Category talk:Year of death missing

Rename?
Other possible names for the category would be: -- User:Docu
 * Category:Year of death unknown
 * Category:YOD missing (short, with a TLA)
 * Category:YOD unknown
 * Category:Died unknown
 * Category:Death unknown
 * Category:unknown deaths (similar to Category:2005 deaths etc.)

Year of birth missing
I don't have any preference on this category's title, but whatever it turns out to be, it should have a sister category, e.g., Category:Year of birth missing, for those articles with (death dates and) no birth dates. Also, please update the instructions on People by year once these categories are established. --Quuxplusone 17:19, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * It currently doesn't exist, but you already updated the instructions at People by year (?).


 * Before we create it, we have to decide how we want articles to be categorized, for e.g.:
 * someone born c. 1425 or 1431-1432 and died after 1488:
 * Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing
 * Category:15th century births and Category:15th century deaths
 * Category:15th century births and Category:15th century deaths
 * Category:1430s births and Category:Year of death missing
 * Category:1425 births and Category:1489 deaths
 * and for someone who fl. 1430-1440:
 * Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing
 * Category:Year of birth missing and Category:15th century deaths
 * Category:15th century births and Category:15th century deaths
 * etc.


 * Besides, I haven't much of a preference for the category title either.
 * -- User:Docu

I've just created Category:Year of birth missing by copying from "Category:Year of death missing" and changing the words. It looks like the German Wikipedia's style is just to use as many relevant cats as possible, all the time; I think that's reasonable. For your examples, I'd personally use
 * Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing and Category:15th century births.

I don't know what "fl." means, so I can't comment on that one. --Quuxplusone 00:15, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Juan Ponce de León is in both Category:1460 births and Category:Year of birth missing. I don't think it's of much use to add it to Category:Year of birth missing. Besides, many of the early biographies won't have a year of birth, so they will also end up in Category:Year of birth missing. Personally I'd think the year of death category or the century category is sufficient.
 * fl = flourished (some of the imported biographies use that).
 * -- User:Docu


 * "Many of the early biographies won't have a year of birth, so they will also end up in Category:Year of birth missing." See, I find that advantageous. I enjoy articles about lesser-known historical figures, and it seems like this category might collect a lot of them. Whether we want to follow de.wikipedia's lead in "overcategorizing" biographies with respect to YOB and YOD is debatable, I agree. Emphasis: The point isn't to put every bio in just one category. It's to create interesting, logical, and/or useful categories (IMO this cat satisfies all three: interesting as mentioned above, logical by symmetry with "YOD missing", and useful because editors might add the missing information to some articles). I agree "c. 1460" might not belong in "YOB missing", but nobody's moved it out of the category yet, so... :) --Quuxplusone 06:58, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Article sorting
Regarding "Articles are generally sorted by article title." To maintain consistency with the other birth / death categories and Category:Living people, shouldn't this be sorted by family name? Especially seeing as most of the articles are already sorted that way in this category. Ziggurat 21:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Ooh. Definitely by surname, yes. (Or in general by however the article appears in other categories.) I didn't even notice that sentence was on the category description page; apparently it's been there for a while. I'll change it now. --Quuxplusone 23:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Cool, I thought that was a little odd. I'll get to work on moving unpiped articles then... Ziggurat 23:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

As it's a temporary category, there doesn't seem to be much a point of sorting them. Besides, the bookmarklet adds them that way .. -- User:Docu


 * That would be a problem with the bookmarklet, then. I don't use bookmarklets, or know anything about them; otherwise, I'd try to fix the bookmarklet myself. (I may try anyway, by comparison with the C:YOBM bookmarklet, if one exists.) And is there really a point to any of this? :) Plenty of pages have been in this "temporary" category since its creation, and I expect many of them will be there forever (since a lot of historical figures' death dates simply aren't known by anyone). I think sorting this category the same way as the other categories makes more sense than special-casing it. --Quuxplusone 02:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * This category and a few related ones never had been sorted (YOD missing, possibly living people), so there isn't much a point in going doing it for this one. -- User:Docu


 * Marking this topic resolved, and there has long since been consensus to sort by family name, and the DEFAULTSORT magicword exists to do this. Important usage note: DEFAULTSORT must go "before" categories, and "after" wikiproject banner and similar templates, on talk pages, or it will NOT work correctly (bug confirmed to exist as of 26 May 2007; may be resolved in future by the MediaWiki software developers.) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 16:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on splitting these categories
See Category talk:Year of birth missing. --Quuxplusone 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Such a split has been proposed many times in various categories of this sort and at WP:CFD, yet never reached anything close to a consensus to do so. The only way it would ever be likely to do so would be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography as a well-outlined, comprehensive proposal, followed by a mass rename-CfD of all of the affected categories at once. Marking this topic resolved, because it has no responses and is certainly not going to result in such a rename. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 16:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Goes in articles not talk pages
Per consensus at WP:CFD this category is considered "defining", and unlike most related categories goes in the actual article itself (when it applies; if the person is not known to be deceased it should not be used at all). —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 17:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Useless
A perfectly useless "category", which is simply an inflated locution for a list. Only list-makers can be concerned with such a list: the Wikipedia reader is not served. Why is this? Inspecting a category should offer depth and context to an article. Otherwise its use is simply to keep Wikipedians from crayoning on the walls. --Wetman 22:03, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "Inspecting a category should offer depth and context to an article.". Categories are for the logical grouping together of connected articles, to aid navigation, for maintenance, and for many other things. True, we should aim to serve the reader first and foremost but you do your argument a great disservice by insulting people who maintain or use categories like these. --kingboyk (talk) 19:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)