Wikipedia talk:Categorization

Listing most common categories of articles in category
To help with stub sorting, I'd like to go through a large stub category (let's say for example - none of the pages in its subcategories) and see what the most common categories on those pages are, to check if there's any more subcategories that could be made. Is there any way to do this? I don't see it in Petscan. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 01:47, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Overcategorization
I just had this note connected with an edit reversion. "Undid revision 1231303175 by Johnpacklambert (talk'') It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry. This is just plain wrong practice. If we cannot be bothered to mention something in the text of an article, it is too trivial to categorize by. Categories are supposed to lead people through somewhat similar articles. A minimum expectation is that the information be mentioned in the article.''John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:09, 9 July 2024 (UTC) I recently had 4 articles I had edited get revered. This is the general tone of the edit summaries. "Undid revision 1231303175 by Johnpacklambert (talk) It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry, this is just ludicrous. First off, external links are not always reliable sources, so just using them to push categories directly is problematic. Beyond this, categories are supposed to link something that means something. They need to be "defining". If playing for a team was so non-defining to a person that we do not even mention it anywhere in the text of the article, not even in a table, we should not categorize by it. This makes me think that at some level team played for becomes to close to performance by performer categories. I am sorry, but we should not be categorizing anyone by 18 different teams played, especially with the amount of other categories sports people are placed in. At least not when we do not even mention in any way all 18 teams in the article.''John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * To be fair the word "professional" above means any level of paid baseball, even in this case A level minors. We have never even agreed that all these levels of playing baseball are notable, even when we were our most generous in granting notability to sportspeople. 18 different teams is just ludicrous. It comes very close to performer by performance level of teams. I am thinking at some point this violates the rule against categorizing performer by performance.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The Abbott article is 16 paragraphs plus tables and other things long. It still does not mention Winston-Salem Warthogs or several other teams that he is categorized by. I am not sure why all 18 teams cannot be expected to be mentioned in his article, but if we cannot expect them to be mentioned in the article, I am not sure at all why we should categorize by them.
 * I think we should limit categories to things that are mentioned in the article. If it is not defining enough to mention in the article I do not think it is defining enough to categorize by.~

John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree. WP:CATDEF is a solid guideline. Perhaps people interested in exhaustively documenting this sort of thing could be directed to Wikidata. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:59, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Kurt Abbott looks to be one of the offenders. Another Jim Abbott is looking like he never actually played a game for the 4 minor league teams he was somehow a player for. This is a huge mess. for sure.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Before I address the rest of this argument, I'm not sure why you say it looks like Jim Abbott never played for those four minor league teams. As I wrote in my edit summaries, it's easily verifiable via his Baseball-Reference minor league page which is include among the External links in his article. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Things need to be clearly stated and explained in the article to use for categories, not just buried in some external link. I looked at the baseball minor reference link, and it was a confusing chart of abbreviations that I could not make any sense of.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, on further reading I now see where the minor league teams are mentioned. I have grave doubts that we should be placing someone in a category (categories must be defining) based on a source that is a database that throws out a lot of statistics but has no prose about the person's time in the minor leagues. We are not a stat website, and if all we have about the time someone was a player for a team is stats that does not seem to be enough to say something substantive, and I do not see how we can argue some part of someone's life is defining if we do not have even a substantive source on it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:CATV applies here. If there is a category for a sports team's players, that team must be mentioned in the article prose as one that the person played for. With source, of course. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I see that the guideline says "Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories." So I am right in stating that the information needs to be in the article, not just present in a source.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am thinking that even if we could make soured mention of these minor league playing roles, we have to ask if they are defining. For example, I do not think it is reasonable to mention most minor league playing in the lead of an MLB player article, so I do not think it actually for most meets the definition of definingness, and so I think most MLB players should not be categorized by most of the minor league teams they played for.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Pinging in here, as he is the editor whose edit summary was quoted above by John Pack Lambert. I disagree with Dennis's assertion that "18 professional teams...can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article." The Kurt Abbott article is aptly rated as Start class. It could be developed a whole bunch more. I just made some edits to it to include mention of his path through the minors from 1989 to 1993 toward his MLB debut. All of the minor league teams that Abbott played for can be easily verified at Baseball-reference.com, a highly reliable site; see https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=abbott001kur. I suspect one could find contemporary newspaper coverage to corroborate all of this and add more detail. John Pack Lambert, as for your claim that "we have never even agreed that all these levels of playing baseball are notable", we have stand-alone articles for all these minor league teams, like Southern Oregon Timberjacks and Tacoma Rainiers. What is the point of even having a category like Category:Southern Oregon A's players if it's not going to be populated with articles like the one for Kurt Abbott and similar players, most of whom ultimately became notable for their MLB careers? Jweiss11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This has all been litigated before a consensus reached and confirmed. I'm not sure where but I guess I'll have to find it. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:23, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I really think that over 5 categories for teams played on is getting excessive. I think categorizing by Level A (4th tier) level of game played is even more excessive. This is not about "notable" this is about defining. No every thing that is verifiable is defining. When we get to a dozen or more categories this is excessive. The guidelines say that we should categorize by what is reasonable to include in a lead summary. We should not be categorizing based on newspaper reports as some moves through their career. This will often be primary and localized sources. Categories are supposed to be limited to defining characteristics. So for example we do not categorize people by every job they had, even if we can verify from reliable sources they had the job. We categorize them based on the careers they are regularly described as. If a women worked as a flight attendant for 6 months when she was 22, but went on to do other unrelated things the rest of her life, as a flight attendant. Yet if she had worked for years as a flight attendant we would. Categories on players should be limited to people who became well known for. A few weeks with a team is not defining. However it is definitely clear that no category should be placed on an aticle until it is mentioned in the article. Consensus can and does change, and local consensus that ignore the general principals should not be used, so we should not just say "this was discussed before, deal with it", we should discuss it now, because there is a huge problem with lots and lots and lots of article in categories not at all supported by the article text, a great many of which are biographies of living people where that is even worse. Also, Wikipedia is not a court, things are not litigated. Using that word to describe discussions of categorization is incorrect and inaccurate.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * John Pack Lambert, Rich Hill played for 13 different MLB teams. Would it be "excessive" in your view to categorize that article under all 13 teams? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would say yes… there was a period in his career when he was very injury prone, and as a result he only played a few games for some of those teams - being frequently either sent to minor league affiliates or traded. Blueboar (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Blueboar, so you'd remove from of the 13 MLB team cats from the Rich Hill article? Which ones? Is there some minimum number of games played you could suggest to qualify for such categorization? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would certainly remove some as non-defining. I am not familiar enough with the details of his career to make definitive calls as to which, but JPL’s assessment (below) seems a good start. Blueboar (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Blueboar, the principles here are not Rich Hill-specific. We need principles than can be applied consistently to tens of thousands of articles. Your suggestions thus far lack coherence. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The principle to apply across tens of thousands of articles is: “Only categorize by what is defining”. In order to apply that at the Rich Hill article, you need to ask: “which of these team categories are defining for Rich Hill, specifically?” Blueboar (talk) 01:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I would say that all 13 team categories are certainly defining. Appearing in MLB action for a specific team, e.g. (merely "donning the pinstripes") is very defining. What is the standard you propose to exclude for such MLB team categories. How much tenure is needed to qualify as defining? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:14, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Your comments are not consistent with what WP:DEFCAT says. We have WP:DEFCAT. Let's follow it. Bondegezou (talk) 14:14, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, his comments are consistent with DEFCAT. The notability of these players are entirely based on them playing in MLB. No one creates articles on college or minor league players because they aren't notable. ~WikiOriginal-9~  ( talk ) 14:44, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Bondegezou, WP:DEFCAT says: "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently refer to in describing the topic." In the case of an MLB player, the reliable sources are going to commonly and consistently refer to that subject as a player for those MLB teams. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Comparatively, for the case of Rich Hill, the reference in reliable sources to something like Category:Baseball players from Norfolk County, Massachusetts is far more tenuous than any of the team categories. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If reliable sources commonly and consistently refer to Hill in those terms, great, they meet WP:DEFCAT. Can you show reliable sources commonly and consistently referring to Hill with reference to, say, the San Diego Padres (as it's been suggested they don't meet WP:DEFCAT)? Bondegezou (talk) 15:36, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Bondegezou, there's already two citations in the article that discuss Hill as a Padre. A quick google searches comes up with, , . There are also definitive listings already included in the article that present Hill as a Padre, like: . Jweiss11 (talk) 16:44, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good. Sorry for the bad baseball analogy, but playing in a game is what I meant. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well it looks to me like Rich Hill did not play any games with either the New York Mets or the Pittsburgh Pirates, at least the text does not mention any games with either, so those two both look like categories that are hard to justify. Actually the San Diego Padres too. So if he never played in a pro game with any of those three I think that is an easy call to say being a player for them is not defining. In general I think we can ask this question about any team he was not on the roster of for a full year. There might still be cases where it is defining, but not every time someone is on a team's roster is it defining. He may have played in games with those three teams, but the fact that there is no mention of it in the article seems to suggest these are not very defining postions.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Rich Hill played 13 games with the Mets, 10 with Padres, and 22 with the Pirates. This is all very easy to find out: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hillri01.shtml. Remember he was also mostly a starting pitcher, and keep in mind that a full season for a starting pitcher is only about 30-ish games. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I know nothing about baseball, but I believe our basic principle is that a category should not be added to an article, especially a BLP, unless there is sourced content in the article to support it. That's not "It can be read in one of the external links", it's text in the article with a WP:RS. So either the clubs are important enough to be mentioned in the article and their categories added, or not. Pam  D  14:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In the case of the Rich Hill article, all 13 MLB teams he played for are mentioned in the article with good sourcing. What isn't in the article is the number of the games that Hill played for each and every one of those teams. But inclusion of such detail is not required for categorization. It's only relevant to a new, proposed standard that John Pack Lambert was suggesting above. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * For a player with a career that extends over several years, where they played for several teams, at a minimum it seems that player should have stepped up to the plate for the team at least once to be considered defining as opposed to just having a contract and being on injured reserve or some non-playing status. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 11:14, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * FieldMarine, yes, actually playing in the regular season or postseason as opposed to mere having a contract is a clear, objective standard that can be applied consistently to thousands articles. In the case of baseball, we should remember that pitchers like Rich Hill often never bat all. But they do play—they pitch! Hill indeed played for all 13 of those MLB teams. He also played for the Michigan Wolverines in college and he's played for a bunch of minor league teams. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * For what it is worth I do not think we should categorize baseball players by county at all. We maybe should categorize them by the state they are from, not born per se, but where they were raised, but only of it is consistently stated. We should avoid categorizing them by more than one state.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The thing is if you upmerge Category:Baseball players from Norfolk County, Massachusetts to Category:Baseball players from Massachusetts, then you have to add Category:Sportspeople from Norfolk County, Massachusetts to the Rich Hill article. Yes, I deal with state of origin categories in sports bios often, and I agree that that the state where a subject was raised is usually more defining than where they were born, if the two are different. Take the case of Michael Jordan, who was born in New York, but was raised and attended high school in North Carolina, which was the state from which he emerged into notability. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Overcategorization of burial
This is what the category guideline says about categorization of burial. "If it is relevant to identify the place of burial (either from the perspective of the person or the burial place), then someone buried in a less notable cemetery, or in a place with just a few notable burials, should be recorded in a list within the article about the burial place. However, if the burial place is notable in its own right and has too many other notable people to list, then such burials may be categorized." I take this to mean the following A-our default should be creating a list at the article on the cemetery, not making a category. B-articles should be placed only in categories for burial by cemetery or cemetery like place. higher level categories seem to only exist to group these categories by cemetery, not to directly place articles. So as I am reading this we would create a list for the specific cemetery in New York City someone is buried in. If that list gets big enough that it would reasonably support a category we would create a category. We then would group those categories by city. We actually have "Category:Burials in New York City by place" that makes this clear in the title. I am not sure why the next level up, Burials in New York state, does not make this clear in the title. It might help a lot if we made it clear in the title in more categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC) burials by place in New York (state)" but I am not sure "place" is the right word, we do not mean "populated place", we mean "cemetery or place that functions like a cemetery". I also wonder if the parent category named "burials" should be renamed to "burial" or if maybe we should create a sepeate category "burial". I am also not sure why we need say "burials by castle". I understand some castles are defining places of burial. However I am not seeing why the fact that the place of burial was a castle is of any import. I do not think this aides navigation, esepcially since it has only 3 sub-cats. We are not going to create a category "burials in castles" and place in it everyone we have reliable sources showing they were buried in a castle, so I really do not see the point in sorting by so many things. The whole burials tree seems way more complex than it needs to be. In fact with the US I am thinking we should make burials in X state by cemetery the main category, everything else looks like needless clutter. New York state have 42 categories under burials in New York (state) by cemetery. It has a further 10 categories that subdivide basically the same context by an eclectic mix of city or county.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:47, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * At the same time I am also not understanding why the category "burial monuments and structures in New York (state)' is under "burials in New York (state)". I think the later is a sub-set of the category "burial in New York (state)" which is different than "burials in New York (state)". One is a topic article for articles about the thing, and the other is a set article for articles that are the thing. I think normally we link the other way around. So we have a category "chemistry" and we make "chemists" a sub-set of Chemistry, we do not make chemistry a sub-set of chemists. I am thinking we need to reverse the order of these categories. Or maybe create a parent category "burial in New York (state)" that is an overarching topic category, with sub-cats "burials in New York (state)" which we probably should rename to

Revolutionaries v Rebels
I just came upon Indzhe Voyvoda who was in a revolutionary category. I added him to another for the state he actually lived in. However it seems odd. The article really seems to be saying he was an outlaw, a bandit, maybe a highwayman. I am not sure how he was a revolutionary. It seems the assumption is "every Bulgarian who violently resisted the rule of the Ottoman Empire was a revolutionary." This does not seem to be a good way to define the term. However I am starting to think in some cases one person's rebel is another person's revolutionary. At other times the terms get used fairly interchangeably. There are maybe 3 actual groups. 1-people who are often called "rebels", who seek to change the currently ruler, but who are content with the system as such. However I think some sources call those involved in the American Revolutionary War "rebels", and they do not fit in this group. 2-People who seek to change the system of government. Such as going for a monarchy to democracy. Or instituting a socialist revolution. 3-people who seek to end what they see as foreign control of a place. Sometimes this is obvious, such as those seeking to end British rule in India. Other times it is less clear. I knew someone who thought the Free Savoie types were a bit nutty, and did not think Savoy/Savoie was a distinct enough place for such a movement to make sense. My experience is both Revolutionary is used at times for all 3, group 3 is regularly called Revolutionary, and at times rebel. There are clearly not 3 widely used terms, which is why we do not have 3 categories. My sense is the split between rebels and revolutionaries is less than clear, especially since we have 3 terms covering 2 topics. The fact that some people seek both to overthrow outside colonial rule, and maybe institute a Communist or other drastically different form of government in the place where they are trying to end colonial rule means that 2 and 3 overlap. I am beginning to think the best solution might be to create a category called say French rebels and revolutionaries, or German rebels and revolutionaries or Rebels and revolutionaries from the Ottoman Empire, and group both. We have other compound named categories like Dramatists and playwrights. This would also avoid us having to parse out exactly what counter revolutionaries are. They are actually revolutionaries, but since sometimes "revolutionary" is used as code to mean "supports of the group that won in X revolution", it can come to be seen to have a narrow ideological meaning. A general rebels and revolutionaries category would allow for grouping people more by what they did than what they thought, especially since some people under our current system probably would count as both rebels and revolutionaries, since they were involved in multiple such movements, but we really do not need multiple such categories on the same article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Johnpacklambert#People in non-people by century categories
I asked a question on my talk page about people in by century categories that are not meant for people. I think that might be something that people here would be interested in. I do not want to engage in over posting or forum shopping, so I am just putting notice of it here.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)


 * @Johnpacklambert Thanks for not opening a second copy of the discussion. Even more helpful is to include a link such as User talk:Johnpacklambert/Archives/2024/July, to help other interested editors to get there quickly. (Especially when, as here, it isn't the most recent item on your talk page). Thanks. Pam  D  21:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Instrumental musicians
So I came across a Soviet musicians who was a singer and an accordionist. I am not seeing enough Soviet accordionists who have articles to justify that Category. I am thinking that however we need him in something other than Soviet male singers. I put him in Accodinists, but still feel that another Category is needed. I actually created a Category:Soviet instrumental musicians, but noticed there is no instrumental musicians. We basically have musicians, then divide by genre and by composers, conductors (music), singers, and then specific instruments such as accordion, organ, piano, tuba, guitar, drums etc. We end up with a huge number of 1 article intersections of instrumental and nationality, especially since dome categories are things like 20th-century Norwegian accordionists, or 21st-century Irish accordionists, or 18th-century French violinists. Others are Dutch jazz trumpets or Irish classical clarinetists. We may even have 20th-century American jazz trumpeters, a 4 way intersection of instrumental, nationality, century and genre. At one point we have categories like 20th-century African-American women opera singers, which is technically a 6 way intersection of nationality, ethnicity, gender, genre and instrument (if we count voice as an instrument). African-Americans are American nationals, so I think calling it 6 way is right. It has 1 non-diffusing trait, and 1 trait where we allow an ERGS trait to diffuse. Singers we allow to diffuse by gender. Those 6 way intersection categories are no more, but we have many. They work if they can be reasonably filled. I think we need to do something about the 1 article cats.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:32, 12 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I rethink one of the two following ideas would help. 1-Treat singers, composers and conductors as semi-nom-diffudimg subcats. Let me explain. If someone was only a singer, composer or conductors we would diffuse. If they were any of those plus a player of an instrument, we would allow placing in say both French musicians and French male singers, or French tenors, until there were enough Frech harmonica players or whatever instrument to justify diffusion.
 * 2. What I think would be better is create a category French insteumental musicians. Right now we have Frebmnch musicians by instrument. This is a container category. You either have to choose a specific instrument or leave the article directly in French musicians. The problem is that the intersection of instrument and nationality is not going to always lead to large numbers of articles. We generally need at least 5 articles for a category to help navigation. We probably only have 1 article on a Panamania accordionist. There is another issue. Some people are not very defined by the specific isteuments they played, but that they played instruments is defining. We do havd a multi-i strumentalidt category. However this oddly mainly works to create category clutter. We have someone in German trumpeters, German horn players, German tuba players, and German flutists. Now we can add him into German multi-instrumentalists. We do not have someone in German geologists, German chemists, German botanists and German zoologists and them add him to German multi-discipline scientists. Maybe there is really justification for the multi-instrumentalists cat, but I think we need an instrumental musicians one as well. This would be a huge change to how musician categories are ordered. I am not sure if we would want to rename say Australian musicians by instrument to Australian instrumental musicians, orleave both categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)


 * It looks like a current problem is that since voice is being classed as an instrument, instrumental musicians would include singers, unless we come up with another term.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:56, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I checked Australian musicians. I think there are 9 sub-cats of Australian musicians by instrument,not counting any under singers, that have 1 article. There are several others that are under 5 articles.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:56, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Publicans
Our article Publican is about tax collectors in antiquity. Our category Publican, is about people who operated a pub. I think we should find a way to make it more clear that the category is not meant to include people who collected taxes for the Roman Empire.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Colonial American people
We have a category Colonial American people. It's header says "

I think we should further rename People of the Thirteen Colonies to People from the Thirteen Colonies. The by Colony sub-cats use from, as do several others. "From" means essentially the sane thing as of. From can include those born elsewhere with an established connection. It woks way better with some subcats. A historian of the Thirteen Colonies can live anywhere, at any time after they were cemented, and if we get a painters cat the painters of the Thirteen Colonies is even worse.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * These categories include people who were notable colonists in the regions of North America which would become the United States, that were in British (Thirteen Colonies), Dutch, French, Russian, Spanish or Swedish colonies."
 * This is a horrible,ahistoric, normalizing present boundaries way to organize things that strikes me as just plain wrong. All the more so because the header itself is not even correct. We should categorize people based on political reality at the time. I wish we could just have a People from British America Category to correspond with British America. The issue there is we already have People from the British West Indies. That groups people from the earliest days in the 1640s and even earlier, down to the 1960s. A lit are broken by Colony, but there are some other groupings. Even though it is an odd anachronism for most of their history People from the Thirteen Colonies is a common enough name that we can just apply it from 1607 on, and ignore than there are not actually 13 colonies until Georgia is formed in the 1720s or so. This leaves the Colony of Newfoundland, British Florida, British Newfoundland and British Quebec that includes Detroit, in an odd position. However my sense is we can live with that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My other sense is people have largely ignored the horrible header. We are not placing people living in what is now Texas, California and New Mexico under Spanish rule into Colonial American people or its subcats despite the header saying we should. I think at this point we around get rid of or rename the whole Colonial American people tree. Our guidelines really discourage using these confusing demonym forms at all. That is why we renamed Imperial Russian people to People from the Russian Empire. In a form like this is Colonial describing people or American. I think it is meant to modify Anerica, or American. So People from Colonial America. However this is America as in the United States of America, not America as in North America or South America. The current way it is used us intense headache forming. The most logical way to use it would be to have it cover everything that became America in 1776, which is effectively the 13 Colonies, so calling it People of the Thirteen Colonies, and excluding those only defined by actions in New Netherlands, New Sweden, New France, or in Spanish Florida that at times included areas later in Georgia and maybe further north would make sense.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually it is 1732 when Georgia is formed. So the 13 Colonies exist de facto for only 44 years, and maybe de jure by dome view from 1732-1783, so 51 years. There were Colonies for at least 126 years before there are 13. However the name has become conventionally applied so I think it works.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Having review Colonial American merchants only 1 person had not operated in areas under British control. I moved him to Dutch merchants, because that is what he was. The only other person who is borderline is George Crogan.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:13, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Croghan did enough in New York he probably counts. Also Virginia claimed the Ohio country, so in the minds of Virginia authorities he was in Virginia. That some of his activities were in areas also claimed by Penbsylvania would make him fit better. He would more clearly fit in Category:Merchants from British America, but if someone really does not see him as fitting is Merchants from the Thirteen Colonies, we could just move him to Irish merchants. Merchant categorization is by nation of affiliation, not place of operation. A Britsh merchant does not become Chinese just because he comes ashore to sell ginseng, opium, or anything else in Shanghai. We are fairly lenient in allowing merchants who become settled residents of an area to be cataloged there, especially when they are from a home country and in a Colony. However Croghan can be called an Irish merchant, at least if we are not willing to accept his working with Johnson in the Province of New York making him from the Thirteen Colonies. I would accept that, but am not dead set on it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:22, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason why someone could not be in more that one category… Irish merchant and Merchant from British America (or whatever)? Blueboar (talk) 10:57, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If they were clearly a national of more than one place at different times in their life, then yes they would go in both.However, if they were only an expatriate Merchant then no they would not go in both. If we have a person who is a British merchant in the 1750s, who travels to Istanbul, sells his goods there for about a year, and then returns home, he is not now a Merchant from the Ottoman Empire. That would be too short to make him notable as an expatriate even. If he stays there 6 years, or comes back 7 times, each staying close to a year, than yes he could be in British expatriate in the Ottoman Empire, or Expatriates in the Ottoman Empire if we do not have that. He would need to in some way become a permanent recognized resident of the Ottoman Empire to move to Merchants from the Ottoman Empire though. We do not place British actors who appear in half a dozen American films in American actors categories. They only go in American actors categories if they in some way become a national of the US, or at least someone with regonized permanent residency. We do not require direct evidence, but merely working in a profession in a country does not make one a national there.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:53, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Templates in category pages
I've seen sometimes navigation templates included in category pages (for example Category:Amiga). Feels like an incorrect use of a category page but I couldn't find any guideline it goes against, closest is WP:CATDESC which says not to include refs or external links in category pages. Mika1h (talk) 16:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If you look further down, you will find WP:CAT. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:41, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstood me, that link is about how to categorize templates. See the example for what I mean, there are templates sometimes included within category pages. I just didn't want to remove them unless there is a guideline I can cite if someone reverts the edit. --Mika1h (talk) 17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Both Template:Amiga hardware and Template:Amiga people are included in that category, under the "A" heading, contrary to WP:CAT. If they absolutely must be in the category, their sortkeys should be altered to τ per WP:SORTKEY, eleventh bullet (the one beginning "Sort keys may be prefixed with Greek letters ..."). -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * To hopefully clarify some confusion due to ambiguous meaning of "included": the special wiki term for this is transclusion. The templates Amiga hardware, AmigaOS and so on are in the page Category:Amiga. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:06, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, yeah, those navboxes are all transcluded in the content of the category page. All they accomplish by being there is to link to the same articles that the category page and its subcategory pages already list (at least, all those articles should be in the category or a subcategory), and the reader has to scroll through them to get to the listing that the category page is there to provide, after being confused because they're not seeing what they expect when the page first displays. Redundant, confusing, pointless. Remove them. Largoplazo (talk) 19:14, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Naturalists in the biology tree
I have been thinking naturalists are a good parent category to contain zoologists, botanists, etc. Other editors seem to think that naturalists, botanists, zoologists and others are sub-cats of biologists. What is clear to me is that we need a little order to avoid too much overcategorization. Basically in the 18th and 19th century you had many naturalists who observed and studied a wide range of plants and animals. We have a lot of very specific categories for studying specific types of plants and animals. Several people are in a lot of these categories. I think we should either say that Naturalist is a parent of botanist, zoologist (including ornitologists, mamaologists etc) or state that they are overlap cats, so that we only place people in the naturalists category who are not in any part of the botanists or such. We may also have to work not to diffuse people beyond their real level of specialization. For example John Abbot (entomologist) is said in the lead to have been a "naturalist and artists". He is in categories as a botanists, ornithogist and entomologist. He is in no artist category at all, and is not because of how categories are organized in the naturalist category at all. I added him to the artist tree based on the lead, but think we need to figure out the best way to place him under the scientist tree.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Draughtsman
Draughtsman is a disambiguation page. It lists the following. "


 * An architectural drafter, who produced architectural drawings until the late 20th century
 * An artist who produces drawings that rival or surpass their other types of artwork
 * A drafter who prepares technical drawings
 * A law costs draftsman who settles the costs of legal fees
 * A parliamentary draftsman who prepares legislation
 * A playing piece in the game of draughts

So why do we have a category:Draughtsmen? To make things more fun that category through the sub-cat Dutch draghtsmen, includes Jeanne Bieruma Oosting, who would be a draghtswoman. In the main it looks like most people in Category:Draughtsmen, and its various sub-categories are 2- an artits who produces drawings. We also have a seperate category Category:Drawing artists the main article on that type of art work is under the article drawing. I am thinking we would best off rename/merge Draughtsmen and its sub-cats to Drawing artists, and then create American drawing artists, British drawing artists, French drawing artists, and any other by nationality categories to match the ones we have currently. We will also want to ensure that all the people in these categories are actually drawing artists, move anyone who is not to Category:Architectural drafters, Category:Drafters for those who make non-architectural technical drawinings, and I guess if we have anyone who is a law costs draftsman (and we think it is a defining trait) we could create a category Law Costs Draftsmen, and Parliamentary draftsmen as well if we need it. I do not think we need the playing piece category at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It's very hard, if not impossible, to be notable as any of these except #2. A note should clarify that this is what the category is for. Neither "Draughtsman" nor "Drawing artist" are especially familiar or clear terms, and a new name would be better. "Artists notable for drawings" perhaps - this alkso solves the gender issue. The trouble is that over long periods many/most painters produced drawings, as they were trained to do, without being especially known for these. Stern category notes are needed to exclude them. I agree about the merge. Johnbod (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I see John Price (New South Wales politician) worked as #3 for a while, but that's not defining for him. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I think "drawing artist" is probably a good name, and just have a note that says that the category is only for people who are notable for their drawings, not everyone who made a drawing ever.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:26, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree - "drawing artist" seems a made-up Wikipedia term to me, which we should avoid. You never see it in art history. I see some articles on modern artists use "drawer", but I think that is too ambiguous. Johnbod (talk) 21:13, 19 July 2024 (UTC)