. For a bit more context (if needed), I'm asking this somewhat in connection with some discussion currently going on at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization.

RVS (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Missing language, writing, literature, and other Humanities topics
Hi! I was wondering how this classification of topics came to be and if they can be added to or amended. Branches of the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and other fields are missing. Can we broaden this list? Virtualalicia (talk) 01:11, 14 September 2019 (UTC)virtualalicia
 * It would appear that users have placed categories here based on their respective understandings of how subjects may be classified. The more you look at it, the more absurd it all seems (existentially of course; no disrespect to the users). --Invokingvajras (talk) 5:44, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Please can we have Spirituality added here
It is an important subject and isn't just Human Behaviour — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.22.28.144 (talk) 03:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I would consider Spirituality part of "Religion", which is already on the page.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8801:1200:580F:E9CD:4B17:362F:A6F6 (talk) 01:03, 11 September 2020 (UTC)