Category talk:String instruments

Trimming down on redundant categories?
There are now over 300 articles in String Instruments, almost all of which do (or could) fit into one of the sub-categories. Is it going to bother anyone if I (and anyone who can help) just start removing the "Strings Instruments" cat from any article which already falls under an existing subcategory of "String Instruments"? As it is now, you can't even see all the subcategories on one page. MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Would anyone object if I moved this to Category:Stringed instruments? Please respond at Talk:String instrument. —Michael Z. 2005-10-10 18:42 Z 

"Chordophones"
"Chordophones" means the same as "string instruments." This should not be a subcat of "Chordophones"; this cat should be a subcat of "Musical instruments." Badagnani (talk) 19:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I was kind of wondering what the overall intent of the two separate categories (Stringed Instruments vs. Chordophones) is. Is it that "String Instrument" groups instruments by cultural or historical families (Lutes, Banjos, Guitars), while "Chordophones" groups them by technical/organological categories?

There seems to be a bit of spillover, in that "Drumhead lutes" and "Short-necked bowl lutes" are listed under "String Instruments". Should, for example, "Drumhead lutes" be changed to "Banjos" and only the instruments historically related/descended from the American plantation banjo be put into that category? If that category starts including anything with a vibrating membrane soundboard, then it's really more a technical issues than a historical one.

In whatever case, the String Instrument categorization really needs some work. I got over 100 instruments moved into subcategories, which got the overall category down to a single page, but I did get some dispute with folks on a few instruments that they didn't think should be sub-categorized (Kora, Washtub Bass, etc).

Ideally, I'd say that "String Instruments" should sub-categorize as many instruments as possible (in some cases, in more than one sub-cat), with the only difficult-to-categorize instruments cluttering up the main cat page. Thoughts? MatthewVanitas (talk) 08:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)