Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 16

Interaction between RfCs on Antisemitism categories
I'm trying to figure out the relationship both between RfCs held for different categories and of an RfC for other existing categories not discussed in the RfC. The main RfC is Category talk:Anti-Semitism which was closed on 29 July 2014 by User:Sandstein with a decision that there was a lack of consensus and thus an earlier RfC's instructions that for Category:Antisemitism and its various subcategories, "It must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly antisemitic".

On the basis of the word media Category:Antisemitic forgeries, Category:Antisemitic publications and Category:Antisemitic canards were removed today from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by User:Kendrick7. None of these categories are subcategories of Category:Antisemitism so I don't see how the RfC applies, although others may differ. Of course, if we remove everything from these categories they would normally be deleted. Actual subcategories that would presumably be emptied and deleted if this continues are for instance Category:Scholars of antisemitism‎ - "it must not include articles about individuals".

Frankly none of this makes sense to me. We can call Hitler an anti-Semite but we can't put him in the category Antisemitism? But I was on the other side of the RfC so I would feel that way of course.

Another related issue is about the subcategory Category:Antisemitism in the United States. At Category talk:Antisemitism in the United States an RfC closed slightly earlier than the one above was closed by User:Mdann52 with the consensus that "There is consensus not to remove or specifically exclude all BLP's from this category.". Is that closure made null by the RfC a few weeks later?


 * Responses to a couple of your points (I'm not familiar with the RfCs): At the end of your 2nd para are you misquoting by not including "that are allegedly antisemitic"? Regarding your 3rd para: there are many ways Hitler could be described (moustached, born in April ...), but he doesn't need to be categorized for those things - he's in Category:German Nazi politicians etc. DexDor (talk) 20:09, 2 September 2014 (UTC)


 * This all goes back to some CFD discussions several years ago. The main two are Categories for discussion/Log/2010 January 18 and Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 9 - I closed the latter. Following a number of earlier discussions as well they came down against including people and organisations in bias categories because it was felt in many cases the categories are subject to being used for attacks backed up by partisan sources. (And it's telling that critics of this approach almost always bring up a Nazi example as though they're representative of the more contentious cases people have concerns about.) In the past year one user, User:Kendrick7, has been on a campaign against the outcome for at least some of these categories but refuses to accept the validity of either the location or outcome of the CFD discussion so won't request a review or launch a new discussion to overturn it. Instead they've edit warred for months, both in adding the categories to biographies and also trying to remove or rewrite the CFD outcome notices on a wide range of categories, with comments like "there is no consensus because I do not consent" and appeals to WP:BURO as though it allows them to automatically overturn decisions they don't like. For this they've received two blocks and an indefinite topic ban on the biography they kept on trying to add to Category:Anti-Catholicism in the United States. Eventually they were talked into initiating a discussion on the matter but rather than a broad discussion on the general principles they launched a narrow and badly worded RFC about removing the instructions on a single category - see Category talk:Anti-Semitism - which ended in no consensus to remove the notice but didn't formally address anything else. The closing admin on that RFC has declined to close on the wider issues and people are now arguing in multiple places about inclusion anew. The user has since undertaken to remove articles from the categories, often with edit summaries that appear designed to provoke a reaction against the policy. User talk:Kendrick7 contains comments from a number of other users about the conduct on this.
 * On the specifics of Category:Antisemitic forgeries, Category:Antisemitic publications and Category:Antisemitic canards, these are all in sub-categories at one level or another of Category:Anti-Semitism. Category talk:Antisemitism in the United States is a case of a local consensus that's crept through and added to the mess.
 * If people feel the original CFDs were closed erroneously or else consensus has shifted then fair enough - but the only ways you're going to avoid edit wars with others who think the current approach is correct are to either take the original discussions to DRV or to launch a new discussion to see what present consensus now is. But if you do take the latter approach please make sure it's a broad ranging discussion - one thing that seems clear above all else is that there's broad consensus they should be treated the same, though people disagree on whether an individual category should change now or wait for others, and narrow discussions based on one category or one area of discrimination are getting nowhere. (It would probably also help to ban from the discussion using the Nazis as an example of anything as they're not a remotely typical example where the sources may be divided or the accusations are partisan attacks that are ignored rather than countered.) Timrollpickering (talk) 23:26, 2 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I was asked above if I was misquoting. Sorry, I was just being lazy. But what does 'allegedly' mean? Hitler wasn't convicted of antisemitism and the categories were removed from his article and not restored. Kendrick's been removing such categories from virtually every article he can find with the edit summary " no person, group, or media can be categorized as anti-Semitic". Frankly it's a mess. He seems to be trying to make a WP:POINT about this, and maybe it is ANI time. I don't understand how the 3 categories I mentioned are subcategories - they should be, but are they technically?
 * What's the best way forward? Dougweller (talk) 05:39, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Y'all are going to take me to AN/I for enforcing the result of an WP:RfC? How am I the problem here? -- Kendrick7talk 05:53, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * @Dougweller They are sub-categories but at a deeper level. Yes some individuals are clearer cases than othes but the standing consensus is that it's too difficult to draw a workable clear line for inclusion/exclusion. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:51, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Yet the instructions do say "allegedly" so they don't make a clear statement. What this seems to mean that if there is any dispute about a book, person or organisation being antisemitic, even is it is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, we can't put it in an antisemitic category. And you and Kendrick seem to be arguing that even where there is no dispute, where the individuals, organisations, etc flaunt it, they can't be put in an antisemtic category., you are part of the problem as you are removing it, so far as I can see, as though the word "allegedly" wasn't in the instructions. It certainly isn't in your edit summaries. Can we say that National Socialist Movement (United States) which would exclude Jews from citizenship isn't "allegedly antisemetic but actually?Dougweller (talk) 13:12, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Not sure why I've been summoned, but we base things here on WP:V not WP:TRUTH. Everything we do here is just an allegation. -- Kendrick7talk 04:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The instructions as originally fully worded are that all such articles should be removed - see also the close of the CFD. The word "allegedly" was used because the wording was lifted from Category:Homophobia which had had its own CFD but it was clear there and again in the global CFD that all such articles should removed, regardless of whether they're a case with no dispute in the sources or not. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:45, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok, there is still a mess. The earlier CFD does say "Consensus for a unified approach to these categories; most support to ban individuals & organisations." Not a brilliantly worded close but it does say "ban individuals and organisations" with no allegedly. The problem is that the recent CFD used a different wording, adding "allegedly" and "media". Do I gather that what you think is the case is that no individuals or groups should be in such categories but that 'media' can be as they weren't in the original CfD? That would be in line with the close, which I note also says " I therefore note that there is no consensus for changing the instructions, with a noticeable majority opposing a change and calling for an RfC covering all similar categories. In my view, such a RfC should also explore nuanced approaches such as some of those proposed in this discussion, or whether separate categories such as "Anti-X persons and groups" might be feasible instead." I think something like this is necessary as at the moment I think this all or nothing approach makes us look foolish. We've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Dougweller (talk) 16:38, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * And I really hope we can get more input. Of course you are defending a CfD you closed, although I note that someone said "The finding by the closer, Timrollpickering, of "most support to ban individuals & organisations", is manifestly incorrect and false—only six (or seven) out of eighteen editors expressed such support." Dougweller (talk) 16:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * A close is not a crude head count though when both sides have strong policy arguments behind them it can be one factor amongst many. But I note that that comment originally came from a supposedly anonymous IP on Kendrick7's talkpage that tried to provide support and justification for Kendrick7 to arbitarily remove all the notices amidst the edit warring.
 * With media the focus is on things like the Guardian newspaper where the accusation is flung quite a bit rather than on books like the Protocols.
 * I'm not wedded to the outcome of that CFD, though I take offence at what certain editors (not you) have said in pretending that the closure means historical revisionism to deny the existance of discrimination. This probably does need reconsidering anew but it's not been helped by the bull in a china shop approach which has just put backs up. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:03, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

"With media the focus is on things like the Guardian newspaper" #headDesk User:Timrollpickering Do you yet see why admins acting on their own shouldn't be allowed to create new policies?? -- Kendrick7talk 06:07, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * For the umpteenth and final time an admin closing a discussion is not "creating new policies"; they are determining the consensus of the discussion about the proposal. And here it was about whether an already developed practice should be rolled out broadly. Things have been explained to you enough times that I won't do so anymore. Timrollpickering (talk) 08:17, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Categorising lists of red links
Do we have a category for pages with lists of redlinks, like List of ICD-9 codes 630–679: complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium? If not, I think we should create one - hidden, if necessary. Ditto for links in non-article space. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:00, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * What would be the purpose of such a category? DexDor (talk) 19:20, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To make it easier for people looking for something to wrote about - especially by querying intersections of such categories with those by project. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:43, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I was about to say this sounds more like a use case for a database report than a category, but Andy's suggestion sounds very useful. One could think of a bot keeping the category tags up to date (limited to article space I'd think). That said, an external tool generating such a list from a database replica, and collaborating with existing tools that produce per-project maintenance lists would be another option. &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO  20:13, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm still not convinced this would be useful - when editors create lists ("List of villages in ", "List of people who have won " etc) some link every entry (creating a sea of red - and links to dab pages) and some don't. There are lots of stubs that could be expanded and (especially for wp newbies) that's probably a better way to find places to add content. DexDor (talk) 21:22, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Category moves still messed up
Two problems have come up that are causing problems with category redirects:


 * A minor one is the move software isn't creating the redirect in the optimum form. It's producing instead of  which takes longer to clear in the cache and can leave false positives at Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories.


 * The major one is the tendency for users to arbitarily move a heavily populated category and do nothing about the articles. The redirect bot won't process a populated new category for a week so they just sit there. Then when there are a lot to do the bot is crashing with the epic work - see User:RussBot/category redirect log. A cap has had to be set on this because it was never intended to be a substitute for CFD or to monopolise the bot for days on end. There's recently been a batch of moves covering some 10,000 articles on footballers - see Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories for some of the leftovers.

What's the best way forward to deal with these sorts of messes when they arise? Timrollpickering (talk) 09:58, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't take any longer to handle than it does for  . Why do you think it does? Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:26, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Just about all the empty ones that are hanging around in the category that I've checked are in the former format and the product of moves. I suspect the reverse situation is applying and some aren't showing up so fast. It seems to be a cache matter and using the latter setting would avoid it. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see where the confusion is. It indeed isn't taking any longer to purge, but since users can move categories now, a lot more categories are ending up in there, and even though they're still moving just as fast, you're noticing them now because of the larger volume. Using the latter setting wouldn't help at all. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:26, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Simplify and refine naming of category classes
Currently, WP:PROJCATS divides categories into two main types: "Administrative categories" and "Content categories". The former is also subdivided into "stub categories", "maintenance categories", and several others without explicit names given.

The name "Administrative categories" is problematic. It makes it sound like it is something that only concerns Administrators. This misconception is reinforced by the Template:Tracking category commonly being followed by Template:Polluted category as at Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters.

Perhaps it is a better idea to divide categories into "Maintenance categories" and "Content categories". Then "Maintenance categories" can be subdivided into "stub categories", Wikiproject categories, and so on. Those seem like maintenance categories to me so the semantics is fine under this re-naming. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:59, 7 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Agree with the general idea that "Administrative categories" is not a good descriptor for categories that are "intended for use by editors". As Jason Quinn points out, "Administrative categories" sounds like something that should only be touched by Administrators. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I've dug into the page history to figure out how we ended up with the present (rather myopic) naming scheme. I learned that originally there was just a distinction of a "maintenance" category from the rest (see for instance). Things started to change with a massive reworking of Categorization with (11:13, 26 February 2009 by User:Kotniski) which according to the edit summary was done because nobody replied (after just two days) to their "REWRITE" proposal. Among many changes, this rewrite divided categories into "project" and "content" categories. Later,  (03:05, 14 April 2011 by User:Mclay1) renamed the "project" categories to "administrative" categories (without any discussion as far as I can tell). Things fluctuated here and there but for the most part these are the two seminal changes that led to the current scheme.

I've been mulling over this topic for a while but I think the original idea (and my idea posted above) where they are named "maintenance" is still the best. I've tried to get more people to comment here but apparently not many people care. When I feel I've thought this out well enough, I will go ahead and start making some changes. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:00, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * agree with not using name "Administrative categories". Project categories is also a bit misleading. Maintenance categories sounds OK, except that it is already a subcat anyway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Applying categories when information is in a "sub-article"?
Is there a consensus as to how things should be handled when, for instance, Ian McKellen has received numerous awards for which there are categories, but the awards he's received are discussed at Ian McKellen, roles and awards? I can think of a few ways this might be handled but am not sure what the prevailing viewpoint is (or if there is one):


 * 1) The categories should be placed on the main article if and only if the main article discusses the awards, the existence of the sub-article notwithstanding.
 * 2) The categories should be placed on the sub-article with the standard caveat that they must be verified.
 * 3) The existence of the sub-article is sufficient for categorizing the main article, provided the categories are verified at the sub-article.

Among other things, I'm concerned about issues with WP:CIRCULAR, and I don't personally think readers should have to look at article B to confirm that categories applied to article A are appropriate.

Thanks for your input! DonIago (talk) 15:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Choice 1 seems foolish; if it is confirmed that Sir Ian has won a certain award, there is no reason to omit the category simply because it appears on another page. Choice 2, in this case, would result in lots of "List of" articles being placed in categories intended for people; other cases would result in similar mis-categorizations.  Choice 3 therefore seems best.  The existence of the sub-page ought to provide ample documentation for the categories.  If there is a sourcing dispute, participants should have minimal trouble finding the sub-page and the sourcing info there.  I don't think it would cause a WP:CIRCULAR issue because this is not a case of an article citing another article; it is simply adding an extra click to spot the citation for one relatively minor part of the article (the categories in question).  Fishal (talk) 13:39, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with Fishal. If the category is for people (e.g., "Category:Tony Award winners" or "Category:Back Stage West Garland Award recipients"), put it on the person's page. The subpage is a list (not a winner or a recipient) so only a category like "Category:Lists of awards by actor" is appropriate. Let the name of the category guide you. If many of the awards are only discussed on the subpage, you could put a note in the main page's source that says to check the subpage for the citations. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:52, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you both for your input. I don't quite agree, but that's alright. DonIago (talk) 18:28, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Category maxes out at 7 entries
I just created Category:Authors and writers external links templates and populated it. With for example Gutenberg author. However Gutenberg author and many others are not showing up, staying in the parent cat of Category:People and person external link templates. It seems to have maxed out at 7 entries. I notice the other sub-cat to Category:People and person external link templates, Category:Canada politics and government external link templates, is also maxed out at 7 entries (though maybe its natural number, just suspiciously the same). Is 7 a bug, or feature? -- Green  C  15:39, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Template updates cause an low priority task to start that updates the category later. So it is not instant and in the past has taken weeks. Vegaswikian (talk) 16:55, 7 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You edited the template documentation subpages like in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Gutenberg_author/doc&diff=prev&oldid=628657507]. That is the correct action but it's affected by the delay described by Vegaswikian. If you null edit the actual template pages then the category should update right away, but there is no need to use null edits for a minor issue like this. Just wait for it to eventually happen automatically. I realize it seems odd that the category is sometimes displayed at the bottom of the pages, but the pages are not displayed in the categories. However, the page and the category can be updated at different times when the categorization is done via a transcluded page. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:03, 7 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok thanks for the explanation (and Vegaswikian). Regards. -- Green  C  18:47, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Alphabetisation mystery
Look at Category:Health ministries. You'll find two groups of entries under the letter I - one in the usual place, and another one between D and E just containing Ireland. I've checked that both 'I's are in fact the same Unicode character, so what's happening? Colonies Chris (talk) 09:32, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know what was causing it, but I've fixed it (by temporarily changing the sort key to "ZIreland" and then changing it back to "Ireland"). DH85868993 (talk) 11:20, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

transcluding a category into an article
is it possible? here's an example: replacing the link to category with a category transclusion in Copernicus Publications. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 04:40, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's possible, but doing so will only show the contents of the category page, rather than the members of the category itself, which isn't usually what you want. Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:55, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Why all these saint categories for one article?
I just saw someone changing a category from Medieval Scottish saints to Medieval Roman Catholic Scottish saints at Saint Ninian and noticed he is now in 7 'Saint' categories. Does this make sense? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:09, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * According to Categorization, "each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belong", so that change is correct, given the current category structure. Whether we should have that many specific ("Medieval Roman Catholic Scottish ...") is a separate matter. WP:OVERCAT is the relevant guideline. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll ask there. Dougweller (talk) 14:40, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Toponyms by language
I don't understand why categories like Category:Romanian toponyms are not allowed. Since Category:Slavic toponyms and Category:Latin place names, why it can't be another one for Romanian, another for German and so on?

Where can I gather together Romanian language toponyms like Păltiniș Păltinișu, Peșteana, Peştera (disambiguation) and other disambiguation pages like that? At least can I make a list with them?

I have read Categories for discussion/Log/2012 November 26 and Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_November_13 but I don't see any valid reason to remove such categories.

If a name like Banka is used in both Slovakia and India, it can be put in both Category:Slovak toponyms and Category:Hindi toponyms. If a name belongs to many languages (like Alba), then it can be added to categories in a invisible manner, so it won't bother the reader with too many categories. —  Ark25  (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as your last point is concerned, categories are either hidden, or they are not. There is no facility for them to be hidden on some pages and visible on others.   All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:43, 13 December 2014 (UTC).

Putting articles of eponymous categories in parent cat
Input from editors familiar with categorization is requested at Talk:Paddle steamer. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposed clarification
The above-mentioned disagreement has been resolved, by reference to WP:EPONYMOUS. However it does highlight the fact that the WP:EPONYMOUS exception to the general rule of WP:SUBCAT is not mentioned in SUBCAT or the first paragraph of WP:CAT (as non-diffusing categories are). I suggest that it should be. Thus I propose the following changes to Categorization:

Support, comments or objections? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:09, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I've made the change. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion, category "Ferries"
I suggest a new category, some of the following etc Please help me at HH Ferry route, cannot find a suitable category. Boeing720 (talk) 22:44, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ferry lines
 * International Ferry Lines
 * Car Ferry lines / Car & Train Ferry lines


 * I haven't found other articles about individual ferry routes, apart from Kerch Strait ferry line. The closest category I can find is Category:Lists of ferry routes but HH Ferry route is not a list and doesn't belong there. A new category should not be created for a single article or two unless it's part of a category system. I don't think there is enough system to justify such a tiny subcategory of Category:Routes. I suggest placing the article in Category:Helsingør, Category:Helsingborg, Category:Ferry transport in Denmark, Category:Ferry transport in Sweden, Category:Denmark–Sweden border crossings and Category:Routes. If several ferry route articles are created or already exist then they may get a subcategory of Category:Routes and Category:Ferry transport. By the way, I live 10 km from this ferry route and have used it many times. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:SUBCAT - belonging also to parent
The following statement has been in the guideline for a long time:
 * "When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions[clarification needed]) to belong to the parent also."

This statement is completely on the contrary to how the vast majority of our categorisation system works. For example, look at the subcategories and article content in Category:Perth, Western Australia. Category:Perth, Western Australia-related lists‎, Category:Swan Coastal Plain‎, Category:Crime in Perth, Western Australia‎: none of these are Australian capital cities, or Cities in Western Australia or Coastal cities in Australia (the parents of the given category). Effectively, this guideline suggests that even set categories on a topic (like "People from foo") should not be in the topic category ("foo") as they will almost never share the features of the parent category.

This statement should be removed from the guideline because it is completely unrepresentative of our categorisation system. We overlap the various categories when they have a parent-child semantic relationship – by design you can get to the "People in CityX, CountryY" category by going through the "Cities in CountryY" category. That's what we've all come to expect and the implementation of the above (highly restrictive) guideline's categorisation method would profoundly change the structure of today's Wikipedia. SFB 02:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The "Subcategorization" starts off by saying "If logical membership of one category implies logical membership of a second, then the first category should be made a subcategory (directly or indirectly) of the second." And further on: "If two categories are closely related but are not in a subset relation, then links between them can be included in the text of the category pages." If this isn't how things are done, or not exclusively how things are done, then these should also be removed or modified. Perhaps we should insert a sentence along the lines of When there is a parent-child semantic relationship between categories, the child should be a subcategory of the parent, regardless of whether the members of the subcategory can be expected to belong to the parent or not. - Evad37 &#91;talk] 04:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Isn't this they same as saying 'we have a parent-child category system'? Hmains (talk) 04:58, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps then We have a parent-child category system, regardless of whether the members of the child category can be expected to belong to the parent category . Basically, make it clear that subcategories are not subsets. - Evad37 &#91;talk] 06:23, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. That "the members of the subcategory really can be expected ... to belong to the parent" is fundamental to (wp) categorization. Without it categorization could turn into a complete mess - in particular category intersection would never work.  If Foo is a city then Category:Foo can contain any article that is within the subject of that city (e.g. an article about a lake in that city).  The Foo article should be categorized as a populated place, the Foo category should not - that way the lake article can be placed in Category:Foo without the lake being categorized as a populated place. That this (like most things in wp) isn't currently perfectly implemented isn't a good reason to throw it away. DexDor (talk) 08:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding the above example, that suggests that (a) "Lakes in Foo" should be removed from "Foo", or (b) "Lakes in Foo" should be included, but "Foo" should have no parents at all. The Perth example demonstrates that all the parents of that category do not apply to any of its subcategories. That category is also very typical of how Wikipedia's category system is built. If this guideline was "perfectly implemented" what would that category look like to you? What would the parents be?
 * Category intersection will not work via the current system, but that doesn't mean the arrangement is wrong – people want a semantic web approach of navigation. It's how humans read things. This just means that the current category system is technically unsuitable to build the category intersection feature. For that, we need a new system that allows us to set attributes for category relationships. For example, whether the relationship is "tree inclusive" (most set categories) or "tree exclusive" (most topic categories). For example, "People from Perth, Western Australia‎" would have a tree exclusive relationship with "Perth, Western Australia‎", but a tree inclusive relationship with "People from Western Australia". Note that under this model, the current parent "People by state or territory in Australia" would also need to be marked as a navigational "by"-type category, and not a functional topic or set category. Needless to say, it becomes obvious very quickly that the requirements for category intersection simply aren't met by the current system, not least because we would need to delete and reorganise half of it for intersection to work. SFB 12:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * "Semantic web approach of navigation" is exactly right, and SFB is correct in identifying the flaws with DexDor's interpretation, which would fragment the category system so as to make it less useful for readers, and in any event is obviously not consensus-supported practice. The last time this issue was discussed (only a few months ago, and also at this page), the consensus was clearly against such an absolutist and mechanistic view of parent-child relationships. Obiwankenobi's top comment there really says it all: "Categories really aren't like mathematical sets." postdlf (talk) 15:37, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Replies to SFB's questions: (a) No - Category:Lakes in Foo belongs in Category:Foo and Category:Lakes (b) No - Category:Foo belongs in Category:Fooistan (the country) (and there are also "Wikipedia categories named after ..." categories) and article Foo belongs in Category:Cities in Fooistan, Category:Capital cities etc (as well as its eponymous category). The point is that there are some categories that are appropriate as parents of Foo, but not appropriate as parents of Category:Foo.  Another example: the RAF article belongs in Category:1918 establishments in the United Kingdom, but the RAF category does not belong in a 1918 category (as that would have the effect of putting every RAF squadron in the 1918 category).
 * If anyone thinks wikipedia would benefit from changing the fundamental principles of wp categorization so much that wp:subcat no longer applies (or set up a separate categorization system) then I suggest they write an essay explaining how their system would work (including any changes needed to MediaWiki) - that way the benefits/flaws of an alternative system could be assessed.  DexDor (talk) 19:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Surely the fact that no city categories are in the country categories shows that this guideline is the wrong way wrong? i.e. there are some cases where it is applied (e.g. RAF & year example), but most of the time that logic is not applied. The examples you're giving are logical enough, but they are far from a reflection of Wikipedia practice, and perhaps categorisation preference of editors as well. Guidelines should be reflecting those. SFB 22:34, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * @SFB. Category:Paris is in Category:France (by several routes) so what do you mean by "the fact that no city categories are in the country categories" ? There is a tendency for categories to be overcategorized - Once upon a time Category:France (as well as the France article) was in Category:Member states of NATO which meant that, for example, articles about the French Revolution were in Category:NATO. That was incorrect categorization, but it didn't mean that the principles of wp categorization were fundamentally flawed - it just needed some tidying up. DexDor (talk) 08:03, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That's my point. For your logic to work the Paris category should be directly in the France category, otherwise by your category logic we get other strange results. In the current arrangement 1996 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Final is a child of Populated places in France, Cities in France and Departments of France via the Paris category. For you logic to work (i.e. all the tree must logically apply to the children) you would not only need to completely change the way set categories are used, but you would also have to radically re-parent things like the Paris category. As I say, I'm not saying there is a problem with the system you're proposing, but the mere enforcement of the stated guideline would hugely affect topic categories like that one (which are actually the most important ones). SFB 23:19, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not saying that any article needs to be directly in any category - if there's a suitable subcategory then that's where the article should be (ignoring the special case of eponymous articles).
 * The dual set/topic nature of wp-categorization can make things complicated. E.g. if someone intersects categories like Cities-in-France and Cities-in-Belgium they might be expecting just articles about cities that are in both countries (i.e. that straddle the border, if there are any) - in fact they would get articles about interactions between cities (e.g. your example of a football match).  I don't have a solution to things like this (if, indeed, it's a problem that needs a solution).
 * The onus should be on anyone who thinks the wp en categorization rules should change to design (what they think is) a better set of rules (that are consistent, don't require changes to Mediawiki etc). Until a clear alternative to the current scheme is proposed (and, again, I recommend doing it as an essay so that it can be clearly explained in detail) this discussion is unlikely to make progress. DexDor (talk) 22:35, 21 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with what postdlf has said above. The WP category system is too intricate to regard it as a system in which contents of child categories can always (or even mostly always) be regarded as legitimate contents of the parent categories. I don't think that recognizing this is a proposal for a new system or introducing fundamental principles—it's more a recognition of the complexity and how things are currently set out in practice. As a principle it certainly works in many contexts, but there are also many in which it does not work well. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems to me the guideline should be revisited based on actual usage. The Watergate scandal is under Category:Richard Nixon which makes sense to me. But that scandal obviously would never fit directly in Category:Presidents of the United States and I think this is more common than the occasional "exception" anticipated in the guidelines. Even with what seems like a hierarchical tree, like the lakes above, currently includes Category:Fish of Lake Victoria. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:42, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * A super-common example is the PLACE/People from PLACE combinations. is a subcategory of, but in most cases the contents of the former would not be appropriate for the latter. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:52, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not appropriate for a person from a large city like Paris to be directly categorized in Category:Paris because there is a people-from subcategory. A smaller place (e.g. a town/village) may be large enough to have its own category, but if it doesn't have a people-from subcat then (as long as the persons connection to that place is sufficiently strong) a bio article can be placed directly in the category (e.g. Twm o'r Nant in Category:Llannefydd).  However, it's better in a case like that to have a people-from category even if it only has one member (which is allowed under the exception to WP:SMALLCAT) so that the type of relationship is clear.  Another example: the Llanrwst railway station article is ok in Category:Llanrwst because there isn't (currently) a more specific category such as "Railway stations in Llanrwst". DexDor (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In reply to RevelationDirect's point about Nixon. Categories are for grouping articles about similar topics; that is not quite the same thing as grouping articles about related topics.  Nixon and Ford are similar topics (Republican US presidents of the 1970s) so they should be closely linked through the category system.  Nixon and Watergate are very closely related topics so one would expect them to be well linked in the article text (e.g. using a "main" tag), but they are not so similar that they need to be directly linked by categorization (although both topics fit under categories for US politics etc).
 * There is a tendency for categories named after people to accrue articles about anything associated with that person - so, for example, we currently have California State Route 90 and Five O'Clock Follies in Category:Richard Nixon (the latter article doesn't even mention Nixon). That's just using the category system to display a list of related articles such as you might get in a see-also list or a template. DexDor (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposal 1

 * Reword Sentence to "When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the main article of the subcategory will be a valid member of the parent category." RevelationDirect (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Evad37 raises a good point that we do not follow our current guideline. This proposal is part descriptive in that it captures what we are actually doing now. I think requiring the main article to be a member of the parent category keeps the subcategories from becoming totally unmoored but, obviously, not all categories have a main article. (This is just a rough draft; how can it be improved or is this the wrong direction?)RevelationDirect (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Question Do we have a description of a "main article"? We have Template:Cat main and Main article fixation but I couldn't find a basic description. RevelationDirect (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The proposed change would (if I understand it correctly) mean that, for example, Category:Royal Air Force (as well as the Royal Air Force article) would be placed in Category:1918 establishments in the United Kingdom etc (and Napoleon would be in Category:NATO). That is not how most of wp is currently categorized and (IMO) is not how it should be categorized. DexDor (talk) 20:16, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Clarification No, my intent was the other way aroud to say, if a  child category was under a parent category, the main article of the child category must fit in the parent category. (I did not mean to imply the opposite that Category:Royal Air Force should become a sub-category of every category that the Royal Air Force article is in.)  Obviously if my wording is unclear though, we need to fix it. Is it clearer in context of the paragraph below?:RevelationDirect (talk) 01:07, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In that case I really don't understand what change you are trying to make to the categorization scheme. Please give an example of part of the category structure under the current rules and what it would look like after your changes. I also suggest that you do it on a separate page (e.g. as a user essay) linked from here - that way you will have more "space" to explain your ideas. Categorizing things as subsets is common in the real world (e.g. all bats are mammals, all mammals are vertebrates - thus all bats are vertebrates) and wp categorization shouldn't move away from that without a very good reason. DexDor (talk) 22:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 January 2015
There is a typo: on one occurrence you have "sub-category" instead of "stub-category".

2.125.15.86 (talk) 09:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * "Naming guidelines for sub-categories of Category:Stub categories are listed at WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines" has a correct use of "sub-" vs. "stub-" afaics, or did you mean something different? --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:50, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Content categories without visible parents
I've noticed that some categories completely lack any visible parent categories, seemingly making them uncategorized, except they contain hidden maintenance categories as parents. This completely breaks navigation by category tree, since these categories are unreachable from the root category by descent (you'd have to ascend from some shared subcategory, if any shared subcategories exist)

Category:Wikipedia categories named after Canadian musicians exhibits this anomalous behaviour, where the categorized categories lack any visible parents and only have this maintenance category. Since them categories contained are not maintenance categories themselves, but content categories, this seems wrong.

-- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 05:54, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * This sort of categorization does not completely break navigation by category tree; someone can (for example) navigate from the Bryan Adams article to Category:Bryan Adams. If you think there is a problem here then what do you think should be changed to fix it ? E.g. should we (a) delete Category:Bryan Adams, (b) put Category:Bryan Adams under categories such as Category:Canadian male singer-songwriters or (c) make the category non-hidden ? Option b might look ok, but it would place articles like Queen Elizabeth II domestic rate stamp (Canada) and Zoo Magazine under Category:Canadian male singer-songwriters which wouldn't be correct categorization. DexDor (talk) 08:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to agree with 65.94.40.137 - Category:Bryan Adams (for example) should be in a non-hidden category. Categorization does not mention hidden/visible categories, but I would interpret "every category ... must be a subcategory of at least one other category" to mean visible categories, not admin/hidden categories.
 * The obvious solution would be to include Category:Bryan Adams in Category:Canadian male singer-songwriters (presuming that he is one). While it's true that Queen Elizabeth II domestic rate stamp (Canada) is not a Canadian male singer-songwriters, the stamp is named after a Canadian male singer-songwriters. Similarly, Zoo Magazine was co-founded by a Canadian male singer-songwriter.
 * See also above. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:32, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The categories that would normally belong on the article page, are on the category page only.
 * Category:1977 establishments in Washington (state)
 * Category:Animal rights movement
 * Category:Direct action
 * Category:Environmental organizations based in Washington (state)
 * Category:Fish conservation organizations
 * Category:International environmental organizations
 * Category:Organizations established in 1977
 * Category:Wildlife conservation organizations
 * Category:Whaling

One exception and that being Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I reversed it putting the categories on the article page but then got reverted claiming a talk page consensus[Talk:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society/Archive 12.]. The discussion is lengthy but fact is I have never seen an instance of this, categories only on the category page and not the article page before. Is ...William 13:13, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The simple answer is that categories are not restricted to a like named category instead of the article. In this case take one item in the category, Pete Bethune who was not established in 1977 (the subcategories but be valid for most of the category contents).  That makes the parent categories for Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society or it's contents out of sync.  Since I feel the contents are proper, the problem is the categories as you pointed out.  Looking at it the other way, I expect that Category:Organizations established in 1977 only applies to the parent organization so that should only be present on the main article's page. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:SUBCAT says (with my examples added here in italics) that "A page [Sea Shepherd Conservation Society] or category should rarely be placed in both a category [Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society] and a ... parent category (supercategory) [1977 establishments in Washington (state)] of that category ...", so there is no need to include the article Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in the categories 1977 establishments in Washington (state) etc, because the article is already in those parent categories indirectly via Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
 * However WP:EPONYMOUS allows (but does not require) the article Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to be in the other parent categories directly - as if the child category Sea Shepherd Conservation Society did not exist - because the child cat is eponymous.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 13:57, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Alumni
What is the best way to categorize alumni so that there is a clickable link in the main article for the school? I have been using the first method, but in the past others have removed it, saying the school is not an alumni. Of course it isn't, it is there to be the header for the category list and provide a clickable way to get to the list from the school page. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:33, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "Category:Don Bosco Preparatory High School alumni| " Add the alumni category to the school and add a blank so when sorted it appears at the top of the list?
 * ":Category:Don Bosco Preparatory High School alumni" Add the category with a colon to the see also section?
 * "Category:Don Bosco Preparatory High School" Create a supercategory that will only contain the supracategory "Category:Don Bosco Preparatory High School alumni"?

If I understand your question, you're wondering how to properly link the alumni category within the article on the school, correct? #2 is the only acceptable option of the three you've listed, and you should also use cat main on the category's description page to link back to the school article. If there is also a standalone alumni list as well as an alumni category (and please don't use confuse us by using "list" to refer to the contents of a category), then that list should be categorized by the alumni category with a blank sortkey, and then include a link to the list in the school article. postdlf (talk) 21:41, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. I agree that #2 is the way to go, though I would say the backlinking from the category should be with cat more rather than cat main (since calling something a "main article" for a category could imply that it too should be in the category, which would imply the approach set out in #1). Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

No columns anymore?
There used to be three columns on category pages, but now i only see one at Category:Bandy clubs by year of establishment, which makes it strange. Am I the only one to see this? Is it a problem with my browser? 78.78.1.90 (talk) 09:48, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess so, since I'm not seeing this. Herostratus (talk) 12:09, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I see three columns in Firefox but you are not alone. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 135 PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Exceptions to subcat
WP:SUBCAT currently says "ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent also" and (very reasonably) an editor has asked for clarification. An example of where this applies is Category:British military personnel of World War II - it is (via several intermediate categories) under Category:British people, but there are a few people (example) who were in the British military but were not a British person. This seems a reasonable exception to me. Has anybody got any good other examples and/or ideas about how to explain this simply in the guideline ? Note: The discussion immediately above this and the (now archived) recent long discussion are also concerned with SUBCAT. DexDor (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Clarification needed
Hi, when adding categories to articles, should we be adding categories that aren't literal? For instance, here a category was added for "People from Bristol" in an article that is about a website run by a person from Bristol. The website obviously is not a person. I've seen this sort of thing before, for instance where there might be a robot character in a cartoon series, and a "Robots in fiction" category might be added. The series is not a robot. Can someone help spoonfeed this to me? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Basically no. People categories should only be in articles (or redirects) for people.  Now, if there is a section in that article on the person then maybe, but in that case I prefer the redirect for categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:25, 11 March 2015 (UTC)


 * People categories generally have names that support what you call a literal reading. Keepers of those categories commonly exclude even lead articles (as Bristol, England is not in ).
 * What needs, however, is not the exclusion of such as the unnamed series article in favor of articles about fictional robots. We have  for articles about robots. Rather, {Robots in fiction} needs a substantial preface --to "spoonfeed" visitors. We may need a robot to find and speedily delete category pages that are created with template popcat alone.
 * Note, cat does prominently show subcat Fictional robots, and it is a subcat of . The correct reading of the pagename may even be literal, although it is not the only literal reading.
 * --P64 (talk) 15:28, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Please rewrite the Eponymous section
About Categorization. I still can do not understand the explanation as it is given. Maybe more examples could help (including red don'ts), from a simple set. I can point to these confusing elements for sure:
 * "their corresponding articles": 'their' can mean multiple nouns, and why plural?
 * "take a category": no category is 'taken' AFAIK (a category is added). If this is colloquial language, please replace it.
 * "however, many categories" - I'm lost again. Plural, contradiction, implicit meaning: all not clarifying. -DePiep (talk) 11:29, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

@DePiep, the section is talking about its difficulties; there is a natural tendency to think of a category A as a concrete thing 'a', but it's not.
 * 'A's "their corresponding articles" == 'a's
 * "take a category", such as A, is another way of saying 'for example, A'
 * "however, many categories ('A's)" is trying to be general, to avoid saying a specific, such as category:Barack Obama

--Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 14:26, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This too I do not understand. But I am not asking to explain it here to me. I'd like to see the guideline itself be understandable. -DePiep (talk) 14:35, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * How about this? SFB 22:07, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


 * An eponymous category should have all the categories of its parent article, with the exception of categories that describe the main article but do not fit well with the broader content immediately in the eponymous category. For example, the article American football is in Category:1869 introductions, but the content of Category:American football is broadly not material related to "1869 introductions", so it should not be used on the eponymous category. In comparison, the contents do fit well within the topic of Category:Ball games, which is used both on the main article and its eponymous category.
 * Yes, an improvement for this detail. -DePiep (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Allow me:
 * An eponymous category is ... (example: cat:NY)
 * Normally, cat:NY would not be added to "NY state", because [parent cat reason].
 * But an eponymous cat should be mentioned (added), because ...
 * DePiep (talk) 22:13, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The top detail is already in our first sentence. I think using the George Bush category example first is slightly misleading as personal categories have their own, separate issues. If we merge this section into the first eponymous section with your above bullet point method, Is this an improvement? :
 * The top detail is already in our first sentence. I think using the George Bush category example first is slightly misleading as personal categories have their own, separate issues. If we merge this section into the first eponymous section with your above bullet point method, Is this an improvement? :


 * A category which covers exactly the same topic as an article is known as an eponymous category for that article (e.g. New York City and Category:New York City, Mekong and Category:Mekong River).
 * An eponymous category should have all the categories of its parent article, with the exception of categories that describe the main article but do not fit well with the broader content immediately in the eponymous category. For example:
 * The article New York City is in Category:Populated places established in 1624
 * The content of Category:New York City is broadly not material related to "1624" so it should not be used on the eponymous category.
 * In comparison, the contents do fit well within the topic of Category:Cities in New York, which is used both on the main article and its eponymous category.
 * SFB 19:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, Bush is bad example (because of distractions/associations and "W." addition). If NYC fits, I'd stick to that one (over Mekong). IMO, for good description we need the Football/1889 example to be NY too. -DePiep (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Mekong is a good example to keep as it shows that the same topic might not necessarily have the same name in category space. I've amended the above to a New York example, but I've actually had to change the article and category to apply the guideline! The New York area category structure is as labyrinthine as the city itself. In some ways, New York is hardly the easiest example either. American football or FIFA World Cup would be much more straight forward. Anyway - Do you think the updated version is good to go? SFB 19:47, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Diffusing/non-diffusing question.
In the category Category:American alternate history novels, there are subcategories which are Series of novels set in the same Alternate Universe. Should these be diffusing or non-diffusing. I'm trying to figure out whether (for example) 1634: The Baltic War which is in the subcat Category:1632 series books‎ should be in the parent as well.Naraht (talk) 10:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Today I feel hopeless about this.
 * By the way, it seems at a glance that we handle in yet another way. Some or all constituent novels are cat "American historical" but the series The Tales of Alvin Maker is not. Perhaps some volumes are deemed alternate history and others not -- or some are deemed novels and others are not, for the series is in . I feel hopeless about so-called novels too. --P64 (talk) 21:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Force feeding
This is one of those can of worms. I see has recently been created and been given the same cats as Force feeding, namely Cruelty to Animals, Nutrition and Torture. Now I can sort of see why the article gets the Torture cat as that's a main focus of it - but articles such as Pliers and Electricity don't get the cat. But the category is currently all about its use in food production - the foie gras article and so on. Such uses may not be nice but they are legal in many countries, unlike torture. My feeling is that the torture cat should be removed from but it's the kind of area where I'd hesitate to step without some discussion first. Le Deluge (talk) 11:41, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi. As the creator of the category, my intention was this to be used for non-human animals.  It would not concern me if torture was removed, but I can also see the arguments for it being retained.__DrChrissy (talk) 12:42, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * A question rooted in my ignorance of all things Cat: Would it be helpful to establish the intended scope of the category via a description at the top, or is that rarely done? I've often had problems with categories like Category:ABS-CBN shows where it's unclear if the intention of the category is to log every show broadcast on this network, or just the original programs. Descriptions are helpful. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:13, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * @Cyphoidbomb, the problem is that not everyone sees the category preamble - eg when they are tagging with Hotcat. So the onus is on the creators of categories to give them names that are as idiot-proof as possible, and an explanatory preamble should be regarded as a last resort. In your case it might be best to either seek out existing guidance from WikiProject TV or go through a process there to develop guidelines.
 * It doesn't help when in effect there's two main aspects to a single category, it's no bad thing to split them up even if the eponymous article covers both. My real point was that although copying the categories direct from an eponymous article can be a useful way to get some cats onto a new category, it needs to be done with care and a recognition that there are subtle differences between categorising an article and a category. In this case @DrChrissy might have been better off with (and delete  altogether to keep it from showing up on Hotcat. Both for the reasons above and because this is an area which touches on both animal rights and human torture, both of which are highly emotive making them long-winded subjects for discussion in a Wiki environment. More focus means fewer distractions. Le Deluge (talk) 18:58, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This seems more difficult than already implied; the first thing I thought of when I saw the category name was therapeutic force feeding of animals.... — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 07:36, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would be happy to see this moved to Force feeding of animals. I actually had not considered Arthur's theraputic aspect, thanks for bringing that up (no pun intended!).  I think the theraputic aspect would be covered by Force feeding of animals.__DrChrissy (talk) 09:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Categorising by place of burial
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography for a follow-up discussion after my recent close on Burials by city. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Now archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 50. 17:32, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Treaties by country
There is a discussion going on at Category talk:Treaties extended to Christmas Island about the inclusion of categories in multiple levels of parents, contrary to the WP:SUBCAT's "A page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category ... ". Editors interested in categorization are invited to comment there. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:20, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Western Europe
In Category:Western Europe, some countries as listed directly in the category, some are listed as subcategories, and some are listed as both. Which is the correct categorization? Kaldari (talk) 00:17, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Exactly which ones are missing from Category:Western Europe directly? Hmains (talk) 02:04, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The ones that are missing from the category directly are: Andorra, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Malta, Norway, San Marino, Sweden, and Vatican City. Do you have an opinion on whether Western European countries should be listed directly in the category, as subcategories, or both? Kaldari (talk) 22:50, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added Vatican City since it was listed neither directly, nor as a subcategory, and is pretty unambiguously in Western Europe. Kaldari (talk) 00:14, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * This is all fine. The only thing not fine with Category:Western Europe is another editor keeps insisting that Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are 'countries' to be listed here. Hmains (talk) 03:51, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Categorising buildings by street
I would encourage editors to vote at Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 17 on whether it is a good idea to categorise buildings by street. – Fayenatic  L ondon 15:04, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Categorization of Years articles
Recently I had added, Category:20th century in music‎ to those pages where it belonged. Although I have been questioned by one of the editor who referred me to WP:SUBCAT and told that if 1998 in music has Category:1998 in music, then there's no need to add Category:20th century in music.

He must be correct. Although we have articles such as 1998 in Ireland, they are having categories about not only the particular year but also the decade and the century.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 15:10, 24 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Agree, that sounds correct. The reason there is no need to add a decade or century category if you already have a year category, is that the year category will be a subcategory of the decade category, and the decade category will be a subcategory of the century category. Debresser (talk) 01:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Exactly. We should keep the category tree and its items clean and reduce duplicated entries as much as possible. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:27, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the creation of a category like Category:1990s in music disrupts the century listing, so it means the "199x in music" articles should appear in the decade category instead (which they currently don't, by the way), as that is the highest level parent. That said, there is still some appreciable usage in having a category which groups all the year articles of a century. I disagree that just because there is hierarchical logic we should automatically dismiss potentially useful structures. SFB 19:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I support the births and deaths structure where we have comprehensive decades categories defined by the first three digits such as "199x" and contains both  and . Thus the latter is in both the 20th-century cat directly and the 21st-century cat via the "2000s" decade.
 * Offhand this disagrees with Magioladitis, agrees with Sillyfolkboy. --P64 (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I would like a more specific answer. 1998 in music should be


 * Only in Category:1998 in music
 * Only in Category:1990s in music
 * in both?

-- Magioladitis (talk) 09:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No chances that we will ever have consensus to remove any of those categories at all. It is better to have each of them, they look sophisticated.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 09:49, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Diffusing category?
Thoughts? Where we have: a) Category:Opera; and below it b) (sub)Categories:Opera by composer, is that a diffusing category? Tx. --Epeefleche (talk) 17:03, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

New subsection added to 'Categorizing pages'
Greetings, Today I added Category cleanup templates subsection which contains comments about templates for improving an article with not enough, too many, incorrect templates. The Category unknown title was added above the existing Uncategorized sentence. Most of these templates I have used occasionally while doing article assessments. While there may be more templates available, these should be the ones most helpful to new editors. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 00:24, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

container category
where is a guideline which describes how to handle Category:Container categories and how to depopulate categories?

Case:
 * jewish nose was in category:jews. however a user deleted category on the reason that cat:jews is a container. I feel this is wrong, that containers should be depopulated by moving items into subcategories, not by throwing things away, which is imo against common sense.

in the case there is no such guideline, please help me to resolve the disagreement with -M.Altenmann >t 15:44, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:EGRS? (a "diffusing" category being a "container" category)
 * Another reason why jewish nose cannot be in category:Jews is while that category indicates "persons" and when it wouldn't be a container category it should only contain biographical articles per WP:COPSEP.
 * Categorization in Category:Jewish portrayals in media (already containing some "stereotyping" articles) and/or Category:Jewish-related controversies (Jewish nose indicating a controversy) are maybe better suited cats (although I have not enough knowledge of the area to certify). --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Clearly it and should be categorised somewhere within Category:Jews and Judaism. I put it in Category:Jewish portrayals in media, along with the main article about Stereotypes of Jews. – Fayenatic  L ondon 19:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Jewish portrayals in media isn't bad. --Monochrome _ Monitor  01:16, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, someone did that. Okay then. --Monochrome _ Monitor  01:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Take two about container category
Sorry, I was probably was unclear about the question. Let me clarify. Is it a correct solution to delete the article from the category to which tree it clearly belongs? For comarison, suppose some "overcategarized" category is to be deleted. We don'r simple remove this category tag from articles. We put this category somewhere else in the category tree.

IMO this issue must be clearly written in the policy, because there are plenty of people armed with twinkle mop work hard of "cleaning" wikipedia without applying common sense. In old times there were zealots who reverted important additions with edit "incorrect English"/"poor grammar". And the explanation that this is an invalid reason was added to policies, despite it being pretty obvious to people with a grain of common sense.-M.Altenmann >t 15:24, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Subcategory vs. Parent Category in NJ
This is in regard to the categories Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey and Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey by county. If we have one parent category, for instance, the Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey category with 940+ entries, this would help serve as a guide for those searching for individual locations within the state (like a glossary). As for the Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey by county, not all readers may know what county a specific location is in. I find that both work for helpful navigation, even if some believe it is not necessary. To be consistent with states in the U.S., see the subcategories in Category:Unincorporated communities in the United States by state, where practically all, except a couple Northeast states, have a parent category and multiple subcategories. NJ should not be any exception. Plus it will be time consuming to delete the already included categories added to the pages. Thewildone85 (talk) 20:21, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. As a general rule, we shouldn't intersect two specific facts with each other (here, the type of community and the county of location) but instead should intersect at different levels of generality to make sure readers are better able to browse by multiple methods. By county we should only categorize populated places generally (as in Category:Populated places in Essex County, New Jersey), and the kind of community/municipality should all be categorized at the more general state level (as in Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey). postdlf (talk) 20:45, 7 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I disagree, based both on policy and reality. There's a discussion going on at Categories for discussion/Log/2015 April 27 in which an editor argues that counties are non-defining, arguing that a broad array of structures of places, buildings and organizations by county should be deleted; The overwhelming consensus is that these structures should be retained, largely because of the clear benefits of organizatio and navigation. As one editor stated, "Keep all as container categories. These categories serve an important purpose in organizing the 'Foo in STATE by county' categories, which are a logical way of breaking up a state category, especially since some of the "Foo in STATE" categories could otherwise have well over 1,000 articles."
 * That's exactly where we are with Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey, which is an utterly disorganized mess of 939 articles, every one of which is effectively organized for navigation purposes in Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey by county. WP:SUBCAT specifically states that "If logical membership of one category implies logical membership of a second, then the first category should be made a subcategory (directly or indirectly) of the second. For example, Cities in France is a subcategory of Populated places in France, which in turn is a subcategory of Geography of France." and that "A page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category (supercategory) of that category..." As a readily diffused category, this editing guideline completely supports the use of Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey by county as a means to diffuse the articles, with Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey existing solely as a container.
 * The mid-parent Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey is itself an ill-defined, unusable mess of nearly a thousand articles. Bizarrely excluded are all of the entries in Category:Census-designated places in New Jersey, which are all unincorporated communities that are left out of this mid-parent. Furthermore, all of the incorporated places are not grouped in any mid-parent, and the ultimate parent in the state, Category:Populated places in New Jersey, should by this logic contain every single populated place in the state. It doesn't, and people looking to use the category system would have to know that a particular place is unincorporated, but is not a census-designated place to make any use of this overpopulated mid-parent.
 * Per the overwhelming consensus at Categories for discussion/Log/2015 April 27, we should be categorizing by county and we should be diffusing these categories to the county level. Putting every single unincorporated community (but not census designated places) both at the county level and in the parent Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey adds nothing and patently violates WP:SUBCAT. All of these needlessly duplicated entries nationwide should be deleted on that basis. Duplication of the article at multiple levels of categorization is inconsistent, irrationally structured and violates policy. Alansohn (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I also don't think these articles should be placed in both a parent and subcategory. My agreement with the OP is limited to the main point that all populated places should not only be subdivided by county, but we should instead give readers the option of browsing by county or by type of community/municipality. Your comments seem to more address the OP than my solution to that. You said the state-level categories are a "disorganized mess", yet they are auto-sorted alphabetically. That's not disorganization at all. And the easy solution to the separation of the CDPs from the unincorporated communities is to make the CDPs a subcategory, as a CDP is a type of unincorporated community. Category:Populated places in New Jersey should contain every populated place in the state, but only as a container category. postdlf (talk) 15:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's best to have the parent and the subcat in each entry, for reasons given by Wildone and Postdlf. They are not really messy, since they are alphabetically sorted. Sure there are over 900 entries inside, but this is a useful tool for those in search of these locations. Modifications are allowed from what I have seen here. Tinton5 (talk) 19:59, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * But no reason has been offered. Why aren't census designated places -- which are unincorporated placed -- included in Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey? Why aren't all populated places -- including boroughs, cities, towns, townships and villages, as well as all the unincorporated communities -- included in Category:Populated places in New Jersey? Why stop at the state level, and not do consolidate all populated places nationwide in Category:Unincorporated communities in the United States? We could also mix in churches, schools and people into this mess, and it would be in sequence by ABC. Alphabetical order is hardly a level of organization; it's just an order. Alansohn (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:SUBCAT clearly explains policy. Organization by county is common practice. Categories for discussion/Log/2015 April 27 clearly comes out in favor of keeping counties as a container category, and I agree. Additionally many supposed unincorporated communities created for NJ are stubs that are questionable, not verifiable, and should be re-directedDjflem (talk) 05:22, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Jersey is ongoing discussion taking place since February 2015.Djflem (talk) 14:51, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The logic offered seems to be to include every community in the state. That would indicate that Category:High schools in New Jersey should contain every high school in New Jersey and Category:Churches in New Jersey should contain every church in New Jersey. Is that true? If not, why here? Djflem (talk) 14:51, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * So far as categorization on Wikipedia has become nearly useless for normal users who are not steeped in the arcane rules that seem to be designed primarily for the benefit of those who maintain the Byzantine organization, I don't really think it matters that much how this turns out. But as someone who has on occasion had the need to find a community without knowing the county, I found it helpful to have a category nicely sorted in alphabetical order.  older ≠ wiser 16:52, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Sadly, this discussion is for the benefit of those who are supposed to understand the byzantine organization of the category system. One of the rules for this system, WP:SUBCAT, specifies that pages should not be placed both in a category and its parent. I'm not sure how violating this editing guideline benefits anyone, nor do I see why we should deliberately place articles at multiple levels of categorization simply for the benefit of those unaware of how to search for an article using other means. How would any editor, whether educated in the byzantine rules or not, would know to Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey to find a place, while also knowing not to look there is the place is incorporated or a census designated place? Alansohn (talk) 20:01, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It only illustrates that the categorization rules are written primarily to facilitate precise categorization rather than to assist actual readers with genuine issues in navigating the category structure. Why should categories presume that a reader knows which county a community is in? It is mostly unrealistic unless you are a local. older ≠ wiser 20:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * From User talk:PointsofNoReturn where I had asked for clarification of statement made at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Jersey
 * I think that organizing unincorporated communities by county would be a good idea, and then within the counties alphabetize the names of the communities. That would make the category easy to navigate. PointsofNoReturn (talk) 13:54, 27 May 2015 (UTC) Djflem (talk) 20:06, 27 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The above just illustrates how far some editors are from the idea that whatever we do in categorization (as in WP in general) should help the readers. Having populated place articles (of each major subcategory, like cities, towns, etc.) in BOTH county categories of a state AND in a state-wide category of all the populated places.  This helps the reader who wants 'all state' information and knows nothing about nor cares to learn what county the populated place is in and it helps the other person who wants to look at populated places within a county.  Any other comments are just 'against the reader'.  The category rules need to be written to match what we need to do to help users and not for prettiness, pettiness and control. Hmains (talk) 03:02, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

As this dual categorization violates WP:SUBCAT?
Given that WP:SUBCAT clearly excludes the dual categorization by both county and state, why should it be done here? Any suggestions of a policy basis for its use here? Alansohn (talk) 20:01, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

adding parent categories
Should this be happening? Category:2000s American animated films is not a child of Category:American films, but it would be better to do that than add a redundant category to all of the other films. 208.81.212.222 (talk) 17:30, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you asked why they are doing this? Somebody else clearly has: see User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:46, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * But why is this unusual set-up permitted? 208.81.212.222 (talk) 18:55, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that this unusual set-up should be challenged. The template says "For convenience, all ... are included in this category.", but it's not clear to me who it's supposed to be convenient for; it's certainly not convenient for editors who tidy up category tags on articles. And the "all ... are included" statement is often completely wrong - e.g. Category:American films (excluding subcats) currently contains just 205 pages, but the subcategories actually contain thousands of articles. If an editor really wants a single list of all the articles in category (including subcats) then there are tools that can do that. DexDor(talk) 21:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Two weeks ago, above, User:Redrose64 linked a section of Ser Amantio user talk by its section heading "Please stop". Next day the link was broken by User:Walter Görlitz who changed that heading to "Please continue".

Maybe-relevant talk sections, 2015 only: --P64 (talk) 15:45, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * gendered people categories : Category:Women writers for children ; Male screenwriters ; Recategorization //May begins here// Gender categorization ; Male historians ; May 2015 ; Category:Male historians
 * other : User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao ;
 * English writers
 * Recent changes to categories
 * June begins here User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao
 * Adding parent categories
 * User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao
 * Male composers
 * Categories
 * Slow it down

disambiguations for Categories question?
If Mercury (planet) were the *only* Mercury article which had a Category based on it, should the category for the Planet have the disambiguation in the name?Naraht (talk) 14:46, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Hypothetical question. If the question weren't hypothetical would it be worthwile to answer? --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:57, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * We name categories after their parent articles, and follow the same disambiguation that the article does regardless of what other categories exist. This is considered more predictable and thus easier to deal with than if we were to make a completely separate judgment on disambiguation for a category structure (though we do on occasion go even further to disambiguate categories than we would for the corresponding articles). postdlf (talk) 16:52, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Is Category:Video games based on films a diffusing category?
The terms of what makes a category "diffusing" or "non-diffusing" are still opaque to me—I get the gist, especially re: nationalities, gender, etc., but not with the edge cases. Is Category:Video games based on films a diffusing category? I would think that it would be fine to be included in just Category:Video games based on films directed by George Miller rather than that and its parent, no? (Side note: why would an article need to be in both Category:Wii games and Category:Wii-only games?) – czar   20:00, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * If a category is not tagged as a non-diffusing category etc then the normal WP:SUBCAT rules apply. DexDor(talk) 21:06, 24 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Ick, the triple-categorizations are making my head hurt. Video games...based on films...that were directed by George Miller. The subcategories for franchises make perfect sense (Category:Harry Potter game series, Category:Predator (franchise) games‎, etc.), but the contents of Category:Video games based on films by studio and Category:Video games based on films by director are really WP:OCAT. Neither subcategorization represents a characteristic of the games themselves. Our category system really gets bogged down by this compulsion some editors feel to subdivide any category with more than a handful of articles, and to intersect more and more facts regardless of how tangential their relationship is or how narrowly specific the end result is. It's really a kind of entropy, not an improvement in information organization. postdlf (talk) 16:54, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What does it mean for "top" category video games based on films to be diffusing or non-diffusing, given that it contains these two subcategories --evidently container cats altho not explicitly so-- (^^ i looked only 5 levels down, 4 levels down from the studio and director containers, using CatScan 3.0)
 * (no pages; 13 studio subcats with 453^^ pages)
 * (no pages; 47 director subcats with 312^^ pages)
 * as well as 47 other subcats (in the alphabetical listing, perhaps mutually exclusive) for films, series, brand names, etc?
 * There are 928^^ pages under, of which 210 are pages in that "top" category. The two container subcategories jointly cover 586 pages [=453+312-179], while the other 342 [=928-586] are nowhere under the studios nor the directors container, of which 213^^ are not pages in the top cat.


 * The top cat provides no descriptive or instructional preface. I suppose that some editors have deemed it diffusing with respect to its 47 alpha-listed subcats, some have deemed it non-diffusing with respect to its studio and director container subcats, perhaps many or most. --P64 (talk) 17:45, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Removing Category:Pseudoarchaeology from Category:Pseudoscience
Right now Category:Pseudoarchaeology is a child of Category:Pseudoscience. This is wrong as archaeology is not considered a science in the English speaking world, being taught either as part of the humanities or the social sciences. What's the process for getting this done? Doug Weller (talk) 13:45, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Go to, edit the page, find the line that begins  and remove from that up to the next   inclusive. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:53, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much, fixed. Doug Weller (talk) 14:13, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * And was immediately reverted. Doug Weller (talk) 14:34, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Is this a sample of Humor? Then please allow me to chirp a pun or two: Category:Social sciences is under Category:Science, so I guess you have to dig deeper. -M.Altenmann >t 15:41, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I am aware of the raw between sciences and humanities, so another possible solution would be to write several articles about "social pseudoscience" to justify a more NPOVish subcategory within category:Pseudo-scholarship. E.g., Social Darwinism may be a good source for this new category. -M.Altenmann >t 15:45, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * P.S. The advice of Redrose64 was incomplete. Sometimes categories are preceded with the comment "<! --DO NOT delete this category-->". You have to delete it as well. -M.Altenmann >t 15:54, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd say that some of these categories were organised by someone unaware of the academic differences, just seeing the word 'science'. So yes, that's another problem. You've got an interesting suggestion there. Doug Weller (talk) 16:16, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * My advice was complete as it applied to the category under consideration, which did not have any hidden comments (it still doesn't). Hidden comments won't work if you put a space before the first double hyphen - it needs to be formatted like this DO NOT delete this category -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:33, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Categorization using templates
In response to non-article pages may get added to the category: When using templates to add pages to categories, it may be helpful to test using code to check the namespace of the page transcluding the template, perhaps something like

, before committing a template to auto-categorize.

Or, for a userbox:

Ref. mw:Help:Magic words, mw:Help:Magic words. Slivicon (talk) 15:18, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * We already have templates like and  to do exactly that. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:26, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, good to know. Maybe the article text should be updated to provide that helpful method to avoid the problem it describes? Slivicon (talk) 15:34, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It's covered by the link in the sentence "Also, see Category suppression for ways of keeping inappropriate pages out of template-generated categories." -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Categories on novel subjects
In respect of the discussion on Burgher sportspeople I find the current guideline lacking on what I believe is a generally followed practice in categorisation:


 * Categories should correspond to a subject which has been defined or had coverage in third party sources

This is, to say, that the topic isn't one which is an entirely new creation through Wikipedia. The only pertinent part of the guideline I could reference for that was the section on defining characteristics. However, this deals with whether a category should be applied to a subject, not whether a category on that subject merits creation in the first place. User:Obi2canibe cites the guideline diffusion of large categories as a relevant reason for creating subcategories on topics which have no real world application, and there is some precedent of doing this.

I've seen plenty of discussion of whether categories should be subject to a notability check on an article (i.e. "is this relevant to the person's notability" – the purpose of "defining characteristics") but I haven't seen any discussions applying WP:Notability to the creation of categories themselves. Have I missed something here? SFB 21:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I think we should make a distinction here between (1) entirely novel creations versus (2) novel intersections of existing accepted characteristics. We should be pretty strict on the first type of categories in terms of notability, but I can imagine that the size of an existing category may sometimes justify the second type of categories. In fact it already happens a lot (e.g. biographies by century and nationality). Though I agree that in the particular case quoted here the size of Category:Burgher people is not big enough for that. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:14, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Container category eponymous page
Category:Container categories is defined as "subcats only". How to proceed with situations when there is a single page, which from my understanding is eponymous, such as the following: Slivicon (talk) 16:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Category:Astronomical observatories in the United States
 * Category:California (see below. DexDor(talk) 19:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC))
 * Category:Canadian Music Hall of Fame
 * Category:Countries
 * Category:Cyberpunk
 * In general I'd remove (or replace by catdiffuse) wherever the category does (or could) legitimately directly contain a page (e.g. an eponymous article). You might want to look at the history of the page, but generally editors have been adding/removing/changing these tags without any explanation. Another thing to do is to look at similar (i.e. sibling) categories - I can't see any good reason why, for example, some categories for US states would be container cats and others not. I've changed the California category. DexDor(talk) 19:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As always, thanks for the help and info :) Slivicon (talk) 19:25, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Sub Cat
Hello, should the Category:Disused railway stations in Croydon be a sub cat of Category:Former buildings and structures in Croydon (as defunct schools currently is)? At present it does not appear as a sub cat. Thanks. Eagleash (talk) 14:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. The various "Disused railway stations in ..." categories are for stations that are no longer served by passenger trains, although they may still exist. The various "Former buildings and structures in ..." cats are for buildings which don't exist any more. should be a subcat of, which in turn should be a subcat of . -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The two stations in particular I was looking at are Spencer Road Halt railway station (station closed 100 years ago) and Selsdon railway station where the lines (which served both) closed 30+ years ago and only some remnants of the structures survive: a footbridge (forming part of an alleyway) in the case of Spencer and possibly part of the platforms for Selsdon, though this is not verified. Eagleash (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Needs a better category
Hey guys, I just went to go and look for a category for male film directors, but saw that we didn't have any. I noticed that we did have a category for women film directors (Category:American women film directors), but that male directors go in just the general category. Given the amount of flack we got over not having a category for male novelists, I think that it'd be a good idea to do this with directors as well before someone catches on and we get more hell from the media. I haven't the foggiest how to get this started other than posting here, though. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  08:21, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You've posted the same q at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories - per WP:MULTI, please can we have only one discussion? -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:44, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Undercategorized articles within a project
Is there an efficient method for determining articles included within a project that are in 1 to 3 categories? I've realized lately that undercategorized articles may be a minor issue in that it could be the reason why some articles get less attention (reading and editing) than they should. I could probably use AWB to go through the article list and do a regex skip for articles with 4 or more categories, but if there's an easier approach, I'd rather use that. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:05, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Searching for articles with very few categories is a really good idea. It would be useful to build this cleanup worklist. Maybe ask at Bot Requests to see if any coder is interested in the task? I'm sure it would be of interest to quite a few WIkiProjects. SFB 22:16, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There are lots of articles that are perfectly well categorized in 3 or fewer article categories (plus any hidden maintenance categories). E.g. many articles with a title like " in " belong in just 2 categories. A better approach might be to look for articles of a particular type that are not in a relevant category - e.g. articles about specific buildings that are not in any location (e.g. country) category. DexDor(talk) 06:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that not all of these instances are problematic and I didn't mean to suggest that. I just want an easier way to identify them so I (and other editors) can review them to see if they are undercategorized.  I don't want a process to look for specific cases because I don't know in advance everything to look for.  I want to see all cases so I can compare that list to articles in projects I work in, so that then I can go through those and make individual decisions for each article.  Like I said above, I can already use AWB to run through a list of articles on a project, skipping those with 4 or more categories.  So, if there's no other solution, that's what I will do. (But most people don't know how to use AWB, so my solution only works for me and other AWB users.)  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 12:44, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Non-diffusing categories
Is there any systematicity in when categories should be non-diffusing more than "Subcategories defined by gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality should almost always be non-diffusing subcategories."? --JorisvS (talk) 09:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Could someone please answer? --JorisvS (talk) 08:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps rephrasing the question would help. I would ask "What factors of a category should prevent diffusing it?"  And my general answer is "It's complicated.". You could have simple "rules" like, if you have fewer than so many members, you wouldn't want to diffuse. But even that breaks down in some circumstances where category structures need to be improved even while ending up with sparsely populated categories. Also, there have been seemingly arbitrary community "decisions" like "Sportspeople from {city}" can't be diffused by sport (e.g., "Basketball players from {city}") because those can only be at the state level.  Overall, I'm not sure what to say beyond "Use your best judgment."  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 09:51, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for a response. I came here with this question because at Milky Way an anonymous user insisted that it be included in Category:Barred spiral galaxies, even though Category:Milky Way is also in that category, yet I see no reason why both the article and its category should be in that category. --JorisvS (talk) 14:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I've found things like that to be a little sticky with a number of editors. There's probably no great harm in dual inclusion, even though your position is eminently reasonable.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 16:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It's usually good practice to include main articles of a category in that category's parents, otherwise the creation of such categories prevents the useful gathering of all articles related to the topic. With non-diffusion, my rule of thumb is that if the thing to be categorised fits within a child category, but that child category only partially describes how the thing relates to the parent, then it should be non-diffusing. The academy award example in use in the guideline is the perfect example of this. SFB 22:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * On the first point, I'm sure you know this, but for the sake of other readers, that never applies to any hidden categories that main article's category may be in. Otherwise, even with WP:EPONYMOUS, I've seen many disagreements among editors related to whether an article should be included in all the non-hidden categories its eponymous category is included in. Re: your point on non-diffusing, that works as long as there's not much potential for growth in members, if at all, such as the example you point to. Surely, there's no arbitrary limit on the size of categories, but at the same time, editors naturally want to break down big ones. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 13:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Images
template:Images has been proposed for deletion, see Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_October_12 -- this is a category description template -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 03:44, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:CAT and WP:SORTKEY
WP:SORTKEY's allowance for template categorization seems to contradict what's written at WP:CAT. I'm assuming WP:CAT would have priority but perhaps we should remove "(tau, displays as "Τ") is for templates" from WP:SORTKEY to avoid confusion. -- &oelig; &trade; 06:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There are cases where the Tau sortkey is used (e.g. see how Category:WikiProject Algeria templates‎ is sorted in Category:WikiProject Algeria) so it probably shouldn't be removed from WP:SORTKEY without careful analysis. It might be useful for the paragraph about Greek letters to have a note about it not overuling guidelines as to which pages belong in which categories. Note: User:DexDor/NSCat may help to identify cases where these sortkeys would be used. DexDor(talk) 07:17, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * BTW, about User:DexDor/NSCat, amazing work putting all that together, applause for that! -- &oelig; &trade; 20:52, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Tau is used for templates, so we should keep that. I don't see the contradiction. I think OlEnglish got mixed up between the sorting of templates in categories and the specific location of the templates inside that category. Debresser (talk) 07:39, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not mixed up. WP:CAT states: "Templates should be categorized according to kind of template, but not by template content. For example, Template:Carter string quartets is categorized under Category:String quartets by composer templates, which should be a subcategory of Category:Music navigational boxes (kind) but not Category:String quartets (content)." This is essentially saying that Templates are NOT to be included in categories that are specifically reserved for article content. Yet further down on this same page, we have guidelines on how (or where) non-mainspace pages should be sorted within categories INCLUDING specifically templates but making no distinction there between "kind" and "content"; there is no disclaimer, or exception noted, directing readers back to WP:CAT. This gives the reader, who may have happened upon WP:SORTKEY without reading the entire Categorization guideline, the impression that such sorting of templates along with mainspace content in any categories is allowed. See and  for context on how all this came about. I understand that the Tau sortkey is used in certain cases though, so I just think there should be some clarification as to where and when. Regardless, this minor discrepancy probably can be fixed with a short note about not overruling previous guidelines, as per DexDor's reply above. -- &oelig; &trade; 20:45, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for explaining. I have seen Tau used in maintenance categories. In categories that are specifically for templates, the Tau is not necessary since, e.g., you'd sort Template:Carter string quartets with a "C" as sortkey. Debresser (talk) 08:43, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Right. So now what about DexDor's argument that non-mainspace pages do not belong under Category:Articles? I happen to agree with him, but then that excludes almost the entire category structure! And If Greek letter sorting under categories that are specifically meant for them is not necessary then wouldn't that make that whole paragraph under WP:SORTKEY kind've pointless? -- &oelig; &trade; 13:39, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There are some non-mainspace pages that readers may want to navigate to - e.g. Wikipedia (community) books. For such pages it isn't (so) unreasonable to categorize them with articles about the topic (even though they are not actually articles) - e.g. see how the beta sortkey is used to categorize the book at Category:Albert Einstein. Portals are another type of page that are aimed at readers and are often placed in article categories. Many categories (e.g. Category:France) have subcats for images and stubs (both using Greek sortkeys) - an argument could be made that these should be removed from article categories, but whilst they are so categorized the sortkey is useful. Hence, the paragraph about Greek letter sortkeys should remain. However, I've not found any case where Wikiprojects (or anything else in the Wikipedia namespace) usefully uses the Omega sortkey so I suggest we comment out that with a note saying that it could be reinstated if there is a use for it. DexDor(talk) 17:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In short, templates sometimes are useful to have in article categories. Therefore, I suggest we do nothing. We are involving ourselves in instruction creep here, I feel. Debresser (talk) 18:47, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Re "In short...": I never said that (and I certainly don't agree with it). Regarding instruction creep: we should have (clear) guidance stating whether or not templates (for example) belong under Category:Articles (it's in everbody's interest to have consistency). There are many reasons why templates should not be placed in article categories - e.g. cluttering up article categories (sometimes we see that a newbie has created a category just for an eponymous article and an eponymous template), and templates being categorized in an article category instead of in Category:Wikipedia templates. DexDor(talk) 22:11, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Using that rationale, I would argue that navboxes are aimed at readers too. But WP:CAT prohibits it, even using a navbox as an example! I was thinking perhaps we can just alter WP:CAT to use infoboxes or some other type of template as an example. That way WP:SORTKEY will not seem to conflict as much, editors can use their best judgment when to categorize templates in with articles, and we won't be involving ourselves in instruction creep. But on second thought, navboxes aren't exactly content in the way that books, portals, and images are. So yes, probably best to just leave it be. -- &oelig; &trade; 02:42, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Navboxes are part of how we construct articles - readers are not expected to want to navigate to navbox pages (which often contain stuff that's only of interest to editors such as "How to manage this template's initial visibility" or other documentation). IMO, we shouldn't start having different categorization rules for different types of templates (navboxes, sidebars etc) - that would complicate things. DexDor(talk) 22:11, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:DIFFUSE
The WP:DIFFUSE section does not give a reason for or purpose of diffusion of large categories. In essence it doesn't really have any substance other than "categories are divided up by topic". Anyone care to rectify that? SFB 22:09, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? Something like "When appropriate, a large category can be split into smaller categories by topic"? Debresser (talk) 13:46, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Not really, as that similarly doesn't give a reason. I'm thinking something along the lines of "The benefits of diffusing large categories are..." SFB 18:41, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Want to make a detailed proposal? Debresser (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, the most obvious reason would be to aid readers in finding specifically what they're looking for, quickly and efficiently. -- &oelig; &trade; 03:04, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * From what I can think of we have two issues with large categories: (1) the sheer volume prevents easy navigation (I'd say after +1000 the number of pages you have to go through - more than 5 - hinders navigation), and (2) potentially the broad scope of the category means the articles don't have enough in common to merit direct navigation between the each other. So, I would say the reasons (and benefits) for diffusion are to allow easier viewing of articles in the category and to eliminate articles which don't merit direct navigation on the basis of the given feature (with the implication that articles diffused alongside another article will have more in common, and are thus more useful to the reader). SFB 18:40, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

IMHO, "diffusion" should only be used by orthogonal categories. Wikipedia is on a "categorize everything" binge, I fear. Collect (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

double categorizing in parent category & in a subcategory that is Non-Diffusing
This is mostly for the editor TonyTheTiger, but mostly concerns categories, so this text seemed to belong mostly to this category page.

greetings Tony,

This concerns whether the Chris Young article should be double categorized in the parent category Princeton University Alumni in addition to being properly categorized in child subcategories e.g. Princeton Tigers Athletes.

Your view was No -- see here. (I put a note there, pointing Tony to this talk page.)

Yes, 'the general rule [is] that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory ... .'

However, 'non-diffusing subcategories ... provide an exception to the general rule ... ' (same source), such that a page should be placed, or can be placed, in both the category and its subcategory.

Such exception seems to apply to the article at issue (Chris Young), based on the following reasoning:

A Diffusing Subcategory seems to mean a subcategory created to reduce the size of the parent category. 'Diffusing large categories[:] a large category will often be broken down ("diffused") into smaller specific subcategories.'  source (with italics added)

A Non-Diffusing Subcategory seems to mean a subcategory created for some reason other than size-reduction, e.g. to highlight some 'some special characteristic of interest'. source

Princeton Tigers Athletes appears to:

- have been created not to reduce the size of Princeton University Alumni, but rather to highlight some special characteristic, i.e. Princeton University athletes

- therefore be a Non-Diffusing Subcategory.

Therefore the article at issue, Chris Young, seems like it should be included in both the parent category Princeton University Alumni and in the Non-Diffusing Subcategory Princeton Tigers Athletes.

Another reason for such double inclusion is that the public might not immediately know that Princeton Tigers is part of Princeton University, because e.g. the wording is 'Princeton Tigers', not 'Princeton University Tigers', and conceivably 'Princeton Tigers' could be a team of e.g. Princeton township, not Princeton University.

Maybe this proposed chain of logic is flawed. What do you think? Thanks.

Bo99 (talk) 15:45, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

update: TonyTheTiger replied here. Bo99 (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Your thoughts needed on title change being proposed to history of video gaming console pages
(this notice x-posted to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories page as well)

A user has placed a request for renaming all of the video game console generations pages (eg, History of video game consoles (third generation) → Third generation of video game consoles).

These pages are used to categorize eras in video gaming history not only on Wikipedia but due to what some believe is a documentable case of citogenesis, has probably helped form a standard naming convention outside of Wikipedia as well. So these pages have some level of influence and visibility beyond this site.

The reason I'm here is that the current structure of the category names is likely flawed and not up to Wikipedia standard, but historically this often becomes a contentious change debating semantics (the last time this came up it sure did) and I believe that if it's going to be changed it should be changed to a Wikipedia standard form. I just want this current vote to have high enough visibility to get a clear consensus so that we're not back here in a couple of years when the next new crop of editors decides they have a better way to phrase the category titles.

So I'm bringing this debate to a greater audience so we can hear your thoughts and help us video game editors in the process. Thanks for your attention and I hope to see your thoughts on this vote. BcRIPster (talk) 01:08, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Question regarding specific article
Hello, I've written an article on Easy Listening Satanic music which I would very much like to remain on Wikipedia. Is it possible that it might be included in the general music category or perhaps easy listening?

Rev. Reynolds — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rev. Reynolds (talk • contribs) 20:04, 28 November 2015 (UTC)


 * This is not the place to discuss specific articles, rather the general rules of categorization. Please raise your question on the talkpage of the article, or at WikiProject Music. Debresser (talk) 23:38, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

When is nationality/ethnicity/religious affiliation non-defining
If you have been on WP long enough, you have probably seen at least one endless debate about whether Person X should be categorized by a given nationality, ethnicity, or religious affiliation. Such debates can get quite heated. It seems that there is a natural desire to establish that a notable person is "one of us" (or to establish the negative version of this - that the notable person is not "one of them")... I get that... however, far too often no one involved in the debate asks the more fundamental question: "Is X's nationality, ethnicity, religious affiliation (etc) worth categorizing in the first place? Is being an  really a defining characteristic of person X?" Note I am not saying that a person's nationality, ethnicity, religious affiliation (etc) is never defining... for some bio subjects it can be. However, I don't think this is true in every case. I think we need more clarification as to when a person's nationality, ethnicity or religious affiliation should be considered defining (and thus categorized) and, more importantly, when it isn't defining (and thus not categorized). Please share your thoughts. Blueboar (talk) 14:18, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * My position has been pretty consistent from the get-go: No categories should be used for any living persons which can be remotely considered to be contentious which are not "self-identified" and of significance to the biography.  Including ethnicity, religion, political or economic beliefs, gender, race, ancestry etc.  Too often such categories are used to make guilt-by-association or other imputations which are harmful to the encyclopedia. Collect (talk) 19:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Nationality is nowhere near as contentious as the other kinds of categories you mention, and is overwhelmingly the consensus-supported manner of subcategorizing just about everything about people, especially occupation. Disputed or controversial nationality cases are a relatively tiny minority of WP biographies. As for the other demographic criteria you list, you've asked such an abstract question that the answer is bound to be meaningless or have no consensus for any hardline rules that would somehow apply across a wide variety of cases. That difficult cases arise here and there does not mean that we need clarification, or that a kind of clarification is even possible that would eliminate all such disputes. Time and time again the consensus has been to judge on a case by case basis, whether it's to determine whether a single category should intersect Occupation A with Ethnicity Y, or whether Biography B should be categorized at all by Religion Z. postdlf (talk) 21:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It certainly can be quite contentious - vide "Polish", "Russian", "German" for persons born in territory which rather had changing or disputed borders,  any Balkan area claims of nationality,  claims of Armenian nationality,  claims of Israeli nationality, inter alia. In all such cases, the suggestion here is that self-identification is the best basis for categorizing people, and especially living persons. Collect (talk) 13:32, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I not really concerned with figuring out "which" nationality/ethnicity (etc) to categorize someone with, as whether to categorize them with any nationality/ethnicity (etc)... to figure out when to categorize someone in this way and when not to do so. I especially see this as an issue in regards to sub-categorization. I think too many of our categories are sub-categorized by nationality/ethnicity/religious affiliation etc, when these factors have no real connection to the parent category.  They turn a defining category into a non-defining subcategory.
 * To give you an example of what concerns me... take a look at the categories at Nicola Tesla. Endless debate over whether to call him an American engineer, a Serbian engineer, an Austrian engineer... To my mind, what is defining in terms of Tesla was that he was a brilliant engineer... not the nationality/ethnicity of his engineerhood.   Blueboar (talk) 13:53, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Hard cases make bad law. And his intro presently describes him as a "Serbian American engineer". It's not only typical to categorize nationality, but also to lead with that in the lede as one of the most basic and important facts about a person, which along with birth/death dates serve better than anything else to present a basic context for when and where this person lived and did notable things. So if you have a problem with the presumed emphasis on nationality, it's not really a category issue because the categorization just reflects how we handle the information generally. And, I think most would argue, how reliable sources fundamentally describe people (and, particularly if of a cultural nature such as art or literature, even their works...John Singer Sargent's paintings are housed in "American art" wings of museums even though he made many of them living in Europe). One could also consider how libraries or publishers would classify a subject (some Tesla biographies I see previews of online apply classifications such as "Electrical engineers--United States--Biography"). We also have the further benefit of being able to apply multiple categories for the same characteristic if they could equally apply. Your opinion here basically seems to be "I would categorize fewer things than other editors", as well as (maybe a less fair characterization) "I don't care about a person's biography or demographics, only their resume". Fine, then don't apply those categories; I ignore the ones I don't care about when I create or edit an article. Leave it to other editors to engage in what you consider "endless" debates, which wouldn't occur if those editors didn't think it mattered. postdlf (talk) 15:51, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Exceptions in WP:SUBCAT
WP:SUBCAT has long included this: When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions ) to belong to the parent also.

The section which I have shown in italics was removed on 24 June 2015 by user:Bilorv.

IMHO it should be reinstated. I doubt that a comprehensive set of detailed principles could be produced for this, but common sense should suffice. Cases of dispute could be discussed on the talk page of the sub-cat, or somewhere centralised if there were broader issues. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Common sense already takes precedence over every policy and guideline we have. IAR and all that. The parentheses as they stood contained nothing useful: anyone who doesn't know what counts as an "exception" is left just as unaware as they were before reading this (there is no explanation), and anyone who already knew that there should be exceptions sometimes didn't need telling again. I still don't have a clue what "exceptions" we're talking about. Can you give an example of when you would need to make one? — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 10:22, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure. Category:Yiddish-speaking people contains Yiddish-speaking people by occupation, even though some Yiddish-language writers might be mute. – Fayenatic  L ondon 13:35, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Um -- I think that is wrong - "speaking" generally includes people who can either read/write or speak/hear a language. ASL users would be aghast to learn they were not "English-speaking" to say the least.    Collect (talk) 14:12, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's helpful, although not obvious to all. Another that came up in a recent discussion is Category:Jain organizations which is a sub-cat of even though it has two members in North America; the other 10 out of 12 member pages are in India, as are 21 of 22 in the sub-cat. – Fayenatic  L ondon 15:00, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm removing the "clarification needed" tag. – Fayenatic  L ondon 21:33, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Specific issue
I saw a bunch of boys choirs in Category:Men in the United States. I think that category is a bit too general to have boys choirs in it. I think there are two possible solutions: create a specific American subcategory of Category:Boys' and men's choirs and put the article in there and that category in Category:Men in the United States, or simply delete that category. Opinions, other ideas? Debresser (talk) 07:37, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:SUBCAT clarification
Further to an ongoing discussion at Category talk:Southern Levant, I would like to propose adding a clarifying sentence to WP:SUBCAT, along the lines of:
 * Apart from certain exceptions, an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it.

Please could editors confirm if they agree with this? It's purpose is to ensure the guidance is in plain English and even more difficult to misunderstand.

Oncenawhile (talk) 12:55, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * That sounds true enough. Apart from non-diffusing subcategories. Debresser (talk) 19:20, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Politicians convicted of crimes
I'm currently involved in a debate about whether or not politicans who received criminal convictions before their political careers began ought to be included in Category:Politicians convicted of crimes. I've no strong opinion on the matter but amn't happy with the disparity I've seen. A list of US politicians with criminal convictions stipulates they committed their crimes while in office, while the only countries I've seen that include politicans whose convictions precede their political careers are Ireland and South Africa. Both of these countries have had recent conflicts, which introduces a more fraught note to discussions. Gob Lofa (talk) 15:49, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there should be two categories, to cover both cases? DonIago (talk) 16:23, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I thought about that, but it seems to me that at least one would have a cumbersome title, e.g. [Politicians convicted of crimes before their political careers]. I don't know if there's a limit on the length of category titles. There's also a political element; some editors feel strongly that freedom fighters whose actions took place in the context of a conflict ought not to be labelled as criminals, others that the terrorist criminals must be labelled as such. Gob Lofa (talk) 17:08, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the latter point is somewhat contingent on the reader to sort out, though I can see how that could be contentious. That is to say, the category is merely claiming that they were convicted of a crime, it's not making any assertion as to whether the conviction was justified.
 * As to the former point....[Politicians convicted of crimes] as a parent cat, with [Politicians convicted of crimes while in office] as a sub-cat may be a way to go, though I'd recommend seeing what other editors have to say on the subject. DonIago (talk) 17:44, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable. Gob Lofa (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Uh oh. If I made a suggestion that sounded reasonable you should probably brace for all kinds of trouble. :p DonIago (talk) 17:51, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll batten down the hatches accordingly. Gob Lofa (talk) 17:54, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, if politicians convicted of crimes while in office is the norm, then no way should it be the subcat. Also, I think we should consider the POV aspect a little more deeply if you think (and I agree) it's likely to be contentious. Scolaire (talk) 19:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Misuse of categories is rampant, alas, on Wikipedia. IMHO, such categories should be restricted to only those politicians whose crimes were specifically related to their careers in politics - that an MP was convicted of drunk driving as a youth is useless as far as categorizing the adult as a "criminal". Collect (talk) 19:53, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It's just been pointed out to me that the parent category Category:Politicians convicted of crimes stipulates "Politicians who were convicted of a crime while in office, or while as an election candidate seeking office." and has done for five years. Gob Lofa (talk) 20:55, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In that case, other politicians should simply have that cat removed. There is no need for a subcat. I've added that header to the Irish and NI politicians cats. Scolaire (talk) 23:25, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * TBH, Wikipedia would be better off, if it got rid of categorizing. GoodDay (talk) 00:59, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * First, it's too late in the day for that; second, it's a WP:VPR matter. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:35, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

[[od}}It may be me but I can't see an agreement here which reflects on the edit war here. Can we try and get a one time resolution?  Adding Irish politicians as a category is contentious.   I can see the argument (and have some political sympathy with it).  One solution is to get rid of British and Irish from the links.  [[User:Snowded| Snowded ]] TALK 18:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If this hasn't been resolved, how about "Criminals who became politicians" ? ;-) - Arjayay (talk) 14:54, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 February 2016
111.118.248.6 (talk) 14:46, 16 February 2016 (UTC) AJAY SIR PLS PLS MILO NA


 * ❌ as you have not requested a change, but I suspect you are in the wrong place, as this page is only to discuss improvements to Categorization - Arjayay (talk) 15:01, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorting within river basin categories
An editor has proposed and partially implemented a novel system of ordering entries in categories for river drainage basins. For an explanation of the system, see the headnote at Category:Thames drainage basin.

Although WP:SORTKEY does not claim to be an exhaustive list of possible sorting methods, the proposed system seems out of line with the guidelines there, because it relies on numbers (and letters) which are not part of article titles. It seems to me that the system makes it much more difficult to use the categories as navigational aids. For a discussion see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rivers.

Any views?--Mhockey (talk) 21:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but per WP:MULTI, please can we keep discussion in one place? -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:56, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Order of categories on a page?
Is there any guidance to what order the categories should be on a particular page? For example, first the Eponymous categories and then alphabetical? Also, does this same guidance (alphabetical) apply for the categories that a category is subcatted in?Naraht (talk) 20:14, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as I know... We don't mandate any specific order. Many articles don't bother (so new categories are simply added after those added previously).  Others are "organized" following some logical order (alphabetical is certainly logical... But there are other ways to do it).  Suggest you look at other articles in the topic area and see what they do. Blueboar (talk) 22:24, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Helpful discussions:
 * Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically
 * Concerning the presentation of categories a page belongs to when the list is humongous
 * CN1 (talk) 22:41, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Planned change to the implementation of sort keys
From the latest "Tech News":

Future changes
 * Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems.

Reposting here so that editors interested in category sorting are more likely to see it. -- John of Reading (talk) 03:25, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yay! Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:52, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds logical. We also demanded that in a program we had written for our firm. Debresser (talk) 12:56, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I suppose this means that instead of page names '+', followed by pagenames that begin with '0', '1', ... '9', 'A', 'B', we will see all pagenames that begin with a numeral grouped together under '#'?
 * Evidently I don't know the status quo. shows a big group of pages under '#' while  shows a big group under '1' followed by a big group under '2'. (The NBA isn't old enough to have any seasons defined by three-digit years, so numerical sorting makes no difference here.) --P64 (talk) 18:34, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
 * has a lot of pages grouped under "#" because those pages use, and the code for that template includes the line  - don't worry about the stuff from   on, the important thing is that   immediately after the cat name which forces transcluding pages to sort under "#". Forced sortkeys like this should not change behaviour, it's those that use default sort keys - such as if you used   on a page - whose behaviour will change. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:36, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Sub-cat policy for closely related topics
We have a vast body of precedent that sub-cats may have shifts in topic, e.g. as discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Categories. E.g. Category:Food- and drink-related organizations cannot be ingested, yet the latter is an accepted sub-category of Category:Food and drink.

I recently asked James Michael DuPont (talk) why he set up Category:Open content companies as "not a subcat of Category:Open content". He replied that "a company is a subcat of company, not of content"… "Just because it is related to does not make it a sub category" and referred me to the mathematical article Subcategory. When I countered with the food example, he asked whether this is policy.

At present, the guidance WP:SUBCAT does not seem to cover the shifts in meaning to closely related topics. I propose that it be rewritten to match longstanding practice in English Wikipedia.

CN1, would you be able to help, please? – Fayenatic  L ondon 22:35, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it is purely a technical problem how you manage the categories. If your tool makes it hard to manage facets of the category system,then you will find it difficult. I propose that you have "people in open source" as a related category. Wikidata will provide some help eventually. James Michael DuPont (talk) 09:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I have no experience in writing guidelines for Wikipedia but here are some thoughts:
 * I would understand that Category:Open content companies is not allowed into a category called Category:Open content works, or Category:Open content products but Category:Open content does not specify in that or any direction.
 * It can be understood as two things: (1) content, which is open source or (2) the concept of "open content". This is also literally what the first paragraph of Open content says.
 * (2)'s way of understanding the name is broader - let's call it a topic category.
 * (1)'s way of understanding the cat is a register of open content objects e.g. films. - a register/object category.
 * Compare Category:Stone and Category:Stone objects
 * The difference between topic and register category is that the register never widens the scope of the category's subject/item/topic "X". In an all-pages category it lists all items of "X". In a cat with subcategories it breaks "X" down by sort keys (e.g. components, nationality, time period). It holds items of X.
 * Topic categories go beyond the scope of their subject/item/topic "X" via intersections of "X" and another subject/item/topic which can be anything. It holds items about/to X, e.g. Category:Water and society or a one-topic-cat Category:Water. A type of topic category are eponymous categories: Categorization.
 * CN1 (talk) 23:23, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

That kind of bizarrely rigid misunderstanding of categories comes up like spring weeds every year. The category system is created and maintained by editors, primarily to facilitate navigation, and to connect related articles and topics. It is not and never has been a strict classificatory hierarchy. We do no one any favors by imposing arbitrary roadblocks and deadends in this system just to satisfy some ultimately unrelated concept such as what is "mathematically" proper (I've also heard we "must" do it a certain way "because set theory"). Doing it that way, we'd end up with thousands of disconnected little category ladders you could only go up and down rather than a network that connects everything. postdlf (talk) 23:57, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * What exactly do you think is a misunderstanding? Whether you like it or not, mathematics is the field that describes the logic (and provides the language for discussion) of categorization. If you have an idea for a different way of doing wp categorization (e.g. without WP:SUBCAT) then you can try to explain it - but, I suspect it'd end up as something that is less useful (because it would be less rigourous) and more time-consuming to maintain (more "flexibility" would mean more disagreements between editors) than the current system. We already have a system to provide navigation between articles about related topics (in an unstructured way) - normal links between articles; categorization is not intended just to duplicate that. If two categories are sufficiently related that it is useful to have a direct navigational link between them, but the two categories don't belong in a parent-child relationship, then just create a link between them (an extreme example being Category:Georgia (country) and Category:Georgia (U.S. state) where the "relationship" is just similarity of name). DexDor(talk) 22:01, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * We've had this conversation before (and that discussion references this earlier one that you didn't participate in). postdlf (talk) 22:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Quoting Help:Category: "Categories are intended to group together pages on similar subjects. [..] Categories help readers to find, and navigate around, a subject area, to see pages sorted by title, and to thus find article relationships."
 * In FAQ/Categorization we read: "There are two main ways to use categories: lists and topics.".
 * Topic categories are less rigid and more time consuming than lists, but one should not automatically take the line of least resistance.
 * There are always disagreements but they are solved by discussions and new guidelines.
 * CN1 (talk) 14:23, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Making categorisation more rigid will not make it more useful. Rathfelder (talk) 20:37, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

A big part of the category system already consists of topic categories. Fayenatic is right when he says that despite their importance and presence, they are mentioned very little in the category policy page and we need to formulate guidelines for how to use them or at least a description of them.

The following is what I imagine for a paragraph in Categorization.

Topic categories

Topic categories are categories in which the relationship between its subcategories and themselves is't an is-a relationship, but a belongs-to relationship.

The presence of an is-a relationship can be objectively determined but it is not so easy to assess if a belongs-to relationship is justified.

Every belongs-to relationship has to be assessed individually.

This is why it's always a good first step to identify the nature of the subcategories in question, which means to ask if they are themselves a topic or a set category.


 * Category:History — topic cat
 * belongs-to relationship with other topic categories
 * Category:Philosophy of history — links topics history & philosophy
 * Category:Historic preservation — links topics history & preservation
 * Category:History education — links topics history & education
 * belongs-to relationship with set categories
 * Category:Historians — links topic history & set category system branch people
 * Category:History awards — links topic history & set category system branch awards
 * Category:Historical eras — links topic history & set category system branch eras
 * Relationships between topic categories are justified if the topic of the parent cat plays a large role in the topic of the sub cat.


 * Relationships between a topic category and a set category of the same topic are always justified.


 * Set categories have two traits: (I.) object type, which they register, and (II.) topic.


 * The set category Category:Historians has the object type people and the topic history.


 * Another example is Category:Food and Category:Food companies.

Questionable belongs-to relationship


 * There are also harder cases.


 * It was judged by a user that Category:September 11 attacks doesn't belong into Category:Presidency of George W. Bush.


 * This is because one can hardly know if the presidency of George W. Bush played a large role in the attacks.


 * Still the article September 11 attacks is a subpage. This is a good strategy to mention related topics, which's category is not suited for a belongs-to relationship.


 * The best place to ask for opinions on questionable belongs-to reltionships is CFD.

CN1 (talk) 18:14, 29 May 2016 (UTC)


 * An excessively rigid approach to categorization will not work because the vast majority of users will be unaware of it. It needs to relate to patterns of human understanding.  Rathfelder (talk) 07:31, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As Fayenatic london said, it's simply unbearable to not have categorization described in the Wikipedia policy because otherwise people will ask: "Well, is this even a rule?"


 * So far, only set categories (= object categories) are described.


 * I wish for criticism, but please be specific about what you don't think fits the nature of topic categories or maybe even add something on your own.


 * As the last example showed, I'm unable to postulate rigid rules for some cases, but it is possible for some others.


 * Where it is not possible, examples and descriptions can help inexperienced users.


 * CN1 (talk) 11:09, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

OK to switch English Wikipedia's category collation to uca-default?
In the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey, the 5th most popular proposal was numerical sorting in categories (for example, sort 99 before 100). The WMF Community Tech team is ready to implement this, but a pre-requisite for the change is that we must switch English Wikipedia's category collation from "uppercase" (a simple collation algorithm that sorts strings based on character values, but considers uppercase and lowercase letters the same) to "uca-default" (which is based on the Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA), the official standard for how to sort Unicode characters). The most noticeable difference is that UCA groups characters with diacritics with the their non-diacritic versions. So, for example, English Wikipedia currently sorts Aztec, Ärsenik, Zoo, Aardvark as "Aardvark, Aztec, Zoo, Ärsenik", but UCA collation would sort them as "Aardvark, Ärsenik, Aztec, Zoo" (with Aardvark, Ärsenik, and Aztec grouped under a single "A" heading, instead of under 2 separate headings). There are numerous other advantages to using UCA collation, but they are a bit technical to discuss, so I'll refer you to the documentation instead:. If you would like to experiment with UCA collation, go to https://ssl.icu-project.org/icu-bin/collation.html. Set the collation to "und (type=standard)" (the default) and turn on numeric sorting in the settings. If anyone has any concerns or questions about switching to UCA, please reply here or in the Phabricator ticket. Thanks! Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support as proposed above. — xaosflux  Talk 00:59, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Can't wait for numeric sorting to be implemented. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 03:18, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Proper collation of diacritics is hardly a disadvantage. —Cryptic 05:18, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure, by and large, but any coding change can have unexpected consequences: if certain ‘hacks’ have been premised on an observed behaviour of a system despite its being a bug, when it gets fixed those features will break.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  17:58, 25 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Support, with seconding Cryptic's comment above Goldenshimmer (talk) 05:41, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Currently, all articles are being sorted just as the Unicode Collation Algorithm would do via the DEFAULTSORT parameter. So, diacritics/accent marks aren't currently an issue in articles. With UCI, less DEFAULTSORTs will be needed in non-biography articles in the future. However, this will alter most current non-biography talk pages as  listas is not set in those, therefore the uppercase algorithm currently applies on those.  If I remember correctly, UCI handles every variant of dash/hyphen, single quote marks and few others as separate charachters, so DEFAULTSORT will still need to be set for those cases.  Depending on what "switch" is set in the UCI algorithm, de Gaule, De Gaule, de-Gaule and De-Gaule will be sorted in different orders.  Other wikis have already changed to UCI.  French is one of them.  Bgwhite (talk) 06:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Administritive note - Discussion moved from WP:VPT, since this is a better place to discuss category issues. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:25, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with the venue change Od Mishehu. But someone should probably notify WP:BOT/WP:BAG, WP:AWB, WP:TWINKLE, WP:HOTCAT, etc., to make sure that this won't affect/break those tools. - jc37 17:32, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Support of course!—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  17:58, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Subcategories and geography-related categories
According to WP:Categorization: "When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent also."

However, geography categories don't seem to follow that rule. For example, contains, which contains (indirectly but correctly) Aljmaš, Croatia; however, Aljmaš, Croatia doesn't belong in. An other example: contains (indirectly), which includes  - even though a person isn't part of the geography. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:11, 8 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Category:Danube should not be in Category:Rivers of Austria etc because (as you point out) Category:Danube contains articles that are about (places in) other countries. Category:Danube would still be categorized (in Category:International rivers of Europe and a hidden category). The category would also still be reachable from the Danube article. There is no rule that Category:Foo should have all the same category tags as the Foo article - e.g. the Germany article may belong in Category:Member states of NATO, but Category:Germany (which contains articles about Germany that have nothing to do with NATO) does not.
 * That would still leave the article about the village in Category:Rivers, but I don't see that as being (such) a problem - Category:Rivers is for anything about the topic of rivers (e.g. things such as river surfing) and (at a bit of a stretch) an article about a riverside village is within the topic of rivers - that's certainly not as bad as putting a Croatian village in Category:Austria.
 * Regarding geography categories - afaik there's no clear definition of what belongs in a geography category and what belongs in its more general parent category - e.g. why is Category:Hiking trails in Massachusetts‎ categorized as geography, but Category:Landmarks in Massachusetts not? DexDor(talk) 22:29, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Agreement I'm glad I followed this link form the award category to this discussion because I'm in complete agreement. Emerald catfish is under Category:Amazon River but it's still reasonable to categorize Category:Amazon River under Category:International rivers of South America since the whole category (more or less) belongs there. But all the local state categories, like Category:Rivers of Pará, are not appropriate as parents of Category:Amazon River since only a fraction of the Amazon is there.
 * Categories should generally be placed in fewer categories than the corresponding main article. I'm not sure if there is a good way to formalize this in a guideline, but we're in conceptual agreement. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:01, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Minimal number of items in a category
What is the minimal number of items in a category? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:34, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Many maintenance categories aim for zero items. for (talk)  17:47, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If you mean content cats, the practical minimum is 1, this happens where WP:CATDIFFUSE is enforced. For instance, we should have an article for every national President, and these do not get put directly in but in a subcategory, like . -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:59, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

What are the guidelines on how to best structure "GA-class" categories?
Since well-over half of all articles contained in Category:GA-Class Animation articles seem to be about The Simpsons, and probably at least a quarter of the remaining articles are about either Family Guy or South Park, I feel that it would be beneficial to create subcategories focused on each of these shows. Would this be appropriate? I'm not familiar with the general guidelines on how to structure "GA-Class" categories. Ideally, I'd like to see all of the articles related to these three shows removed from the parent category and placed solely within their respective subcategories - that way, it would be easier to see which animation articles about other topics have attained GA status. I've skimmed through a handful of Help / Guideline pages about categories, but haven't seen anything written on the topic. Can someone point me to the relevant page, if it happens to exist, or if it doesn't, could someone let me know whether there are steps that I should take before moving stuff around (aside from simply consulting with the relevant WikiProjects)? Should I bring it to WP:Categories for Discussion or is that strictly for "renaming, merging, and deletion"? Also, since it seems that all GA articles within WP:Animation are automatically added to Category:GA-Class Animation articles, would it even be possible to remove the articles on Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park from the category, without also removing them from the WikiProject? --Jpcase (talk) 19:55, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Talk pages are placed in because they bear  perhaps with some other parameters. Similarly,  contains talk pages which bear ; and  contains talk pages which bear . These categories exist to indicate the intersection between a WikiProject and an article's class. It's all part of the way that WikiProject banner templates work. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Are there never instances in which these categories are partially diffused? I can't think of any instance in which an article would be added to WP:SIMPSONS, WP:SOUTHPARK, or WP:FAMILYGUY, and not also to WP:ANIMATION. They overlap entirely. So nothing would be lost if all of these articles are diffused into their respective subcategories. And as things stand right now, it's incredibly difficult to pick out those articles that aren't related to one of these three shows. I admittedly overstated things, when I suggested that three-quarters of all the articles contained in Category:GA-Class Animation articles are also contained in one of these three other subcategories (It was a random guess). But I just checked the actual numbers, and out of 711 articles in the Animation category, over three hundred are about The Simpsons and over 100 are about Family Guy (only 38 are about South Park, so that's less of a problem, but 38 still makes for a substantial subcategory). Having to search through all of this, in search of articles about animated feature films, or animated short films, or simply articles about other animated tv shows, makes the current category for GA animation articles almost more of hassle than it's worth. --Jpcase (talk) 23:57, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * You can use the category intersection tool PetScan to get a list of GA animations without Simpsons, Family Guy, or South Park – try this query - Evad37 &#91;talk] 00:23, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Some WikiProject banners are set up to have task forces, and these may in turn be set up to place the talk pages into categories specific to that task force. But this does not take the page out of the main category group for the WikiProject. To do that would need the task force to be spun off to a separate WikiProject, with its own banner template.
 * As an example, puts pages in subcategories of ; and if yes is set, the pages are also put in subcategories of, but are not taken out of the subcategories of.
 * By contrast, is the banner for a separate WikiProject, and it puts pages in subcategories of  but not in subcategories of, so any page that is in a subcategory of  and of  must have both WikiProject banners.
 * You might argue that is redundant if  is present, but that's a decision for WT:WikiProject Animation and they may well say that The Simpsons does fall within their purview. It's a well established convention that each WikiProject reserves the right to set its own boundaries, even where they overlap significantly with those of another. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:46, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses. I see what you're saying Redrose, and certainly wouldn't suggest that the entire Simpsons WikiProject should be folded into WP:Animation, but still, it seems to me that the current way of structuring GA-class categories is less than efficient. The Petscan method that you mentioned, Evad, looks like a good work around, though it would still be nice to see a more straightforward way of distinguishing GA-class articles by topic. --Jpcase (talk) 14:27, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposing a change to the WP:CATDEF wording
WP:CATDEF currently states that "The order in which categories are placed on a page is not governed by any single rule (for example, it does not need to be alphabetical, although partially alphabetical ordering can sometimes be helpful). Normally the most essential, significant categories appear first."

I would like to see it changed to something like "Although no single rule governs the order in which categories are placed on a page, alphanumeric order is useful for placing the categories into a coherent order. An exception is when a leading category is equal to or is closely associated with the name or subject of an article."

I am suggesting this from my exposure to cognitive psychology & user interface design (besides the classes for my Library & Information Studies MS degree, I have worked in IT for 25+ years & am also a former university reference librarian). I find that Chunking (psychology) is very useful to organizing information. The lack of any order among categories is chaotic & makes it difficult for a reader to follow. As one of the simplest forms of chunking, alphanumeric order is a basic & effective solution to this problem.

Peaceray (talk) 16:52, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Yes, I've been doing alphanumeric category ordering for years. Usually when I edit an article to alter the order in which categories appear, my edits are kept, though once in a while someone will revert or leave me a note saying the original (arbitrary) order is more useful. Well, the order may not seem arbitrary to one editor, but may to others. I support encouraging alphanumeric ordering. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 17:59, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose in its current form, but I morally support the attempt at giving us more order (which is why I'm not bolding anything). Specifically, I have to oppose this particular wording because I think we should also allow for like-categories to be placed together. For instance, say I'm tagging a gridiron football defensive lineman who played both American and Canadian football. It makes perfect sense to keep Category:American football defensive linemen and Category:Canadian football defensive linemen next to each other. Similarly, all establishments/disestablishments categories should generally go together, etc. etc. This is all a bit of common sense, I think. How about a wording like "Although no single rule governs the order in which categories are placed on a page, there are a number of considerations worth taking into account. Categories which are closely associated with the name or subject of an article should generally lead the list of categories. Categories that are within the same category tree or are closely associated with each other should generally be placed together. In the absence of other meaningful schemes of ordering categories on a page, defaulting to alphanumeric ordering provides a useful coherent order." Open to copy-editing and other changes, of course. ~ Rob 13 Talk 20:15, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * H9,, do you have any suggestions for a different wording? Peaceray (talk) 00:16, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I provided it already in my comment. ~ Rob 13 Talk 01:10, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose This was brought up very recently. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:03, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi,, I just wanted to note that this previous discussion was about mandating as opposed to suggesting that alphanumeric order is useful. Peaceray (talk) 00:16, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * As I noted in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories at 07:41, 10 May 2016 (UTC), a useful order for cats is basically one of descending order of relevance. Alphabetic (or alphanumeric) order could give rise to some very minor cats appearing early in the list. Consider Garsdale railway station: what is it? it's a railway station. Where is it? Cumbria. So, is highly relevant. What trivia is mentioned in the article that might be categorisable? There's a memorial for a dead dog. Even with grouping related cats together, placing those groups alphabetically would still place  (trivial) above . -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:27, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I wish the categories at Garsdale railway station were displayed in alphabetical order. Looks arbitrary otherwise. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 18:03, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * From down to  (inclusive), these are the most important cats for an open railway station in the UK, and the listing order is conventional. From  onwards, they are somewhat less important, and the order of those four may as well be alphabetic. In short: no way should  go before . -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:09, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Opppose. Alphabetical might be (slightly) preferable to random order, but it surely is not preferable to any reasonable scheme of logical order, whether that is important-stuff-first or grouping in some more complicated way.


 * If the main, important thing about a person is that she's a 20th century female Ukrainian Marxist writer, let's put those categories together (probably first or first after birth-death years, or even in the middle or the end, but at any rate together). Because "Ukrainian writer" and "Marxist writer" and "20th century writer" and "Female writer" are not near other in the alphabet, alphabetizing will lead to sprinkling in where she went to school or what cities she lived in or what awards she won and so forth among these categories. Doing that presents a conceptually random order.


 * I don't really even believe that alphabetical order is much preferable to random order, to be honest. It might be for certain kinds of searches. It might be useful if the person is searching for X to answer the question "Is this article in category X". My guess is that most readers are more interested in connecting the articles in other ways. (In other words, given some bio article, the question is more likely to be "Where is this person from?" (probably as an entre to "I want to see articles about other people who are like this person in important ways") rather than "Is this person from Aalborg or not?", although granted some non-zero number of readers will be asking that.)


 * But I think that alphabetical order gives a false sense of order. It helps the editor feel that article is more orderly. It doesn't really help the reader. It also helps us because its easy to do (a bot could alphabetize categories, actually) and it's not subject to dispute (assuming you've accepted alphanumberic order). But so?


 * If people are alphabetizing article categories, they should maybe consider not doing that.


 * I guess if its done with reasonable care, and since it's a lot quicker to alphabetize than to figure out a logical order, and assuming that the categories are more or less random (which I don't assume, but which is possible) it is possible (not certain IMO) that your alphabetizing is an improvement.) Herostratus (talk) 22:36, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Will somebody take a look at this?
Is this category acceptable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atsme (talk • contribs) 3:05, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Categories shouldn't be in themselves (that creates infinite recursion), fixed with this edit - Evad37 &#91;talk] 03:25, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * currently contains one article, 1 sub-cat (... people) with 2 sub-sub-cats (... alumni, ... faculty), and all of the subcats are empty of articles. Are there articles to go into those subcats? Mitch Ames (talk) 08:57, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Where is the category police report form? ☺️ Atsme 📞📧 15:16, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There's Database reports/Self-categorized categories, updated weekly. Cats listed there usually get fixed the same day, either by myself or one of the other watchers (there aren't many of us). I've no idea why I forgot to go though it last week. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:37, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

New tracking categories created
I have created, and requested template changes to populate, two new tracking categories. Like Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability, these categories combine all the entries from corresponding month-by-month tracking categories in one category. One use for this is to allow the use of Special:RandomInCategory across all tracked months at once, though there are certainly other uses. The new categories are:

— swpb T 13:00, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * All articles sourced by IMDb (to be populated by BLP IMDb refimprove) – will include all (currently ~2100) articles in month subcategories of Articles sourced by IMDb
 * All BLP articles lacking sources (to be populated by BLP sources and BLP unsourced) – will include all (currently ~99,000) pages in month subcategories of BLP articles lacking sources (unlike All unreferenced BLPs, which only lists the (~3000) BLPs with no references)


 * Please weigh in at Template_talk:BLP_sources—this uncontroversial change is being scuttled by lack of attention. — swpb T
 * It is actually controversial. Debresser (talk) 00:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You are still the only person on the planet who thinks so. — swpb T 13:05, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Andy also thinks so. That is why he undid his edit. If something is controversial is a fact, not an opinion. Which proves you are in the wrong here. Debresser (talk) 17:01, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Category sorting update
As previously discussed on this talk page, we’re going to change the algorithm for how sorting works in categories, as a step on the way to be able to get numerical sorting. We plan to do this today August 29, around 18:00 UTC. We expect the maintenance script will take about 24 hours to run, during which sorting will be a bit unreliable. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 13:14, 29 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether this is caused by the new category sorting method, but I noticed that the grouping of pages and subcategories in categories has changed. For river systems, we use category sorting by stream order, so first order tributaries under "1", second order under "2", etc. see for instance de:Kategorie:Flusssystem Theiß (in German Wikipedia the sorting method still works). Now in English Wikipedia everything is under "0-9", see for instance Category:Tisza basin. Is there a way to revert this to the old grouping method? Markussep Talk 10:48, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the new category sorting method means that 10 sorts after 9, 100 sorts after 99, etc. But I thought that it had been agreed not to sort categories by stream order, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 4. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the sorting itself is still going fine (2Giucoșin comes after 1Zagyva), but they're not grouped anymore by "1", "2" etc. So it would be nice if we could get that back. BTW it's not clear to me from the discussion at WT:RIVERS that it was decided to abandon the idea to sort basin categories by stream order. Markussep Talk 15:03, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No, the grouping is unchangeable. All numeric sortkeys now go under "0-9", see Village pump (technical)/Archive 149, so the only thing to change it is to consider whether you really need that sortkey in . -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:57, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think understands how things are now, . He's asking for them to be changed back to how they previously worked with 1, 2, etc. being separate headings, which is something I personally agree with. ~ Rob 13 Talk 17:00, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * We can't do anything about it here. It's part of the MediaWiki software itself, so you would need to file a ticket, and I doubt that it would be accepted for action. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:20, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This must be something specific for English Wikipedia, since it still works the old way in German Wikipedia. I have no idea how to file a ticket, because I don't know what has changed. Could someone help me? Markussep Talk 07:36, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Please can you advise here? -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:36, 21 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm Danny from the WMF Community Tech team. We run a Community Wishlist Survey once a year, where we invite active contributors to propose projects for our team, and then the community votes on the proposals. In the last survey, Numerical sorting in categories was the #5 most-requested proposal.


 * The point of the new 0-9 sorting is to put numbers in the order that people would expect -- for example, in Category:American films, the sorting lists the articles in numerical order: 7 Wise Dwarfs, 12 Monkeys, and 101 Dalmatians. With the old sorting, it was the other way around.


 * We deployed the new sorting on English and Swedish Wikipedia a couple weeks ago. It hasn't been deployed on German WP yet, so that's why you're still seeing the old sorting. We're currently setting up conversations on each wiki to find out if the community wants to use the new sorting. I don't think that discussion has started yet on German WP, but I'll find out.


 * Unfortunately, we can't change the sorting to fit the workaround you've been using on the river categories. The old system only sorted by 10 digits, so it was possible to have headings for each digit from 0 to 9. With the new sorting order, we'd have headings 0 through 9, and then 10, 11, and so on. It would be a lot of useless headings that wouldn't really serve any purpose for the vast majority of categories.


 * So I'm afraid that we broke your workaround, and I'm sorry about that -- I know that it's frustrating when somebody disrupts a workflow that you've been using for years. You're going to have to figure out a different workaround, to get the results that you want. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left used digits as headings before. It now uses A to G instead, but it's less intuitive and maybe not suited for visible article categories aimed at readers. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * An idea for a horrible hack: Make a redirect called First-order tributaries: to Tributary or some page explaining the purpose. Give it sort key "1" in Category:Tisza basin and other categories using the tributary order system so it sorts before articles with "1Something" as sort key. Redirects are italicized in categories so it will stand out from the articles. Do the same for Second-order tributaries: and so on. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)


 * That is horrible, and very clever. :) DannyH (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

What about replacing the sort-key numerals with, say, Greek letters: α for direct tributaries, β for secondary ones, and so on? (Vaguely similar to their use in chemical nomenclature to indicate the point of attachment of substituents relative to a functional group.) I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard for a bot or AWB to make such replacements in the affected categories.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  00:49, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Greek letters are displayed upper case in category headings so it would become Α Β Γ Δ Ε. See for example Category:ABBA where Book:ABBA has sort key β and the templates have τ. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:06, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My suggestion would be to use subcategories for tributary level, rather than numeric headers. I highly doubt anyone besides a small handful of WikiProject Rivers editors understood what those numeric headers were referring to. Changing them to letters (or Greek letters) would only make it even more confusing, IMO. If that doesn't sound like a good idea, my second suggestion would be to not sort them by tributary level at all, but just use the regular alphabetic sorting. Honestly, sorting rivers by tributary level seems kind of odd to me, no offense! What do you do when a river spans multiple tributary levels? It seems like that sort of information would be better presented in a list or the article on the primary body of water, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 01:40, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Quite so; but see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 4 where there are people intent on the German system. -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:58, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I like the redirects suggestion by PrimeHunter, I'll give that a try. Markussep Talk 09:36, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It works fine for articles, see for instance Category:Olt basin, that has third-order tributaries, but not for subcategories. We'll have to think of a solution for that, maybe only list first-order subcategories., what do you think? Markussep Talk 10:29, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I honestly have a hard time imagining that anyone is going to intuitively understand this system. It will be especially confusing for anyone clicking on "First-order tributaries" thinking that it's an article. What's the downside to just using subcategories, like "First-order tributaries of the Mississippi River"? You can expand subcategories from the categories view, so this should be just as easy to use. Kaldari (talk) 18:13, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but this is a classic example of launching a change to solve one problem e.g. US films but causing an unintended screw-up elsewhere e.g. river categories and then telling other editors in effect to just "suck it up" after many months of hard work. Unless we can find a quick way to accommodate both requirements, the change should be reverted while we look how we can achieve that. I'm willing to accept that there is merit in helping to categorize films if others can reciprocate when it comes to sorting river tributaries. Bermicourt (talk) 18:50, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, US films was just one example; the change to numeric sorting benefits any category that includes articles that begin with numbers. The Community Wishlist Survey isn't meant to supplant discussions or RfCs on a particular wiki, but as a data point, the fact that numerical sorting was the #5 most-requested feature seems fairly compelling. It's definitely a pain for people working on the river categories that that particular workaround doesn't work anymore, but I don't think it's equivalent. I'm hoping that people (in this discussion, or on a rivers talk page) can come up with another workaround that would achieve the same end. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * ISTM the problem here is not the numerical sorting per se (I don’t imagine that these hydrological trees extend to more than half a dozen levels, while single digits have never been a problem—a similar system with more than ten levels would never have worked before either), but that number-first items are all being displayed under the same heading rather than under each leading digit separately. Would it be possible to modify the category-page machinery to allow for separate headings under certain circumstances? Perhaps with a special character as a switch: suppose it was the number sign (is that used for anything else?), then a sort key of “#3abcd” would appear under “3”, but “3abcd” would appear under “0–9” as is now usual? This would also provide for the creation of headings with more than one digit (themsleves sorted in the correct numerical order) and might be useful in other areas as well.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  19:52, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I bet we could come up with a hack like that, but is it really a good idea? Looking at previous discussions about this, it looks like some people have objected to the tributary sorting as not in line with the guidelines here. Categories weren't really intended to act as custom article sorting systems or to provide metadata about articles. Isn't that what lists are for? Kaldari (talk) 20:34, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is evolving all the time and that's a good thing. So we will always come up with innovative ways to present information and, when we do, they'll always be some objectors who fall back on the original guidelines. But the guidelines need to evolve too or Wikipedia wouldn't be where it is today. The sort of people who want to look at a river basin category will welcome this sort of structure over 200 articles listed alphabetically with no indication of whether something is a major tributary, lake, canal or 5th-order rivulet. Since the change has been made without reaching a consensus (probably in good faith without realising the impact) and caused a major problem with river basin categories, the onus is on those who made the change to a) revert it while we work something out or b) provide a fix that at least enables the option of the current basin category structure to be implemented. Bermicourt (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, it's not practical for us to revert it. Switching the collation involved a change to the master database, and it took six days to run the script that implemented the new system. It cannot be rolled back so that a specific WikiProject can adjust.
 * I think that the problem is that you're using categories for river basins, instead of pages. For example, you have Category:Olt basin, but there's no article page for Olt basin. On the category page, you could have subcategories: First-order tributaries of the Olt basin, etc. When people want to look through the entire list at once, you could create the article page, Olt basin, and list every tributary in the order that you want.
 * I know that there are a lot of rivers in the world, and it's a pain to have to change your system, but that would bring your project in line with all of the others on Wikipedia. If you choose to use categories in a way that's different from the other 2,000+ WikiProjects on the site, then this kind of thing is bound to happen, eventually. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:52, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Please don't be patronising Someone has erred by making a change without thinking through the implications. This change hasn't just affected rivers. For a start, the changes have also screwed up hundreds of locomotive class articles worldwide in various locomotive categories, for instance: Category:Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft locomotives, Category:Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways steam locomotives, Category:Caledonian Railway locomotives and Category:Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway locomotives. The change has clearly had a major negative impact that wasn't envisaged and should be reverted while we find a way to accommodate everyone's all requirements. Bermicourt (talk) 14:06, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Oh and it also seems to have messed up categories of military units e.g. Category:Infantry regiments of the United States Army and Category:Infantry regiments of France... --Bermicourt (talk) 14:27, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

P.P.S. ... and political article categories e.g. Category:New Jersey legislative districts and Category:Arrondissements of Paris. Bermicourt (talk) 14:35, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Current sortheader 0–9 is incorrect: also number 10 is sorted in there. IOW, since the sorting is by number value, the sortindex must says so: &minus;&infin;–&infin;
 * A category should have the option to add sortgroups (and their headers) like: 0–100, &gt;=100–200, &gt;=200–300. (To be tailored to the actual listings, i.e., the numbers categorised, into meaningful sortgroups). Automatically, a provision must be there for the out-of-ranges numbers listed (&lt;0 and &gt;300 in the example). -DePiep (talk) 16:30, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To me, there doesn't seem anything amiss with your examples; what exactly is wrong with the order of, for example, (this being the only one where I've been directly involved in the past)? They all seem to be in numerical order; Caledonian Railway Single may seem like an anomaly, but its sortkey is 123 - the original running number of the sole example of that class. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:51, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Rivers aside, I don't see the problem. Just what is messed up with Category:Infantry regiments of the United States Army?  Looks like a perfectly rational sort to me.  I don't think the new sort made the 180th Cavalry Regiment suddenly appear in the list. --Lineagegeek (talk) 00:49, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Rational it is -- and useless. It's one indiscriminate list. What is missing is the, say, 100, 200, 300 subheaders. (just think: why don't we sort all other articles under just one A–Z header?). -DePiep (talk) 01:42, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There never were any 100, 200, 300 subheaders - previously there were single-digit headings: 0, 1, 2 ... 8, 9. Unless the sortkey was modified in some way, then pages named 10th, 11th, 100th, 1001st etc. would all be listed under the 1 heading; pages named 20th, 21st, 200th, 2001st etc. would all be listed under the 2 heading; and so on - out of numerical order. Even if the sortkey was modified, they still appeared under the single-digit headings - e.g. Caledonian Railway 49 and 903 Classes, with the sortkey  was previously placed under the 0 heading; Caledonian Railway 179 Class under 1, because of its sortkey  . -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:42, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not proposing to go back at all to the old 0–9 first digit sorting & sortheaders (if that's the word for the headers we see in the category list). I want to take the new situation one step further. I am describing the idea that, if we sort by true number value (as we do now), that number value best be used in the sortheaders too. As it is now: 0–9 lumps all sorted numbers together: both correct in order and near useless in category overview & search. I propose, after the change/improvement: add useful sortheaders that to differentiate between true numeric ranges. Compare: we do not put all alphabetic titles under A–Z, but split them into 26 sortheaders. Quite useful. (Yes there are subtle differences between letters and numbers. Eg numbers being a continuum and letters being discrete &mdash; that's why for true numbers we'd need a range sortheader). -DePiep (talk) 11:34, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Please don't call them headers, subheaders or sortheaders. They are subheadings; headers are the boxes that appear at the top of pages (such as the four at the top of this page, like "This page is for discussing the .." etc.); headers are also the top row of a table.
 * Changing the sorting back to how it was before (with 10 sorting after 1 but before 2) can be done very simply (it's a change to a configuration setting, and can be done solely the English Wikipedia without affecting the others) - but we would need a consensus to do so.
 * Keeping the current sort order but splitting a category page into ranges of 100 (or whatever) would need a change to the MediaWiki software itself, a fundamental change that (afaik) nobody has written, so we can't simply flip a switch. A ticket needs to be filed, agreed, coded, approved and deployed - and that can take years. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:58, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * re (-edited-)


 * 1. Please don't call them headers -- They are 'subheadings', OK.
 * 2. Changing the sorting back to how it was before -- I do not propose to change back into sort-by -digit. I support keeping the sorting by numerical value.
 * 3. Keeping the current sort order but splitting a category page into ranges of 100 (or whatever) ... -- Splitting the numbers into numerical headings (like 100, 200) sure would need a code change, but that does not make the proposal invalid. imo, it would be an improvement (and I do think this solves the current discontent people mention). -DePiep (talk) 00:40, 14 November 2016 (UTC), edited -DePiep (talk) 10:02, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Categories are not articles
I propose that WP:CAT should include the following subsection, under 2. Creating category pages:

A few current examples that I think need cleaning up: And a previous example, which has now been cleaned up: What do other editors think? Mitch Ames (talk) 08:12, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
 * - See my recent edits and their reversions in the history, and comments at User talk:Mitch Ames.
 * Category:Department of Aboriginal Affairs (Western Australia See the history for edits/reverts, and User talk:Mitch Ames for discussion.
 * Note that the Categorization FAQ asks as to "avoid copying large quantities of text ... from an article to a category page". If the above proposal is approved, the FAQ might need updating, eg to something like "avoid copying text from an article to a category page unless it is required to define the scope of the category". Mitch Ames (talk) 08:48, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Misunderstandings of categories and category mainspace are so intertwined in the history of wikipedia in the last 10 years, I think this is a fairly limited approach to a more complex issue:

Some readers are likely to be quite perplexed at the subject and contents differentiation, and I believe to complicate as to which is which would create situations where arguments and potential conflicts would arise, where the creation of the distinction is in the end of no particular help in the long run.

For a project or subject area to have an editor keen on clarifying the context or background of the category I believe does not harm the main space of a category. I believe the allowance for editorial comments on the subject or contents at a main space area on a category can in many cases clarify something that is otherwise difficult to place.

Many editors place links to wikiprojects, to portals, and to other subjects, so that if someone does venture to the category mainspace, it is not as a 'blank' clean main space - but a space with clues as to the category (many biota categories have nothing, so that an unacquainted reader is incapable of discerning whether the category is about animal vegetable or mineral).

I believe, before this gets out of hand in time or space, that there should be an effort to allow clarifying text of either subject or content, to remain in category mains space in the name of helping anyone who might arrive at the space to know how to get out or go somewhere for clarification, the proposal to cleanup the space I believe is retrograde, unhelpful and equivalent to a building inspector asking to remove Exit signs in buildings. JarrahTree 08:34, 20 August 2016 (UTC)


 * "Some readers are likely to be quite perplexed at the subject and contents differentiation" I suspect that the readers don't need to make the distinction, so much as the editors. Otherwise you have a reasonable point. Possibly the word "contents" should be "scope" - I chose "contents" for consistency with
 * in Creating category pages. But, as always, I'm open to suggestions for improved wording. It may be helpful if we include an example or two in the additional text. Eg:
 * ✅ "" – Defines the contents of the category, ie what articles should go into this category.
 * "" – Describes the subject of the category's articles (the river), not the contents/scope of the category.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 09:28, 20 August 2016 (UTC)


 * "many biota categories have nothing, so that an unacquainted reader is incapable of discerning whether the category is about animal vegetable or mineral"
 * Given that "... a hierarchy of categories which readers, knowing essential—defining—characteristics of a topic, can browse ...", the reader is presumed to already know that "biota" categories would include both animal and vegetable but not mineral. Do you have a specific example that would illustrate your point? Mitch Ames (talk) 09:16, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

One specific reason for the proposed "categories are not articles" addition to the guideline is the matter of references. Generally statements about a subject (eg "The Gordon River is ... in South West Tasmania") must be verifiable, and typically this is done by including references "at or near the bottom of the article" – ie on the same page as the statement being made. However "category pages should not contain ... citations"; this implies that category pages should not make statements about the subject. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:08, 20 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Although this is true, I think that we needn't add instructions, per Avoid instruction creep. Specifically, I think that "Instead hatnotes such as Cat main should direct the reader to the relevant article." is not a good idea. I think that some words of explanation are usually also okay. Perhaps without that line I could agree with the proposed addition. Debresser (talk) 18:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I can see why you would want to avoid scope creep (although I disagree with you) but I don't understand why you specifically object to the last sentence "Instead, hatnotes ... should [be used]". (Note that I've added a comma, but it ought not change the meaning.) The last sentence is not scope creep - the hatnotes exist for that very reason. (At worst my last sentence is redundant, because hatnotes are already mentioned under WP:CAT, but I think it important to mention them explicitly in the context of my proposal.) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * My problem with that line is that is disallows free text. That is in general a bad idea, and contrary to common practice. Debresser (talk) 22:44, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The last sentence is intended to mean
 * but re-iterating that bit in square brackets makes it very wordy. I want to disallow free text that describes the subject (that's the point of the proposal) but not disallow free text that describes the scope/content of the category. Any suggestions to clarify the wording, e.g. to remove ambiguity - but keep the intent - are welcome. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:31, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * If there is an eponymous article we can use Cat main and in that case any additional free text is most likely to be redundant. Put it the other way around, free text is mainly useful in cases when there is no eponymous article. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:53, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think we do need something along these lines that Mitch has proposed. Yes, we want to avoid instruction creep, but we have a few very active users who commonly add "definitions" to categories which are very intricate and detailed, and it almost gets to the point of reproducing article text in the category. It would be nice if we had some sort of guideline that stated what is and what is not a good idea in this regard. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Mitch Ames It would be helpful to emphasize that categories are merely tools to aid a reader's search. Thus additional detail at the category level saves time for the reader, if the category has a human-generated sentence as explanation. It would be harmful to force a robotic search for keywords instead. The danger would be that a robotic search could produce false associations during its search for something that isn't in the article. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 07:58, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

SORTKEY and definition of "key article"
Hi, I don't normally ask for help but I really need some for a category-related issue. I've been having a bit of a slow-but-now-speeding-up edit war with a user who is intent on categorizing certain articles about coats of arms with a "key sort" that looks like this: for the article "Coat of arms of FOO", he would like it to be categorized like this

 

See, for example, [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coat_of_arms_of_Whitehorse%2C_Yukon&type=revision&diff=753402220&oldid=753283257 his recent edit] on Coat of arms of Whitehorse, Yukon.

In other words, he wants to categorize coats of arms articles as "key articles". The guideline #8 of WP:SORTKEY states: "Use a space as the sort key for a key article for the category."

Shortly after I pointed this guideline out to the user, suggesting that this sorting was inappropriate, he [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AGlossary&type=revision&diff=746673223&oldid=746237199 changed the definition] of "key article" in the Glossary (!) to state that a heraldic coat of arms in an example of a key article (which is clearly is not, in my opinion). There was no proposal of this edit to the definition made beforehand or contemporaneous with the edit, so I have been repeatedly removing it while trying to have it discussed on the Glossary talk page, but only this user is participating in that discussion, and he has repeatedly reverted my removals of it.

I thought about an RFC, but my patience on the issue is all but spent and this is the most I can muster.

Could some users who are familiar with categories please take a look at the discussion here and weigh in?

Thanks, Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Update: There's now an RFC at Wikipedia_talk:Glossary.


 * Once the dust settles at that RFC, I suggest that the wording of bullet points 8 and 9 under WP:SORTKEY needs a bit of attention:
 * 8 refers to "a key article", which doesn't make it clear whether this means "there will be one article which will be identifiably the one to be called Key Article", or "the article you're considering might be one of a set of several Key Articles"; 9 talks about "the key article", which makes it clearer.
 * I don't understand what is meant by "(Note: If the key article should not be a member, simply edit the category text itself to add it, perhaps using Cat main.)" in 8. "Should not be" is ambiguous: "ought not to be", or "is not"?
 * We should not be depending on WP:GLOSSARY to state policy, so the text of these two bullet points in an approved Guideline should be independently unambiguous, as it appears not to be at present, not needing the reader to link to WP:GLOSSARY for a definition or clarification.
 * But not until the RFC is closed! Pam  D  11:31, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that there is some work that needs to be done there. I was surprised that we had to refer to the glossary to get the full guideline, as it were. Good Ol’factory (talk) 11:35, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Hidden categories on talk pages
Can someone tell me how to make Category:Articles containing timelines appear on the talk page so I can click on it. I made it a hidden category, was that wrong? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:29, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * . -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:40, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * But why do some administrative categories appear on the talk page and others are just invisible? I can see the ones on the talk pages, yet when I edit a talk page there are no categories to edit. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:42, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You didn't give any examples but nearly all talk page categories are added by templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:21, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Greek letters
In § Sort keys, list item #10 begins
 * To place entries after the main alphabetical list, use sort keys beginning with tilde ("~"). Several Greek letters are also used for specific purposes. "Σ" (sigma) is used to place stub categories at the end of subcategory lists ("µ" was previously used but the capital version "Μ" was confusing). "β" (beta, displays as "Β") is for Wikipedia books. "ι" is for images. "ρ" is for portals. "τ" is for templates. "ω" is for WikiProjects.

Having said that "Μ" (capital mu) was changed because it was confusing, the section goes on to reinstate the confusion, in &spades;s:
 * Similar to the handling of Latin letters, if the sort key is a lower case Greek letter then the capital Greek letter will be displayed in headings on category pages. ; "ω" beneath "Ω"; etc. Several of these resemble Latin letters B, I, P etc., but they will sort after Z.

Yes, they do "resemble Latin letters B, I, P etc.". So much so, in fact, that those Latin capital letters are indistinguishable on the page from their Greek lookalikes, which makes the text I have highlighted completely misleading.

In addition to clearing it up, I've made several other changes. Item #10 now reads:


 * To place entries after the main alphabetical list, use sort keys beginning with tilde ("~"). Several Greek letters are also used for specific purposes.
 * "Σ" (capital sigma) is used to place stub categories at the end of subcategory lists. ("µ" (mu) was previously used, but the capital version "Μ" was confusing.)
 * (The remaining letters in this list are all lower case.)
 * "β" (beta, displays as capital, "Β") is for Wikipedia books.
 * "ι" (iota, displays as "Ι") is for images.
 * "ρ" (rho, displays as "Ρ") is for portals.
 * "τ" (tau, displays as "Τ") is for templates.
 * "ω" (omega, displays as "Ω") is for WikiProjects.
 * Similar to the handling of Latin letters, if the sort key is or begins with a lower case Greek letter, then the capital Greek letter will be displayed in headings on category pages. Items whose sort keys begin with "β", "ι", "ρ", "Σ", "τ", or "ω" will appear beneath "Β" (capital beta), "Ι" (capital iota), "Ρ" (capital rho), "Σ" (capital sigma), "Τ" (capital tau), or "Ω" (capital omega) respectively. Several of these resemble Latin letters B, I, P etc., but they will sort after Z.

--Thnidu (talk) 01:48, 28 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I also was bothered by the resemblance of e.g. the tau to the regular "t" many times. Debresser (talk) 07:02, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In many fonts, the vertical stroke of the small tau - τ - doesn't extend above the crossbar. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not supposed to extend above the crossbar; I've never seen it like that. See, for example, this jpg of the Greek alphabet. --Thnidu (talk) 22:06, 28 December 2016 (UTC) (linguist; I also studied Classical Greek at St. John's College.)
 * That's my point, it doesn't, which makes it an easy way of distinguishing τ from t. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Good, but I wasn't clear on what you meant by the comment. — Have you ever seen the upright of a lowercase tau extend above the crossbar? I ask only because you say "many".--Thnidu (talk) 06:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No, but I wanted to avoid the word "never", which is not only strong but unprovable. If even one instance of such a glyph being used to represent the character U+03C4 can be found among the hundreds of computer/printer fonts that exist, then "never" would instantly be disproven. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Articles with a comma in the title/sort order
I have come across some cases (about 90) where a DEFAULTSORT has a space preceding a comma from the article title. This is done so that the following sort correctly:


 * Bush Hill, Enfield (sort key  )
 * Bush Hill Park, Enfield (sort key )

- based on the fact that in ASCII space sorts before comma (which sorts before alpha characters). These entries were made around 2010/2011 and seem to make sense (I may even have been involved in a discussion back then).

Should we adopt this more widely?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:19, 9 January 2017 (UTC).


 * I can think of examples involving persons' names. Take a look at Category:People from Berkhamsted, for example. Having the comma directly follow the preceding word results in the following sort order:
 * Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien-Smith
 * Horace Smith-Dorrien
 * Augustus Smith (politician)
 * Which should really be in reverse. (Smith should be sorted before Smith-Dorrien which should be sorted before Smith-Dorrien-Smith). Applying this change to the entire bulk of biographical articles would be a huge undertaking, though. Could there be a better way? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:33, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The section on sort keys says, “Hyphens, apostrophes and periods/full stops are the only punctuation marks that should be kept in sort values.” I expect that eliminating the commas accordingly would solve the problem, as a wordspace sorts before everything else. Likewise for the placename scenario further above.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  08:51, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Cat sorting rules for some punctuation changed in August (along with numeric characters and diacritics). Village pump (technical)/Archive 149 is very relevant here. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 16:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This is important. We should then sort "," before " " as the simplest solution. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC).


 * Rich, your examples don't exist. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:56, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes they do I've been there. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC).


 * They do and they don't. A bit under three hours ago (01:21, 10 January 2017‎) you redirected them both to Bush Hill Park, according to their revision histories. I don't see any DEFAULTSORT on Bush Hill Park, and the (now) redirect pages don't have any. "I've been there" is no kind of documentation on WP. How about giving another couple pages which have this characteristic? --Thnidu (talk) 04:11, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * (This is not important.)
 * Hmm I was replying to RedRose's taking of my example of where this would work as literally implying existence of these pages and sort orders, with the literal interpretation that the place(s) exist. Indeed there is a very pleasant park in Bush Hill Park, which could be considered Bush Hill Park Park.  The man that tends the roses we used to call the Bush Hill Park Park Parkie.
 * Of course I created the redirects, because they too should exist.
 * Of the 88 cases I did not see an example, nor was I minded to examine every category they occur in to look for one.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:14, 10 January 2017 (UTC).


 * Twelve minutes after you said "Yes they do I've been there" you made them go away, eliminating the evidence you were, as it were, submitting. You might at least have said something like "These pages are examples of this mistaken sorting. But they should be redirects, so I'm going to make them into redirects because that's what they should be." Then you wouldn't have wasted 's and my time trying to look at them for the sort order statements.--Thnidu (talk) 23:57, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * RedRose was right that the pages didn't exist. Saying I had been there was what we call a joke. CLealry it did not refer to the pages.  They are not physical places you can visit.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:44, 11 January 2017 (UTC).

Legacy issues
Prior to being blocked for an unrelated issue user:earflaps left a legacy of a range of categorization issues that will dog us for a while - maybe a companion with user:wwikix of whom idiosyncracy is a polite and genteel term for the two editors legacies in the realm of categories...

The last batch that earflaps was into in his editing history was Canadian festivals... The following family still exists at List of festivals in Canada:-


 * Category:Festivals in Canada..and
 * Category:Festivals in Canada by city..and
 * Category:Festivals in Canada by province or territory..and
 * Category:Lists of festivals in Canada..and
 * Category:Lists of festivals by country..Canada
 * Category:Lists of festivals in North America..Canada
 * Category:Canada-related list..Festivals
 * Category:Canadian literature-related list..Festivals
 * Category:Cultural festivals in Canada..and
 * Category:Arts festivals in Canada..and
 * Category:Fairs in Canada..and
 * Category:Events in Canada..Festivals

And please do not let me make claims over the legacy of a blocked editor - if it can be argued that the family of categories is a genuine and valid combination - please feel free to clarify and explain!

The arguments that earflaps had at CFD and similar venues about the 'festivalization' of wikipedia were from how I read them slippery and elusive - and the specifying of what constituted 'events', 'festivals' and so on are quite unsatisfactory for the long term benefit of the encyclopedia.

Whether anyone is going to pick up the issue and work on the anomalies that wwikix and earflaps created, I have no idea.

However I do think it has to go on the record that category savvy editors need to be aware here is a legacy that needs examining, and somehow, someone needs to bite the bullet... JarrahTree 01:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Despite my goading user:mitch ames into looking at it (and probably reducing the family and size) - associated similar conflagarations exist and need discussing here JarrahTree 02:38, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:SUBCAT and people-by-century categories
I have been having a discussion with User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao about the applicability of WP:SUBCAT to people-by-century categories. The discussion is at User talk:Ser Amantio di Nicolao.

We have been unable to reach agreement, so please can other editors review the discussion and offer their input on that user talk page?

Thanks! -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:16, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Duplication of categories - inclusion of an article in child and parent categories, contrary to WP:SUBCAT - is very widespread problem. My recent contributions (9-12 January) shows a few fixes in several specific areas. WT:CATP discusses another specific problematic editor.
 * We really need a bot to remove the duplicates automatically. (See also .) Does anyone have the time and skills to create one? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:27, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * This does relate to the previous item - the legacy issues include the over-use of parent/child combinations - it is widespread and inadequately checked JarrahTree 12:39, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the category tree/forest is badly formed and includes loops, or at least it did. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC).


 * Fixing loops is probably beyond the capabilities of a bot, but detecting them is algorithmically possible, given a finite maximum search depth. Eg search through the category tree a maximum of N levels, temporarily remembering each level. If before getting to N you encounter a category that you have already passed through on this iteration, then stop and report the loop (eg X is a subcat of Y, Y is a subcat of Z, Z is a subcat of X), then continue on the next iteration. It would require a human to look at the categories in the loop to determine how best to remove the loop. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:40, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Look2See1
User:Look2See1 is a reasonably prolific editor in category space. I'm looking for input from other editors about the questions posed at the end of this post.

I admit that this is a little bit unusual, but I have [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALook2See1&type=revision&diff=753628783&oldid=753253757 recently raised] the issue on the editor's user talk page, and after [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALook2See1&type=revision&diff=753969297&oldid=753628783 another editor] also said they were interested in the answers, we have [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Look2See1&diff=next&oldid=753969297 waited], and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ALook2See1&type=revision&diff=756976492&oldid=756938715 waited], but it [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Look2See1&diff=next&oldid=756976492 looks to me] like we're being ignored by the user.

Basically, I have found the user's edits in category space to be unusual, generally unhelpful, and in some cases problematic. I have used [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Cuban_Missile_Crisis&diff=prev&oldid=751853164 this as an example] for points #1 and #2 below, which was chosen more or less at random. There are hundreds of similar edits to choose from.


 * 1) Indentation of content. For the line that begins, "It occurred and was peacefully resolved ...", there is not one colon mark added for indentation, not two, not three or four, but ten indenting colons added. What is the purpose of this? Why does it need to be indented at all? (The same question could be made regarding the four colons added before the later on.)
 * 2) White space. The category definition/commentary is then followed by two blank lines and then a, adding a considerable amount of white space at the head of the category. This is perhaps not the best example for this particular issue. In the past, I have seen up to eight or nine blank lines of whitespace added in this fashion. The user more recently has been using  to add white space.
 * 3) Relatively detailed category definitions, including the addition of templates to category space. An example of this can be found [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3AMeghalaya&type=revision&diff=751497585&oldid=543883246 here], which also incorporates significant white space additions.

I have three questions about this editing pattern:
 * A: Has anyone else noticed this user's editing pattern in this regard?
 * B: If yes, does anyone else think that these edits are problematic?
 * C: If yes, what should be done, given that the user isn't responding to inquiries about it? – Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:57, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not a restricted problem either. WP:Geology has already had to deal with look2See1's odd template and style additions on Geology and paleontology categories and articles.  See here and on L2S1's talk page.  There was an absence of participation from Look2See1 when consensus was going against the edits, though the edits still continue at a low level.-- Kev  min  § 15:51, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I have come across this user's edits often, because I monitor Database reports/Self-categorized categories - pages often appear in that report because of edits (addition of many categories, including the category itself). -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Or - wrong template used, so cat placed in wrong parent cats. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * From what I have seen, this looks to be a fairly straightforward WP:COMPETENCE issue. The user is likely acting in good faith, but unfortunately their edits are undoubtedly disruptive. They have been contacted on multiple occasions to discuss these edits but have failed even to respond, let alone interact and seek a collaborative solution. This needs to be discussed at Admin level with appropriate sanctions available. Pyrop  e  19:51, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * We would have more solid grounds for complaint if we had a Manual of Style page for categories. jc37 drafted one years ago, but IIRC it had little response (guilty!) and was abandoned. However, even without that, you did at least explain to L2S1 what was disadvantageous about his editing on category pages. Perhaps we might propose an admin sanction such as a limited-term topic ban from editing category pages, which might at least provoke a response. – Fayenatic  L ondon 20:50, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Now that you mention that, I remember working on some category MOS things, but I can't remember where the drafts were put (I think some may have been done offline, and who knows where such drafts would be now). I can take a look if you would like. Or for that matter could start from scratch, I suppose. I think it might be more important now, as cat pages can now be moved... - jc37 04:16, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Found one here: Manual of Style/Category pages. It probably needs updating though... - jc37 04:25, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree that we could use a category page MOS. I'm the other editor mentioned in Good Olfactory's original post; when first raising the issue, I actually looked at the MOS, hoping to find some more concrete guidance, but found only the brief and rather vague instructions at WP:CAT. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:29, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree too! In fact, Look2See1 could be very helpful here with his ideas. Look2See1, what do you think? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The answer to questions A & B is definitely “yes”. Although a user’s activities on other projects cannot be grounds for action here, the behaviour described above appears to be very similar to that which resulted in a series of escalating blocks on Commons, ending with an indef last February: idiosyncratic formatting, overcategorization and peculiar sort keys. Pinging local admins, , and , who I believe will be familiar with this background.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  20:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Fayenatic London's solution likely won't work. At Commons, he made more edits to files than categories, and my limited experience with his editing here (he constantly disrupted pages I watch at Commons, but I don't remember him ever disrupting pages I watch here) has seen him edit mostly in mainspace.  All his Commons blocks were for basically the same type of stuff — if you've been blocked several times for different things and stopped doing each one after each block, we can expect that you've learnt your lesson, but given his history of IDHT-type editing, routinely returning to the block-attracting type of editing once blocks expire, I doubt that we're going to see a different pattern here, especially as the linked diffs are basically the same as what got him blocked at Commons.  Moreover, ignoring you is unusual: he typically treats warnings as personal attacks, as I've detailed here (a C:COM:ANU thread cited in one block log entry), with examples such as, or he'll claim that your warnings about policy violations were just because he offended you (example), rather than even acknowledging that you've alleged a deeper problem on his part.  Nyttend (talk) 23:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I can't speak to his edits here on en-wiki, but on Commons he had an pattern of combining some genuinely useful edits with a large number of edits that clearly went against consensus, and what appeared to be a near-total disregard for that consensus. When I have places where I disagree with en-wiki or Commons consensus myself, I either stay the heck out of those areas, or work within the rules to try to change the consensus. Offhand, those are the only two approaches that I think are constructive. (You can also sit off to the side and mumble and curse, which isn't constructive but at least can be ignored.) But going head on against consensus is active obstruction, because to maintain the wiki according to the agreed consensus then requires work by someone else to bring things back to how they should be. So when someone does this, they can't be ignored. If he's effectively doing what he did on Commons, and he won't knock it off, I'd say blocking him is the only way to avoid spending massive time undoing edits against consensus. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 00:03, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

My comments:

So, there appears to be consensus that Look2See1's edits are unconventional and problematic and something should be done. I agree.

I must disagree with Pyrope. What is causing this is not incompetence. He wrote this and this. He can think and express and understand others expressing themselves.

Considering his willingness to drive off a cliff rather than do things how the community at large sees fit, this appears to be a case of "I am helping shape pages the way I see fit. I am not a big fan of people telling me what to do."

Look2See1 is here to help build and has made 173,817 edits, many, many of them very constructive. A strong effort ought to be made to solve this without it ending in his leaving. The collateral damage of his next 100 edits is small (reverting/fixing) compared to losing a future potential 200k edits. Let's be patient and look at outcomes.

To me, the problem is about willingness to edit according to convention. And don't get me started on the lack of edit summaries. :) So, what to do? I will take a shot at a very friendly plea at his talk. How about that? :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:23, 30 December 2016 (UTC)


 * You're great Anna :) I so admire your patience in these cases. -- &oelig; &trade; 08:15, 30 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It's only because I drink heavily. I want to yell at people, but then just as I'm about to, all that water makes me have to rush off to the loo.


 * Kidding, of course. I drink water in moderation. Anyhow, yay! &oelig;, nice to see you. So, this is where you hang out, eh? :) Best wishes, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

You and I go back many years, almost as many as User:Bearcat and I, and during that time we have never managed to agree on much. So with this introduction I guess we can do away with wp:AGF, and I would like to start by saying that my first impulse on reading your wall-of text above  was who/why is he lynching this time?

Let me ask a simple question: If you have a problem with an edit why not do what most others here do, revert it and see what happens? …and just a note to other ADMINs who I know have good intentions: rushing to reason with User:Look2See1, who is obviously into main-space editing and not into talking, on his talk-page, would not have seemed sincere to me if I was on the receiving end and did not know the posters. Especially since you all posted here as well, after User:Look2Se was pinged.

Looks like the threading here is the pits. That’s all I have to say, I out of here. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:26, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Update: User talk:Look2See1

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:34, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Category redirects from "organisation" to "organization" and vice versa
At Bots/Requests_for_approval, I requested permission to run a bot to create a set of a few thousand category redirects from "Foo organisations" to "Foo organizations" and vice versa.

If anyone has any views on whether this is a good or a bad idea, please add your comments at Bots/Requests_for_approval. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:41, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

well let's talk about it then
An editor added some material (shown here bolded) to the "Articles" section (WP:CATDEF):
 * Articles on fictional subjects should not be categorized in a manner that confuses them with real subjects. Category see also is useful for interlinking examples of real-world and fictional phenomena, e.g., Category:People with bipolar disorder and Category:Fictional characters with bipolar disorder.

And was reverted with the comment more of less to the effect "let's discuss this first" (which is proper IMO, changes to rules should be discussed first).

So let's discuss it. Is this a welcome addition, or not? Herostratus (talk) 17:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

My post below was written before I noticed that the above section was about this very topic...: This page has had some copy on it for a long time that reads "Articles on fictional subjects should not be categorized in a manner that confuses them with real subjects." A couple of months back, I expanded it with a suggestion on how that would apply. Using this as an example, do other users feel like categories such as Category:Fictional characters with bipolar disorder belong as subcategories of the type Category:People with bipolar disorder? Would Catseealso be a better solution? In my mind, I may be seeing this as a difference between set and topic categories--what do others think? for his perspective. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:37, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I would say not. The editor who added this, Koavf, is extending a guideline about disambiguating reality-based and fiction-based articles to their category tree. The result is a broken category tree, where interested users can not locate a related article because it does not appear at all in the parent category. This defeats the purpose and has no visible benefits. Dimadick (talk) 08:43, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

"See also" in categories serve to display a related concept or category, but not a daughter category. An example is Category:Parliament of England leads to the succeeding political body: Category:Parliament of Great Britain.

This does not work well in categories where the common point is the diagnosis or misdiagnosis of a relatively common psychological disorder. These are not related concepts, it it the same concept in reality and its portrayal. Dimadick (talk) 08:53, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:USERNOCAT enforcement?
If I change a page the user or user talk space and the owner changes it back indicating that they know the policy, but simply prefer to keep it, what's next? Naraht (talk) 16:50, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you have an example so we can see the circumstances? Maybe the user just doesn't understand the issue. I have removed mainspace categories from userspace pages hundreds of times and never been reverted or seen any reaction. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:24, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have at least two where even though they know the policy.
 * The most recent, see the most recent edit on my talk page in regard to my edit here and its reversal.
 * I had another edit that was reverted where he insisted his sandbox was private and thus only he could edit it, but eventually the person blanked their sandbox for a while.
 * Most of the time I get no response (and more than a dozen times I've gotten thanked), I just don't know where to go with this one.Naraht (talk) 21:37, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have removed the category again with an explanation and link to the guideline.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Caleb_Woods&diff=762141437&oldid=762085274] I see you usually link WP:USERNOCAT but not in this example. Users are given a lot of freedom in their userspace because it normally doesn't affect our readers but here it does so WP:USERNOCAT should be enforced regardless what the user thinks. If they revert or object then just try explaining it and see if they accept. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I was trying to be more exact since most of the cats were fine, but I should have included the guideline. We'll see. Just curious, what is the next step if they don't accept?Naraht (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Worry about that if it ever happens. We have lots of user pages in article categories and one staying there a little longer is not something we need to discuss contingency plans for. Let's hope no users are silly enough to require options from Dispute resolution. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I was blocked for removing redlinks to joke categories from user pages. The policy is a mess.Rathfelder (talk) 10:07, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, as far as I can tell, at least two users including administrators would have me blocked for editing a user page for WP:USERNOCAT. Where should an RFC on that be started?Naraht (talk) 10:17, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Naraht (talk) 10:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

RfC about user categories guidelines
There is an RfC about the guidelines as pertain to user categories at Wikipedia talk:User categories I figure people who watch this talk page might be interested. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants  Tell me all about it.  21:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Cats
What do cats have to do with categories? The first line of this project page says: ''Multiple shortcuts redirect here, you may be looking for: WikiProject Cats.." I think that's a discrimination for dogs. Or birds. —  Ark25  (talk) 20:00, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Try clicking WP:CAT or WP:CATS, see where you end up. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:43, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Ahh sorry my bad. I supposed that was a "see also" note. In fact it's a disambiguation note. —  Ark25  (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

(Neo-)Nazism subcat disagreement
Editors interested in categorization are invited to comment at Talk:Strasserism, where there is a disagreement about inclusion of articles in both parent and child categories. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:54, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Similarly at Talk:White pride. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:25, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

SUBCAT - Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908
The same editor who thinks that WP:SUBCAT ought not apply to White Pride apparently also thinks that WP:SUBCAT is "nonsense" when applied to Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908.

Editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at Talk:Great White Fleet in Albany, Western Australia in 1908. (I use the term "discussion" loosely here, because the editors who don't like SUBCAT haven't yet indicated why). Mitch Ames (talk) 09:21, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Jewish-American comedians
I've noticed that there are quite a few comedians who are categorized under both Category:American Jewish comedians and Category:Jewish comedians. Is there any reason why the usual parent/child categories rule doesn't apply here? NewYorkActuary (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't see any reason why WP:SUBCAT ought not apply here. The articles in both (84, according to AWB) should be removed from Category:Jewish comedians.
 * (Likewise the 3 articles that are in both Category:American Jewish comedians and Category:American comedians should be removed from the latter.)
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 00:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for commenting. I'll get around to removing the parent categories over the next day or so.  But I'm not sold on your second point.  Although I see why Category:Jewish comedians should diffuse according to nationality, I don't see how Category:American comedians should diffuse according to ethnicity.  If I'm misunderstanding something, please let me know.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 10:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I make no assertions about the validity of the current category structure, ie Category:American Jewish comedians as a diffusing subcategory of Category:American comedians - merely that if it is valid, SUBCAT says articles ought not be in both. If you think that Category:American Jewish comedians ought to be a non-diffusing subcat of Category:American comedians, then add the appropriate template Non-diffusing subcategory. But note that Category:American comedians is marked with Category diffuse so if Category:American Jewish comedians is non-diffusing, we need to ensure that its contents are diffused on something else, to keep them out of Category:American comedians (directly). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:46, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess neither one of us really knows why Category:American comedians was marked as "diffusing" five years ago. Perhaps they intended that diffusion be done via the male/female sub-categories; perhaps they intended it to be done via the "by state" sub-categories.  But either way, my reading of WP:CATEGRS tells me that ethnicity probably isn't the way it should be done.  By the way, I think I might have raised this issue on the wrong page -- the instructions above seem to suggest that the conversation would be better held over at WP:Categories.  If you feel that there are unresolved issues here, I'll be happy to open up a thread at that other location.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 11:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Category:Heavily tattooed people
Thoughts on this category? AusLondonder (talk) 15:24, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * How does one define "heavily" tattooed? DonIago (talk) 19:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Categories need to be verifiable. If there are reliable sources out there that call a person "heavily" tattooed, then the category checks out. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It might mean that they have more tats than me (FYI, I have none). Anyway, WP:SUBJECTIVECAT is relevant. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:58, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Request for comments - politician categories and subcategories
Should the "politicians-by-century" categories (,, etc.) be treated as container categories under WP:SUBCAT? -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:05, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Survey

 * Oppose. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:05, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose This would render the categories useless. Dimadick (talk) 23:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I can see no purpose in emptying them of articles which are not in sub-categories. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:44, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. After reading the attached discussion, this seems like a further polite stalling tactic to avoid adherence to or enforcement of existing policy/guidelines. This is so obviously a bad idea I shouldn't have to explain why, but what is said above by others is the basic idea. This isn't the RfC that would follow from that attached discussion. I hesitate to call it 'disingenuous' because of the proposer's prolific history, but that's how it seems.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 12:28, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose And probably close per WP:SNOW. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:18, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion
Relevant discussion here. It lays out, generally speaking, my reasons for having acted as I did. I'm generally not a fan of overcategorization, and frequently work to battle it when I run into it, but this is a slightly different case, to me (as indeed all the people-by-century categories are, when I think about them.) Happy to elaborate further if asked - I will say that in my opinion a large part of the problem is that the politician-by-country-and-century category trees are not all quite created equal, so to speak, and if that were to be changed it would go some way towards fixing the issues I see.

(Please be gentle - this is my first RfC, and while I think I've done everything per instructions and by the book I may have missed something, in which case my apologies. :-) ) -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:05, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

What's going on?
This proposal may arise out of that long discussion on Ser Amantio di Nicolao's talk page, but it does not address the problem which was discussed there. It proposes a solution which nobody sought, and which is likely to be universally opposed.

The problem is quite simple. Ser Amantio di Nicolao (who I will abbreviate to SAdiN) has been flouting WP:SUBCAT on an utterly massive scale, by using Cat-a-Lot and AWB to copy the contents of categories such as Category:Assam MLAs 2006–11 to its parent Category:21st-century Indian politicians.

WP:SUBCAT is very clear. Apart from certain exceptions (i.e. non-diffusing subcategories, see below), an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it.

Yet despite being aware of this guideline, SAdiN made tens of thousands of edits which clearly breach it. SAdin had treated Category:Assam MLAs 2006–11, Category:15th Lok Sabha members etc as non-diffusing sub-categories, which they weren't. None of them was tagged as non-diffusing, and given the tools used, SAdiN must have been aware of that. Even more troublingly, SAdiN did not himself tag any of these categories as non-diffusing, which would have alerted others to what he was doing. Instead, he acted sneakily, on a huge scale.

Despite the fact that this was clearly in breach of WP:SUBCAT, and that SAdiN's edits received no support from those who responded to my call for outside commentators, SAdiN has steadfastly refused to revert their edits.

As that refusal dragged on, I told SAdiN that unless they could demonstrate a consensus for their massive changes, I would go to ANI to seek to have these changes reversed.

Bizarrely, what SAdiN has done here is not to see approval for their treatment of these categories as if they were non-diffusing.

What I and others have sought is for SAdin to ensure that normal WP:SUBCAT rules apply: articles in a subcat of Cat:xxth-century fooers are not also in Cat:xxth-century fooers itself. That Cat:xxth-century fooers containing only those articles which are not already in a sub-category.

Instead what SAdiN has proposed is to containerise Cat:xxth-century fooers, so that it contains only sub-categories. That would involve a massive purge. It would not just diffuse the articles which are already in subcats ... it would purge all the articles which are not in sub-cats.

What is going on here?

SAdiN is the most prolific editor in the history of the English-language Wikipedia. He has been an administrator for a decade. Most of his edits are to categories. So why this straw man RFC?

Did SAdiN intentionally set up a straw man RFC?

If not, I hope that they will sort this out. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * 1.) I have been an administrator here for nearly two years, not 10. Don't want to take credit for more than is my due. :-)


 * 2.) I did not set up a straw man. I have said - repeatedly, in this and other discussions over my time here - that I am not very good at expressing my train of thought in writing.  I never have been - things that make perfect sense to me in my brain, which I can express reasonably well when speaking (and having at my disposal tones of voice and hand gestures to emphasize my points) I find difficult to put down on paper. Such is the case here. The question I asked was, I thought, one which was a.) apposite and b.) comprehensive enough to invite discussion.  If you have other language which you would suggest I use, please feel free to do so; I would be happy to either reword this RfC or start a new one using your words instead of mine. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 23:50, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I am confused here and it seems like you are even more confused... In the discussion immediately above, you and User:BrownHairedGirl disagree but in the !vote above you two agree... So why is this RfC even happening? From one "power-user" to another, I have to frankly suggest that you cool down a little. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:21, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * My fault entirely - I thought what I had written above stated the case clearly and concisely, but it seems I've made more of a hash of it than I intended. Apologies for that. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:41, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Accidents happen. Have a good one. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

When is a "people from FOO" category justified?
When is a "people from FOO" category justified? Only if a person was born in FOO, or also if they lived there? Debresser (talk) 16:23, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * This question seems to come up periodically. The most recent discussion I found was Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 14.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 17:07, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * So both born in FOO and associated with FOO. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing dispute re duplication in child and parent categories
Opinions are sought at WT:CATP, regarding the use of WP:SUBCAT. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:43, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Eponymous categories needs more guidance
I know I'm drawing attention to a problem without proposing a solution, but the guidance in WP:EPONYMOUS isn't sufficient to know which categories to apply to an eponymous category. The section gives an example, but doesn't make it clear how to generalize from that example. What categories are "relevant to the category's content"? If better explicit guidance can't be given, then some more examples would help a little. — swpb T 15:55, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Category:Political correctness-related controversies
Morning, the above category seems to have exceptionally unclear inclusion rationale and has accrued some both obviously unrelated, or tenuously associated, events. Most just seem to be times when something controversial has happened involving race, sex or religion, and just then been bucketed in. Others are claimed by someone involved to be about Political Correctness, but the actual controversy is about something unrelated (such as violence, suppression of freedoms etc relating to wider political issues). I don't want to nominate it for deletion without understanding what we think should actually be in here first and whether it can be redeemed in any fashion. Any comments or ideas how this can be improved? Thanks Koncorde (talk) 10:32, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Second thought, looking at the content, it seems some are just examples of something considered "Politically incorrect". Koncorde (talk) 10:43, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I looked at a sample and all were in much more suitable categories so I suggest CFD for delete. For info: Categories_for_discussion/Log/2016_August_5 (that category was created by the same editor). DexDor(talk) 20:55, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Cheers, I thought it seemed strange. I suspect the originator was trying to subcategories things associated with political correct category, as I could see that being removed first in some cases. Koncorde (talk) 20:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
 * As this seems to be an important and helpful category, albeit one that needs improvement, I would like to offer my assistance in perhaps clarifying or defining the inclusion rationale. The alternative (deletion)  would seem to he throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  I am just not sure how to get started with such a task and am open to any suggestions.  2600:1012:B05A:3A60:CCDD:CB0D:4EA6:40F2 (talk) 02:06, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
 * 1. Get a wp account (so you can have a watchlist, receive pings etc), 2. Read the relevant wp guidance pages, 3. Explain why you think this cateogory is helpful and important. DexDor(talk) 05:37, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Simultaneous parent and child categorization when reason for being in parent is different than reason for being in child
has been removing alumni categories of people who also (for a different reason) belong to a different category that happens to be a child category of the alumni category. Two examples: I think this issue goes well beyond alumni categories, and that our categorization guideline provides poor guidance for this case. It allows articles to be in both a parent and a child category when the child is non-diffusing (often gender-based or ethnic subcategories of non-segregated parent categories) or when an article is the main article for a subcategory, but it doesn't describe any other exceptions. I think it is common sense that, when an article has a reason for being in a parent category that is independent of its reason for being in a child category, it should be in both, but this does not seem to be codified in our guidelines. Perhaps it should be? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Alfred Stillé went to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, and later to the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly listed in the alumni categories for both; Koavf removed the category describing his undergraduate alma mater leaving only the med school category. After being challenged, he refused to restore Stillé's membership in the main University of Pennsylvania category, instead creating a category for alumni of a particular school within the university (probably not defining) and putting Stillé in that new category.
 * Brenda Baker did her undergraduate studies at Radcliffe and her graduate studies at Harvard, at a time when both were independent institutions. Radcliffe later became part of Harvard, so now Radcliffe alumni are listed in a subcategory of Harvard alumni. Koavf removed the Harvard category describing Baker's graduate affiliation, leaving her only in the category for her undergraduate degree, but restored it after being challenged.
 * I agree that the guideline is confusing (altho we may disagree about this instance). What about more clear-cut cases like by geographic units? Clearly, a person from Chicago is also a person from Illinois (and from the United States and from North America...) I have only diffused categories which were explicitly marked as very large, requiring diffusion, containing thousands of members, and which have a logical scheme for diffusion. (Altho, I grant that the conversation that you bring up is certainly worthwhile and goes beyond my editing or your understanding of it.) Thanks. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:44, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * A person from Chicago is not from Illinois for an independent reason; they are from Illinois because Chicago is part of Illinois. So your example misses the point. And your pleading that you're only doing this when there are other unrelated issues also misses the point. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * "pleading that you're only doing this when there are other unrelated issues"? ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:05, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Why should it be relevant that you only do this for large categories? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The larger issue you are raising is valid and furthermore, it is important to diffuse large categories. Including articles in both parent and child categories simultaneously will only make larger categories larger. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:17, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Another similar case: Patrick C. Fischer for whom Koavf has created the one-article category Category:University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni to avoid simultaneously listing him in the parent category (for his undergraduate degree) and the business school category (for his MBA). It is plausible enough that Fischer's undergraduate degree actually is in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, but our article's text and its sources only say that he earned a bachelor's degree from Michigan. We can guess that he probably majored in mathematics (in LSA) but the sources don't say so, and he could as easily have majored in engineering (a different school) or business (same category as for his graduate degree, but we can't list an article twice in a single category). A quick web search also shows that Michigan undergraduate diplomas do not mention the name of the college, only the university, the degree, and the name of the degree program, so the case for this category being defining seems quite dubious to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:51, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Former members of... question
The North-American Interfraternity Conference is an organization composed of American Social Fraternities. In recent years a few of them members have withdrawn from the conference. There are also Fraternities which are no longer members of the North-American Interfraternity Conference any more because they have merged with other fraternities in the NIC (or in a few cases merged with another group which then merged with a group still in the NIC!

There is Category:North-American Interfraternity Conference, but i'm wondering what the best way is to categorize groups that fit into either of the "no longer member of" category. Separate subcategory? Two different subcategories? Include them in the main category (with an unusual sort key????)? Ideas?Naraht (talk) 21:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Change the guidelines policies
Categorization deletions are harming the encyclopedia. Organizing is wonderful, but deletions should be discussed. Deletions should go through a comment and consensus process. I also detest the practice of well-meaning, good faith category editors going through my contributions/created articles and category edits when I post a concern or revert their deletion. My personal email inbox will now overflow with WP messages that detail the mass category removals from the articles that I have on my watchlist. It is predictable.

I was appointed a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar with the University of Pittsburgh with the purpose of adding archival library content into Wikipedia and commons. Part of the process is to facilitate the 'finding' of such historical content by readers, historians, school children and authors - not category editors. That is to say, if someone reads the George Washington article, finds an archived image from Pitt that has been uploaded to commons, then appropriate and possible numerous categories should appear as part of the article. Readers find archived content by seeing and clicking on categories. The requests from WP readers to the Pitt archives for more historical information has doubled since I began this work. This is the whole idea behind the Visiting Scholars Program. With zealous un-categorization those links to other historical topics are disappearing. Readers don't care about guidelines related to categorization. They want to find historical connections. Of course parents and children will appear connected to articles. That is how you find related topics. Readers don't know or care what a parent or child category might be. Categorization might tidy up the encyclopedia a bit, but I hear precious little about making WP more reader-friendly. Readers like categories. Categories are finding aids. Category deletions are harming my work and the encyclopedia.

Best Regards, Barbara Page — Preceding unsigned comment added by Barbara (WVS) (talk • contribs) 11:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)


 * What would you change? A proposal to change the guideline is more likely to succeed if the proposal is specific. If you want to simply delete a section say so. If you think the wording should change, propose some new wording. It doesn't have to perfect, we can haggle over minor details, but at least get some approximate wording to start with. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:24, 9 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Applying SUBCAT so rigorously for a start is removing capacity for people who either dont want to pursue a line of enquiry through the original category tree structures that required a think of the ways thing work - there is a very good argument that parent and grandparent (even more) categories could be allowed to co-exist - perhaps with an internal wikimarkup device or code that might alleviate any sorting issues - as the writer above insists - the reader friendly aspect of allowing multiple levels to exist and appear at the same time - could surely better than the effort in deleting subcats.  There is however a point of absurdity and necessity where over-cat can make some items so categorised beyond common  sense - perhaps a limit needs to be reached at as well JarrahTree 11:35, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:EPONYMOUS issue - other eyes requested
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains

Should both/either/which of 4-4-0 and Category:4-4-0 locomotives (it's the EPONYMOUS lead article) be members of Category:Whyte notation? Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 20:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Backlog cats
Hi all. I've been whittling down a WikiProject Tennessee backlog, unassessed articles, for about a year and a half and have gotten it from a high of 800 down to less than 100. I hope to empty it soon. (Note that this is all manual editing, no semiautomated tools.) My problem is that I have in the past seen templates that say something like, "administrarors, please do not delete this category even if it is empty" and I now can't find it when I want to add it to the category page. Obviously the category needs to exist even if it's empty, because people will tag without assessing. Can anybody give me the link to that tag? White Arabian Filly Neigh 21:37, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:53, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Discrepancy between count of pages in a category and actual number of pages
I noticed that the advertised count of pages in some maintenance categories does not reflect the actual page count. Delayed update may have an impact but IMO the message should not be misleading. I started a discussion at Village pump (technical), so responses are probably best put there. , you were interested. David Brooks (talk) 00:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * As noted on Village Pump, this is the effect of a long-known and difficult database bug. David Brooks (talk) 18:04, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Should the talk pages of categories be tagged for wikiprojects?
I've seen some category talk pages occasionally get tagged for wikiprojects, but most aren't. Any thoughts on which of the two is best? – Uanfala 18:39, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It's up to each individual WikiProject; it's an established principle that every WikiProject reserves the right to decide which pages do or do not fall within their scope. WikiProject tagging is thus one of the few areas where WP:OWN does not apply. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:28, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That said, it's still worth tagging new categories to ensure that the category gets properly categorised itself, moved or redirected if it doesn't fit into the existing hierarchy of categories, and generally gets a once-over by someone who knows the subject area. If they then decide it doesn't need to be tagged for the project and remove the tag, well, job done. Cabayi (talk) 19:39, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Categorizing eponymous cats - suggestions?
I work on cleanup at Database reports/Uncategorized categories, and I've long struggled with the the guidance of WP:EPONYMOUS: "An eponymous category should have only the categories of its article that are relevant to the category's content." Other than one example, there's no expansion on what that means – what makes a potential parent "relevant"? I think, for the sake of consistency, we should try to flesh out this guidance more – so this is a call for ideas for how to do so, with an eye toward drafting new text for the guideline. Some questions to jumpstart with:


 * What aspects of an article topic are salient when categorizing its eponymous category?
 * How does the content of an eponymous category affect where it should be categorized?
 * Do eponymous categories ever belong in set categories, or should they only be in topic categories?

Hopefully there are some ideas floating out there already. Thanks! Please ping me in your reply. — swpb T 14:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You're struggling because that guidance is poor. I've never seen a good reason why an eponymous category shouldn't be in every category that its parent article is in, particularly since the point of categories is to create networks of related articles. If the article defines the category, then the category should have the same relationships as the article. postdlf (talk) 18:55, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal re: pre-alphabetic sort keys
Several characters (including [space], "*", "+", ans sometimes even "-" or others) are used to place entries before the main alphabetized list on category pages, and sometimes these appear in combination, so that the same category contains entries under multiple pre-alphabet characters. WP:SORTKEY's guidance is lacking regarding which prefix to use and when:
 * Asterisk vs. plus sign – WP:SORTKEY point #2 suggests reserving the [space] prefix for the "main" article, and using "*" for other related entries. But point #10 then mentions the use of "+", without explaining when, if ever, it should be used instead of an asterisk. This leads to categories containing both prefixes, with no clear reason for a distinction. If anyone can come up with a good reason, it should be in the guidance; otherwise, I propose revising #10 to discourage the use of plus signs and other visible characters in favor of asterisks in all cases.
 * For sub-categories, there's no such thing as a "main" entry, and subcats meant to go at the top usually (but not always) use the [space] prefix, except for "Lists of" cats, which use the asterisk. I propose making that explicit guidance, so that, again, we won't have cats with a mix of pre-alphabetic prefixes and no clear reason why.

It seems that these two rules are mostly already followed, so I think this is a least-effort, least-disruption solution to the hodgepodge of uses we have currently. — swpb T 14:11, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Guidance on categories
I am just starting to learn about categories, and I was taking a look at North American Prairies Province. There are a lot of overlapping categories there and I'm not sure which ones to retain. For instance, Category:Native grasses of the Great Plains region is a child of the following categories that are also tagged to North American Prairies Province:
 * Category:Flora of the Great Plains (North America)
 * Category:Flora of the Canadian Prairies
 * Category:Flora of the Plains-Midwest (United States)
 * Category:Grasslands of the North American Great Plainsx

Are there any good tools to visualize the category trees of a page? Also, how does one decide if a page should have both the parent and child category or just the child? It seems very confusing. - Furicorn (talk) 04:35, 27 August 2017 (UTC)


 * You can visualise the category tree with Special:CategoryTree.
 * The general rule is described in WP:SUBCAT (with my emphasis here): "an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it". There are some exceptions, also documented in that section of MOS, but none of them appear to apply here - so the article should be removed from the parent categories. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)


 * @Mitch Ames Thanks. This tool seems to give text output in a more useful manner than what I was able to do before, but two things come to mind.
 * I was imagining I might be able to get a visual diagram like File:Tree product pract.svg - is a tool for that available? Or maybe if I'm not getting a diagram with the tool you provided it's because I'm using the tool incorrectly - I didn't see any screenshots with examples of correct functioning on the mw:Extension:CategoryTree page, do you know where I might find any screenshots to confirm the expected output of the tool?
 * Are there any tools where I can give it an article instead of a category, and it generates the tree of categories visually?
 * - Furicorn (talk) 09:36, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of anything more sophisticated than Special:CategoryTree's text list of category contents. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:50, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I was discussing this with a few weeks ago; I made some notes, can't find them now. But at Categorization there is this diagram, which was apparently prepared using http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dapete/catgraph/ -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:32, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we ended up using https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dapete/vCat, which is the new version of catgraph. − Pintoch (talk) 11:36, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow what a powerful tool, this is almost exactly what I imagined. Only downsides for now are no color to indicate what categories are being directly applied to the page, and you have to construct the URL request yourself. -Furicorn (talk) 18:11, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Cycling teams based in Foo and Defunct cycling teams based in Foo?
Should a defunct cycling team be place into, for example, Category:Cycling teams based in France and Category:Defunct cycling teams based in France? I have previously asked this Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cycling/Archive 15, but looking back I don't think my question was clear (?). I have come back to this as has removed a lot of articles from the parent categories and want further opinions to potentially form a consensus. BaldBoris 13:29, 13 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Cycling teams based in Foo or Defunct cycling teams based in Foo, Not both --Kasir talk 17:17, 13 September 2017 (UTC)


 * They are non-diffusing categories so both. Defunct cycling teams and Defunct cycling teams based in Foo are not non-diffusing. See WP:DUPCAT. It matches all the examples. Severo (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Do you understand 's explanation why both have been used. If you disagree, explain why, and if you do not, please revert your removals, or I will. BaldBoris 17:26, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Category cycles (beyond Self-categorized categories)
In analyzing the 8/20/2017 database categorylinks table, I discovered two reasonable self-linked categories, Category:Hidden_categories and Category:Noindexed_pages, and a dozen or so non-reasonable ones, most of which have already been corrected in the current data, although there are new ones as well. This phenomenon is already tracked via Database_reports/Self-categorized_categories.

I also discovered many more link cycles of length greater than 1. For example, Category:Tracking_categories and Category:Container_categories are members of each other, thereby forming a cycle (loop) of length 2. This is probably reasonable as well, but there are many more cycles, most of which are non-reasonable -- in fact, a total of 5551 different cycles, when considering categories reachable from regular articles and other categories (namespaces 0 and 14), and not following links beyond Category:Articles. (None of this is taking into account redirected categories or articles.)

The longest cycle is 933 links. There are 849 different cycle lengths. Cycles of length 20 or less, while generally the most common, constitute fewer than 1500 of the 5551 cycles.

I don't have any suggestions at this point for what to do, but I'm sharing this in the hope of helping to improve Wikipedia over (a long) time as a natural language processing (NLP) resource.

RVS (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2017 (UTC)


 * This might be considered OK (or not) from the standpoint of a typical Wikipedia user, but it's awful from a computer processing standpoint. Perhaps one might say that the category links are (mostly) locally reasonable but globally unreasonable, as large numbers of slight departures from strict containment relationships can lead to unlimited wandering away from the original topic.
 * This gives rise not just to extremely long cycles, but to nearly all articles being reachable from many of the individual top level subcategories, which you'd expect to be reasonably disjoint. For example, from Main_topic_classifications, 5,670,109 articles and 1,415,839 categories are reachable. Yet from each of 20 of the 22 top level subcategories (,, ... ), 5,670,101 articles and 1,415,826 categories are reachable -- a mere 8 articles and 13 categories are not reachable; the other 2 top level subcategories ( and ) reach a few more.
 * I more or less randomly picked a top level subcategory and a fairly low level "unrelated" category  and ran a search for a path between them, coming up with Category:Matter <- Category:Physical_objects <- Category:Artificial_objects <- Category:Technology <- Category:Technology_by_type <- Category:Emerging_technologies <- Category:Artificial_life <- Category:Emergence <- Category:Philosophy_of_mind <- Category:Metaphysics_of_mind <- Category:Self <- Category:Philosophy_of_life <- Category:Ethics <- Category:Environmental_philosophy <- Category:Philosophy_of_biology <- Category:Biological_concepts <- Category:Species <- Category:Humans_and_other_species <- Category:Eukaryotes_and_humans <- Category:Animals_and_humans <- Category:Animal_welfare <- Category:Veterinary_medicine <- Category:Animal_anatomy <- Category:Organ_systems <- Category:Nervous_system <- Category:Neuroscience <- Category:Intelligence <- Category:Creativity <- Category:Innovation <- Category:Problem_solving <- Category:Decision-making <- Category:Policy <- Category:Decentralization <- Category:Autonomy <- Category:Free_will <- Category:Action_(philosophy) <- Category:Behavior <- Category:Behavioural_sciences <- Category:Social_psychology <- Category:Psychological_attitude <- Category:Belief <- Category:Philosophy <- Category:Philosophical_concepts <- Category:Concepts_in_metaphysics <- Category:Form <- Category:Structure <- Category:Society <- Category:Culture <- Category:Humanities <- Category:Anthropology <- Category:Cultural_anthropology <- Category:Western_culture <- Category:Western_philosophy <- Category:Analytic_philosophy <- Category:Philosophical_logic <- Category:Semantics <- Category:Concepts <- Category:Concepts_by_field <- Category:Social_concepts <- Category:Change <- Category:History <- Category:Fields_of_history <- Category:World_history <- Category:Social_movements <- Category:Intentional_living <- Category:Simple_living <- Category:Quality_of_life <- Category:Euthenics <- Category:Education <- Category:Academia <- Category:Academic_disciplines <- Category:Subfields_by_academic_discipline <- Category:Subfields_of_physics <- Category:Physical_cosmology <- Category:Physical_universe <- Category:Nature <- Category:Organisms <- Category:Organism_size <- Category:Animal_size <- Category:Megafauna <- Category:Humans <- Category:People <- Category:Articles_about_multiple_people <- Category:Social_groups <- Category:Cultures <- Category:Culture_by_ethnicity <- Category:Arab_culture <- Category:Arabic_languages <- Category:Arabic_language.
 * RVS (talk) 00:35, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * For the benefit of editors like me.... take a step back .... what is a “category cycle”? and why is computer processing a concern when it comes to categorization? Blueboar (talk) 01:40, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for asking! From Categorization: "When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent also. Category chains formed by parent–child relationships should never form closed loops; that is, no category should be contained as a subcategory of one of its own subcategories." By a cycle I mean a closed loop as in the second sentence of that quotation.
 * The first sentence suggests that, essentially, a category-subcategory relationship should be similar to a Venn_diagram with the circle of articles belonging to the subcategory being contained within the circle of articles belonging to the supercategory. You could also compare category-subcategory relationships to genus-species relationships, as for Tiger: Animalia / Chordata / Mammalia / Carnivora / Feliformia / Felidae / Panthera / tigris.
 * So the cases I've cited represent very widespread and substantial departures from this vision of how categories are intended to work. If Arabic_language is a descendant category of Physical_objects (... <- Physical_objects <- ... Arabic_language), that is supposed to mean that nearly all articles about Arabic language are also articles about physical objects, which is certainly not true. In contrast, all articles about tigers are ipso facto articles about mammals, since tigers are mammals.
 * Now, one might argue that the world is just too messy to fit well into this "Platonic ideal" of categorization (and I partially agree), but that is the general intention. I would suggest that some of the categorizations in the above chain from Matter to Arabic_language are simply wrong, such as Category:Artificial_life <- Category:Emergence and Category:Social_concepts <- Category:Change. Many others seem quite defensible, though; yet the cumulative effect is to end up with descendant categories that have wandered far afield of the starting point, but ostensibly represent sub-concepts of it.
 * Regarding computer processing, Wikipedia is a popular NLP resource, and intentionally so; that's a big reason why the database dumps are made available. To take a very simple example, it would be very nice if one could put together a corpus of documents about, say, Natural_resource_management (using an example from my previous comment), by finding all the articles under the category Natural_resource_management and its subcategories, without picking up all kinds of unrelated documents about things like Saudi_Arabian_al-Qaeda_members.
 * (Note: My convention is to write "category <- subcategory", reflecting the fact that category links are placed in the subcategory (or article) page, metaphorically pointing to the category, and also reflecting the | categorylinks database table structure, with its cl_to and cl_from fields.)
 * RVS (talk) 05:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Categories have always functioned more as webs of related content rather than strict hierarchies. You can't necessarily impute membership of an article to a category "generations" above its immediate parent categories. To treat it otherwise would swim against the tide of over a decade of practice, and break up relationships such that the resulting category structure would consist in a series of discrete and isolated ladders. postdlf (talk) 00:51, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I respect your opinion, especially given your apparent substantial contributions, but I'd be interested in hearing other views as well. The Categorization page I quoted from is pretty clear. If it really goes against established (as opposed to haphazard) practice, perhaps one or the other ought to be changed. By the way, from my first post is an example of a well-organized category structure (that happened to have a clearly incorrect link), so it is possible to follow the categorization concept successfully. RVS (talk) 21:54, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind, there are a lot of different kinds of linkage. It seems like perhaps categories should be reserved for categorization, which I presume was the original intention. Links to related categories that are not supercategories could go in the body of the category page. RVS (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * In fact, that's what it says in Categorization: "The description can also contain links to other Wikipedia pages, in particular to other related categories which do not appear directly as subcategories or parent categories". RVS (talk) 23:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * A perusal of the history of Categorization indicates that the hierarchical intention of categorization has been there since the beginning. E.g., see this revision. That revision even refers to my original motivation of extracting targeted portions of the hierarchy: "An advantage of categorization is that it allows extraction of large portions of Wikipedia." RVS (talk) 00:03, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Postdlf's views above. Category loops, in my experience, normally arise because of confusion about what the scope of a category is. I.e. with one meaning of "foobar" it belongs above "barfoo" in the category hierarchy, but with a different meaning of "foobar" it belongs below "barfoo"; once you clarify the meaning it doesn't fit in both positions. For example, a library might have a section labelled "Foobarology" that contains books about foobars (e.g. a Zoology section that contains books about animals), but in Wikipedia (because of the large number of articles) we often distinguish between Category:Foobars (articles about foobars) and Category:Foobarology (articles about the study of foobars - foobarologists etc) - confusion about this has been the cause of some category loops. DexDor(talk) 17:04, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Miscellaneous categorization issues
I sometimes uses Wikipedia for natural language processing (NLP) research. I was looking at Category:Sports_competitors and discovered that the Ahmed_al-Darbi page (he's a Guantanamo Bay detainee) had Category:Sports_competitors as an ancestor, due to a clearly wrong-directional and otherwise inappropriate link (which I deleted) making Category:Kenyan_male_marathon_runners a parent of Category:Kenya. (Kenya was involved via another questionable link making Category:Wars_involving_Kenya a parent of Category:War_on_Terror.)

Exploring the categorization links further, I also ran across the following series of links (A <- B indicating that page B is in category A), where all the pages listed are in the category namespace except Ahmed_al-Darbi: <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <-  <- Ahmed_al-Darbi.

Here the whole sequence <-  <-  <-  seems problematic to me. I looked around for the best way to report this and settled on the present page (Wikipedia_talk:Categorization). I also noticed a related older discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Archive_16, and of course Categorization. (By the way, there seemed to be at least a small consensus at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Archive_16 that Category:Rivers_of_Austria should not be a parent of Category:Danube, but no one has changed that to date.)

I see there's a Template:Check_category one can add to point out a problematic category, but there are two major limitations to that. First, it only allows you to specify the problematic parent category, but not which specific parent <- child links one has an issue with. Second, there are no additional template parameters that allow one to specify, say, a short explanation of why one thinks the category or link is problematic.

So I'm writing this for three reasons. One is to solicit opinions on the categorization links <-  <-  <-. The second is to raise the issue of a mechanism to identify and discuss specific problematic links. The third is to have something I can make reference to when I edit some of those problematic links, probably starting by deleting the <-  link. Thanks for your attention.

RVS (talk) 18:50, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Occasionally I find people attempting to adding pages to a category by editing the category page and adding a link to the page which they wish to appear in that category. When the page which they wish to appear in the category happens to be a category itself, one becomes a subcategory of the other - but the "wrong" way around. This may be the cause of some of the miscategorisations you describe. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:48, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Another factor that could possibly account for some of the oddities is the tendency for categorisation sometimes to happen not only on the basis of a semantics like "A is a membmer of B", but also along the lines of "A is related to B". So you have for example loops like <-  <-  <- . – Uanfala 23:07, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The latter one was easy: <-  is simply upside down. Removed. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:09, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Non-diffusing categories: better guidance needed
IMO a more detailed guidance should be given about deciding which categories are non-diffusing. The description " simply subsets which have some special characteristic of interest" is rather vague. Why Albania in "Rivers of Albania " makes it diffusing while "Women" in "Women novelists" is non-diffusing. A river being in Albania looks pretty much "special characteristic of interest" of the river to me, while "Woman" is pretty much decisive classification. Of course, I remember the politically correct shitfall with women writers, which actually reinforces my question: how to decide. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree (better guidance is needed) - once someone tags a category as non-diffusing editors may assume its been tagged for a good reason and thus be reluctant to remove the tag. DexDor(talk) 10:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Template categorization
What is the rationale under the decision that templates are not categorized by content? IMO It would be useful for maintenance. Templates are akin to lists and categories, they are navigation aids. The categorize the latter two, but not the first one. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
 * There are several reasons for categorizing Wikipedia infrastructure pages separately from encyclopedia content pages (i.e. articles including lists, outlines etc). One reason is to avoid cluttering content categories (e.g. Category:Foobars) with pages that are not relevant to readers (e.g. Template:Foobars, Category:WikiProject Foobars, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Foobars, Category:Requested photos of Foobars, Wikipedia:GLAM/Museum_of_Foobar/Meetup_2014). See User:DexDor/Administration pages are not articles for more. Why do you think it would be useful for maintenance? (there are many other ways for editors to find templates). DexDor(talk) 06:06, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * But they aren't. They're internal geeky utilities, code that results in output. They are not material for readers but for editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  20:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Categorization of explosives etc
It would be useful if some other editors could have a look at recent edits to Category:Gunpowder and Category:Explosives (etc). DexDor(talk) 06:55, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

"Fooish children's animated television series"
I've recently discovered a number of categories in the format "Fooish children's animated television series" (examples: and ). I remember reading in a guideline or discussion that a category should only have so many intersections, but I can't remember exactly where. So: are these categories too specific? Trivialist (talk) 23:40, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * perhaps you are thinking of WP:OC. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:38, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Please come and help...
Should MoS shortcut redirects be sorted to certain specific maintenance categories? An Rfc has been opened on this talk page to answer that question. Your sentiments would be appreciated!  Paine Ellsworth   put'r there  16:37, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Category:Kvng RTH
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Category:Alternative medicine
I am attempting to improve the categorisation in this area and my attempts are being resisted by people from the WP:FTN group who will not let me, for example, put articles about acupuncture into that category. As far as I can see they fundamentally disagree with the heirarchical nature of the category system. They want to use categories as labels. I would like some help and advice please. Rathfelder (talk) 23:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you referring specifically to Fringe theories/Noticeboard? Mitch Ames (talk) 01:06, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes I am. Rathfelder (talk) 15:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That's redundant over-categorization; Category:Acupuncture's parent already is Category:Alternative medicine. I'm not sure your idea of what "hierarchical" means matches the usual definition.  By way of comparison, if something is already categorized asa US Air Force plane, it does not also get categorized redundantly as a military plane and as a plane.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  14:42, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I know that, but when I do it I get repeatedly reverted. I don't want to get involved in an edit war on my own. Rathfelder (talk) 15:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Yet more sprawling by-centuries categs
A discussion has been started by at WT:WikiProject Women_in_Red about his creation and population of yet more huge people-by-century categories, including some of which have already been deleted at WP:CfD.

These categories potentially contain many thousands of articles, and are being populated with stealthy edit summaries which give no clue as to what is being done. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Interlanguage links
I note that there has been some editing recently to the one sentence paragraph saying "Interlanguage links work on category pages just as they do for articles, and can be used to link to corresponding categories on other language Wikipedias".... While this is true (the links do work on category pages), I don’t think we have ever discussed the more fundamental question... do we WANT interlanguage links on our category pages (and if so, HOW)?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what this sentence is trying to convey, but it appears to be telling us to place articles at (say) the French or German WPs within the categories here on the English WP... if so, I have to question whether this is something we want to allow. I question whether linking to articles at our sister projects fits with the purpose of our categorization system. I have always thought of our category system as being for internal navigation - helping readers find related articles located here on WP.en.

I do think it helpful to point readers to articles at our sister projects ... but I am not at all sure whether linking to them in categories is the right WAY to do this. Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2018 (UTC) Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Reading that one sentence paragraph, I think it is simply intended to say that a category page can have interlanguage links to corresponding category pages in other languages, in the left sidebar (which is common practice), just like articles have links to corresponding articles. So I agree with the reverted edit which said this should now be handled at Wikidata. --Pipetricker (talk) 15:54, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah... then I was misinterpreting what the sentence is trying to say. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 16:05, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I might add that I think inline interlanguage links should almost never be used on category pages, just like they should almost never be used in article text. @Paucabot, Trivialist. --Pipetricker (talk) 17:10, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I suggest changing it from "Category pages can have ..." to "Like other kinds of page, category pages can have ..." since the present wording implies that interlanguage linking of cats is different in some way. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:55, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If it's not different, why say anything at all? Mathglot (talk) 11:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Category Loops
My reading of WP:Categorization is that the category structure should not contain loops; i.e. A is a member of B is a member of C is a member of A. All categories should (eventually) be sub-categories of the root category, Category:Contents. However, loops do exist, for example:

Category:Truth -> Category:Concepts in epistemology -> Category:Epistemology -> Category:Knowledge -> Category:Truth

Should these loops be broken? If so, how? power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 22:24, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There are several threads on this matter in the archives of this page. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I see at least two threads in the most recent archive page, but neither of them discuss what should be done about this. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 21:20, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I suggest that Category:Knowledge ought not be a subcategory of Category:Truth. Not everything that we (individually, and as a society) "know" is necessarily true. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:34, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I've decided the correct way to fix this loop is that "Concepts in X" categories shouldn't be in regular categories. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 17:54, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Revisiting gendered categories: Let's have a clear criterion of "has or can have a proper article"
I'm not at all a fan of these  categories in most cases because they have a "ghettoizing" effect, especially a psycho-social one. Every time we use a category like "Category:British female artists", etc. without a well-sourced reason for having it, it's like describing someone as "my Jewish friend Jimmy" instead of "my friend Jimmy".

Previous RfCs and other discussion about such categories have been sharply critical, yet we still keep having the categories. Why? As far as I can tell it's just for the convenience of some individuals. By this reasoning, WP:OVERCAT should simply be marked Historical and ignored, since every intersection of topics turned into a category is convenient for someone. The more obvious ghettoizing effect, of women not being found in general categories but only in "women" or "female" subcategories, is partially resolved by making them non-diffusing categories; however, this still depends on editors actually listing these subjects in the specific and the general category, and them remaining categorized that way, which is often not the case. And this doesn't nothing about the perception problem. [PS: All of this applies to other such "socially charged demographics" categories like "gay", "Catholic", "Hispanic", etc., though we're mostly rid of those that are not well-justified.]

We need to come up with a compromise that draws an easy-to-understand line. The one I suggest is this: Such a category is created/kept only if we're certain that a properly encyclopedic article can and should be written about it (or already has been), at least at the top of the category tree.

Here's a detailed example: I wanted to delete Category:Female pool players as ghettoizing, when it was first created, but I would !vote to keep it now, because it would be both possible and desirable to have a comprehensive Women in billards (or whatever) article that covered this history: It's fair to say that our coverage of pool is sorely incomplete until this article is written. (Some basics can be found in select bios like Jean Balukas). The same is of most occupations; the typical arc is that they were virtually all male-dominated in a simply de facto way, until women entered the non-domestic workforce in massive numbers.
 * 1) Billiards started as a unisex game of the European nobility, and remaining that way through centuries of diffusion to lower classes.
 * 2) It changed to an almost exclusively male activity (outside the home) for over a century (pool was associated with gambling and other ne'er-do-well activities, carom billiards and English billiards as sports were regulated by all-male sports organizations, and public recreational tables were found almost only in pubs (where women were generally not welcome yet) and men's private clubs.
 * 3) Pool in turn became an almost exclusively male competitive sport, until the 1960s saw women players demanding to be permitted in pro tournaments and meeting player and organizational resistance (to the present day).
 * 4) All this culminating in the founding of the Women's Professional Billiard Association in 1976 and its continued success, with women actually now dominating the public face of pool and making more stable incomes at it than the male pros (because WPBA got its shizzit together on many levels, from savvy marketing to guaranteed prize money held in escrow to exclusive long-term TV deals, and so on.
 * 5) Similar story with snooker, except that the female pros are actually ghettoized within their sub-industry (they don't have a successful WPBA equivalent), and many of them consequently have switched to pool; until recently, women's pro pool was dominated mostly by former pro snooker players.
 * 6) At top-level pro play, the games remain almost entirely segregated, with the World Pool-Billiard Association and similar sport governing bodies maintaining separate men's and women's divisions, though many events are divided now into "open" and women's, with women allowed in the former.

Counter-example: There's nothing like the women-and-cue-sports story when it comes to women playing particular musical instruments. Women drummers (to use an example from a thread at Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects) are actually quite common, they're just not common among touring pros probably simply because drum kits seem to appeal more to males on average (whether that's a factor of marketing or what is off-topic for now). It's exactly the same as the relative lack of women construction contractors; it's not a line of work that seems to attract many women. It is like the lack of women fighter pilots or female players of American football, which are in fact due mostly to institutionalized discrimination, exactly as with pool: we have clear proof of long-term, organized efforts to bar women's entry. We do not when it comes to drumming or working with power tools.

Our coverage of drumming in popular music incomplete without an article on players who are female, and writing one would be an exercise in original research and PoV editorializing, due to lack of secondary sources for "women as drummers" being a subject of coverage of its own. There's lots and lots of material about women as billiardists and the industry response to them (though much of it is in speciality publications like Billiards Digest and not available online, so doing the article will require library work).

What's current practice? We seem to keep keeping stuff like Category:Actresses and its zillion subcats (despite decreasing support for even using this term at all in female actor bios), on the sole basis that there are some separate awards (Oscars, Golden Globes, etc.) for actresses and male actors, despite there being no particular difference between an actor and an actress in what they do and how they do it. This doesn't really seem good enough to me. It's really quite flimsy.

The reason we have these separate categories has nothing to do with the people receiving them but with the nature of human fiction, which usually involves a love interest which in turn is usually heterosexual; it violates average public expectations that the two main stars in a movie that is at least partially about their relationship are directly competing with each other for a single award. So, they have separate awards to make people happy – and it also lets them give out more awards per film, which makes the awards show go on much longer, which means more sponsor advertising dollars, and so on. It's a business decision.

What's the problem? The problem with this weak "sometimes some separate treatment, like for awards" standard is it could be used to "women-fork" any occupational category of any kind as long as someone can find, somewhere, a case of women and men receiving recognition in a sex-divided way. We can do better than this, by tying it to there being a sourceable distinction on many levels, about which a proper article can be written. Important: Actress redirects to Actor, and any attempt to fork it would fail. And "sometimes separate treatment" doesn't cut it anyway. We don't have separate articles on driving cars and teenage driving cars, despite there in fact being separate laws about the latter.

What about other categories? When it comes to bios, the craptastical ghettoizing effect can be mitigated a little by other categories; e.g., Georgia O'Keefe is in the arguably pointless Category:American women painters, but also in Category:20th-century American painters which is not divided by sex. This should be probably be done in all cases in which we have a gendered category split and the members of it span more than a century and there are enough in the categories for a split. But this only works when the main category (here, Category:American painters) is a container category and stuff is all supposed to be in subcats [that category badly needs work in this regard].

It doesn't work for, e.g. Category:Women eSports players; the number of notable pro gamers is too small for such a split, and it's an occupation almost entirely confined to the 21st century (some 1990s, but not enough for a century split). And Category:Women eSports players is perhaps the worst example of all time, since there are not reliably sourceable differences between male and female gamers, other than that some of the former have been total asshats to some of the latter; half the time no one's even going to know what their sex or gender identity is unless they disclose it or they show up for an in-person, live-action competition, and even then people can "pass" if they try hard. It's not sufficient (yet) that we have articles at Women and video games and Sexism in video gaming, almost entirely about video game marketing and amateur player experience, respectively. They're not focused on women as pro gamers, game developers, or other professionals, and it's unlikely that a proper encyclopedia article can be written about that; there simply isn't enough history there, and what there is isn't sufficiently distinct from men doing the same work.

What about wikiprojects' tracking needs? The argument is offered that we need these categories, and lots more of them, to help wikiprojects keep track of the level of article development in particular topic areas. But this is not what user-facing article categories are for. This can done by creating lists at the wikiprojects, by applying hidden categories with talk page wikiproject banners (e.g. ), or both.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  07:30, 1 January 2018 (UTC); addendum: 04:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC) substantially revised to address some issues raised below: 06:38, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * In general, I support the idea and agree with your reasoning. If it were a proposal I'd !vote for it. Because it's not, I'll offer some thoughts.
 * It should apply equally to male fooians (which is implied by the section heading, but doesn't get a mention thereafter), and any formal proposal should say so explicitly. A specific example is.
 * they have a ghettoizing effect (of women not being found in general categories but only in "women" or "female" subcategories) — It's quite common for such categories to be non-diffusing, e.g., so they are in the general category as well. That's not a justification for keeping the gendered category though.
 * Gendered categories introduce a new source of inconsistencies - e.g. American male painters vs American women painters. (We should probably try to fix these, if we can't get rid for them.)
 * Such a category is created/kept only if ... a[n] ... article can and should be written about it ... — Corollary: such categories should include a Cat main, and if no such article exists a stub should be created.
 * In competitive sports, the existence of a separate organisation for females might be a justification for the existence of a separate category, because that organisation might be notable enough for an article, e.g. Women's Professional Billiard Association, AFL Women's.
 * Women drummers... — I don't think it invalidates your argument, because it's about a specific organisation rather than women drummers in general, but we do have Women Drummers International, which some might claim is a justification for.
 * We seem to keep keeping stuff like Category:Actresses and its zillion subcats — Some of those subcats may be justified by the existence of an article, e.g. and Academy Award for Best Actress.
 * In some cases it might help your argument if you had references for some of the statements, e.g.
 * "Women drummers ... are actually quite common, ... not very common among touring pros because of the physical demands of the job, and probably simply because drum kits appeal more to males on average"
 * "actresses and male actors ... The reason we have these separate categories ... the nature of human fiction ... violates average public expectations that the two main stars ... are directly competing with each other for a single award ... more awards per film ... more sponsor advertising dollars ..."
 * "...driving cars and teenage driving cars, despite there in fact being separate laws about the latter."
 * It's not an article so, external sources aren't required - Wikipedia articles would suffice - but any proposal would be stronger if its statements are backed up by something.
 * Category:Women eSports players is perhaps the worst example of all time, since there is really, really, really no difference at all between male and female gamers — "eSports" and "gaming" are not synonymous, but we do have an article Women and video games, which could give some justification for the existence of the category.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 10:22, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the extra-detailed response.

Agreed on male categories; there may be some defensible ones, but some clearly are not, including Category:Male models and Category:Male nurses; male models have existed as long as there have been models, they're just in lower demand; male nurses have not been unusual for generations now. I'll address the "non-diffusing is the solution" idea below, since two others raised it. Agreed on the inconsistencies point; though fixable it's widespread and annoying and causes cleanup to be needed (either duplicate categories, or categories not being applied because the editor thinks the cat. doesn't exist). Should probably stick to "female" and "male" since so many of these do not have adulthood as a criterion. Corollary: agreed, though it shouldn't be implied that creating the stub is to create the category if the category is genuinely justified. Orgs: I wasn't meaning to imply at all that the existence of a professional association is sufficient; I could create right now an organization called the Men's Political Consulting Association, with full 501(c)(3) status, but that would not justify a "Category:Male political consultants", regardless of any diffusing question, even if we had 20× more articles on people in that line of work. The pool example was about the entire history of the billiards–women relationship, so I would have to clarify that in a real proposal. Yes, we would keep Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners, etc., but there's no reason for them not to be in non-gendered Category:Actors container cats. like Category:Film actors by award, with the pointless Category:Film actresses by award simply going away. Sourcing: This an article, as you say, and the point isn't to mire people in citations for the obvious (even WP:CIRCULAR ones. I would remove rather than source. Given comments below challenging the obvious; it's a political distraction.  Women and video games could potentially be justified, in combination with Sexism in video gaming (see below), but only if there's focused, sourced material clearly established noteworthy distinctions between men and women as pro gamers, which is not presently the case.  Experiencing some (sometimes a lot of) prejudice isn't enough; that would be true at one point or another for women in every non-domestic occusation, often within living memory of many of us.  And changing demographics aren't enough by themselves (and may even mitigate against such categories, as the statistical differences recede). Could write on article Women and tool ownership about increased tool purchases by women, cheesy pink-tool marketing, gender gap in picking up tool skills from an early age and consequent safety/injury issues, etc., etc., but it wouldn't justify categories of women contractors, women set constructors, etc., if the article didn't strongly show gender differences in tool-related occupations.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  02:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC) I've since revised a bit to reflect the above comments. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  06:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Proposal would have to be written tighter to account for some of that stuff (e.g. existence of an organization isn't sufficient, nor is an award, but a pattern of separate orgs and awards is) if a real one were to be drafted.


 * The solution to categories being ghettoizing is non-diffusing categories. So since the problem you describe has a solution, what useful thing would removing these categories accomplish? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:35, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with David Eppstein; this is a complicated solution to a problem with a very simple solution in the form of non-diffusing categories. And even aside from that, there's a bigger problem with this suggestion; it requires us to determine whether practically every activity and occupation has some form of bias against women or not. For many activities, that's a pretty controversial question, and if we're forced to make an official decision on the matter it could look like we have a house POV. (The original suggestion has already made some fairly bold assumptions: why are men more likely to be interested in drum kits or power tools? Are male and female eSports players really on equal footing when we have a whole article on sexism in video gaming?) This suggestion seems like an unnecessary can of worms at best. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 02:59, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The existence of a "female" category without an article to justify it is an unsourced POV, that women are different. In the interests of gender-neutrality, we ought have a male category everywhere we have a female category - unless we can demonstrate that it's not necessary, eg by the existence of a corresponding female article but no male article, in which case we're back to the original suggestion. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:21, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Strongly agreed on the first point, and that's a great way of putting it. Don't agree with the latter idea; we souldn't mutiply the maintenance problem by having thousands and thousands of new "Fooian male bazquuxes" categories. Half the point of this proposal is to get rid of pointless categories (the other half being, obviously, a WP:Systemic bias sociological one).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  02:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware the vast majority of Women X categories are already non-diffusing, so I'm quite baffled as to why SMc bothered to write all this out. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 13:25, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * In reponse to David Eppstein, TheCatalyst31 and Joe Roe at once: I may have drafted this poorly in leading with an article ghettoization point. However, non-diffusing parent categories only partially address that problem (see reply below, to Montanabw), because that "solution" depends on all the articles being properly categorized in both the gendered and the parent, ungendered category, and this often does not happen. The bigger point – which I seem to have lost and would address in a rewrite – is that these categories are  (and politically) ghettoizing for readers and editors.  It's a lesson I learned around age 8, from a PSA aired frequently between cartoons. Boy: "My Jewish friend Jimmy says I'm prejudiced." Father: "Well, you are, because you think of him as your Jewish friend not simply your friend."  Every gendered category that doesn't have a thoroughly sourced reason to exist, based on marked differences between the male and female role, experience, public reaction, etc., is something very much like calling someone your Jewish friend. I can't accept the "it's hard" argument.  It's part of WP's job as an encyclopedia to "determine whether [the subject] activity and occupation has some form of bias against women" and cover it adequately if so. (And yes, that can be politically tense, as is much of what we do in writing proper articles.)  Until that's been done, the article is incomplete, and an insufficient basis on which to create a gendered category. Yes, this means way fewer gendered categories, and I would hope that was obvious, being the central idea of the draft proposal.

I'm not going to get into distracting side arguments about demographics. I've just trimmed the material instead. But go to any Home Depot and note the M:F ratio (and after registering the low number of women, also note how many of them are there with their men and buying non-tool household items while the men are getting tools). Go to 50 rock, pop, jazz, etc., shows over several years and count the number of female drummers; depending on where you live, should be in the 5–15% range at most. I'll just drop such material from any actual proposal rather than invite pointless side disputes about it.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  02:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC); revised: 05:46, 3 January 2018 (UTC) I've since revised a bit to reflect the above comments. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  06:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There isn't anything non-"simple" about having a gendered category only when RS tell us we really should have one, for a confluence of still-relevant reasons, which a proper article would already provide (or demonstrate to be not relevant).

PS: I notifide additionae relevant projects. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  05:46, 3 January 2018 (UTC) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  06:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Question - are these categories useful for editors taking part in Women in Red editathons (i have left a message on their talkpage notifying them of this discussion)? Coolabahapple (talk) 06:55, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Good question, though it seems dubious. Redlinks aren't going to be be in the categories. Maybe WP:WikiProject Women has more use for them?  The one  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  02:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As one of the more active contributors to Women in Red, I must say I find the non-diffusing women categories extremely useful for several reasons. First of all, they give a clear overview of how women's biographies for a given occupation are developing and, when compared to the parent categories, give a general impression of how well their coverage has been progressing. They also provide a set of examples which article creators can use to improve their own articles. In addition, they list many names from Asian, African and other non English-speaking countries which would not normally be recognized as women's names. Furthermore, they can be used as a straightforward basis for creating lists of women in a given occupation, often on the basis of nationality and/or period. But in my opinion, the most useful reason for such categories is that they provide support for the many specific editathons we launch (over 30 a year) as they can be used by our editors as they develop new articles or improve existing articles. Finally, just as we use similar categories from other language versions of Wikipedia to create coverage in English, our Women in Red associates working in other languages can draw on the articles listed in these women categories to enhance the coverage of women in the language in which they work.--Ipigott (talk) 10:06, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * They also provide a set of examples which article creators can use to improve their own articles. — Why are the "female fooian" articles any better than or different to the "fooian" articles as examples? Is there any reason to believe that articles about females are generally better than articles about males? (If there is, perhaps we need "male fooians" to help find the articles that need improving.) Are there specific characteristics of articles about women that are missing from articles about men? The only one I can think of (from my Western male perspective) is handling name changes due to marriage. (recent example)
 * ... they list many names from ... non English-speaking countries which would not normally be recognized as women's names. — That could apply equally to male categories. But in either case it's a circular argument, since presumably the only reason you'd need to recognise the names as female (or male) is because you're explicitly looking for people of a specific gender - in which case the advantage of the category is simply that you can find people of a specific gender.
 * Furthermore, they can be used as a straightforward basis for creating lists of women in a given occupation, — Isn't that simply perpetuating the status quo, rather than justifying it? I.e. the reason for categorising by gender is to make it easier to create lists by gender - but why do need/want lists by gender? (in the absence of a specific article about that gendered list criterion)
 * Our friends at WikiProject Wikidata would probably just tell us to search for all of the people in Wikidata with the appropriate value for gender.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 11:40, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And this all sounds like stuff that can be handled with list non-articles at the wikiproject; I do this kind of stuff all the time and in great detail for other topics (list examples: WP:CUEBIOS, WP:CUEORGS, WP:CUEMISC, and lists of good, featured, etc., articles at the main WP:CUE project page, plus its to-do box template). If they don't like lists, they can use WikiProject Women in Red maintenance categories added by talk page project tags, e.g. .  The entire idea "we should keep these categories because it helps my wikiproject work" is completely wrongheaded when it comes to categories . Integrated this into the draft material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  06:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC); revised 06:38, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The concept that a category can only exist if there can be an article about it is comparing apples and oranges. A similar issue comes up with whether something should be a category or a list article.  In both cases, the WP servers aren't going to crash if there are a few more of either and the REAL purpose of categories is as an assist to the user looking for related articles.  In that sense, non-diffusing gendered categories are extremely useful and important, just as are categories breaking down articles by geography, race, language or whatever.  This topic was also discussed a couple years back in the wake of some very negative mainstream publicity for WP, and the consensus to have people placed both a main category and, if there was a need, in non-diffusing gendered categories for BOTH men and women. Let's drop this stick and not stir up this pot again.  Montanabw (talk) 18:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have no "stick to drop", as I have never proposed anything like this before, and am substantially revising to take comments into consideration as we go. Also, WP:CCC is policy; there is not and never will be a principle that something discussed years ago cannot be revisited; please note the title of this section. I don't need to be told it's been discussed before when the entire point is that it's been discussed before and the interim solution has not been working. Consensus does not change if the pot is not stirred.  Pot stirring is a good thing, or stuff sticks to the bottom, burns, and ruins the entire stew.  The fact of the matter is that conflicts over gendered terminology remain very frequent, and the main impediment to their resolution is the presence of questionably appropriate gendered categories, which are used as an excuse to keep "genderizing" in the prose. Our stew is already burning. This isn't similar in any way to the choice between categories and list articles (and a "choice between" generally doesn't exist; while some things suited to listification make poor categories, most topics of lists have a category or at least a parent category if the list has been split into multiple lists due to length). I agree that categories exist to aid navigation for readers "looking for related articles". But two articles on artists that happen to be women (or lesbian, or black, or Hindu) aren't "related" in any meaningful way. It's just another WP:OVERCAT, an intersection that is convenient for someone but doesn't indicate a connection or sensible comparison.  In some cases, like Category:Female players of American football, there clearly is a meaningful relationship (which I needn't belabour here).   the kind of gendered, non-diffusing category we should retain. However, as I predicted elsewhere in this thread, some of the entries are still completely diffused, and do not appear in the appropriate non-gendered equivalent category (which might be quite a bit more specific, like Category:American football quarterbacks or whatever). I fixed a couple of these, but gave up after a while, since it's not one of my topics of interest and my to-do list is already huge. If we're not even doing this right with gendered categories that make good sense, "non-diffusing is the solution" is very obviously not the solution when we're contemplating thousands of way less justifiable categories. They will in fact ghettoize subjects and.
 * You said "but two articles on artists that happen to be women (or lesbian, or black, or Hindu) aren't 'related' in any meaningful way." This is nonsense: they're minorities in their field, which makes it a common subject of inquiry. There are books and theses about all four of the subjects you raised. But you want to actively prevent readers looking for that material from finding it. Why? The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 07:56, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The point is, there don't seem to be any books or theses which treat them together. There are all sorts of books about starfish, basketball, an rockets, but we don't put all of those in the same category (even if an intersection could be found by which to lump them together).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  13:51, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As Montanabw said, the purpose of categories is to assist our readers in looking for related articles. In areas where "women in X" is any kind of numerical minority (which is most things), it is extremely useful to have categories by which one might find articles of interest. Conversely, there are areas where the reverse is true: "women netball players" would not be a sensible category because it would be nearly all of them, but "men netball players" would be. They're only ghettoizing if they're diffusing - which they should never be, and which there should be an absolute rule against if there already isn't. There is no need for tedious process about justifying whether we should have a non-diffusing category that will be helpful to many people: in the very rare case where to do so wouldn't make sense (such as in the example I gave), CfD is more than capable of taking care of it. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 19:11, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Addressed most this in the response to Montanabw. Why should there be a genuinely tedious and easily broken process of non-diffusing (of cross-categorizing) – a process which people are ignoring or breaking ("removing redundant category") even when it's really, really obvious to not ignore it? We can have a much less tedious un-process of "don't create pointless categories for which an article doesn't and probably never will exist". And if "the purpose of categories is to assist our readers", then why is the primary rationale offered in their defense "it makes doing some kinds of wikiproject work easier" (= "the purpose of categories is to assist some of our editors")?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  06:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The solution to the problem you raise is to have an explicit guideline that these categories are non-diffusing and for editors to enforce that. The categories are very far from pointless - as several people have noted, they're really useful for readers looking to find relevant content. Making out like these are used for internal purposes instead of as a very obvious means of readers finding what they're looking for is nonsense. I don't get the obsession with whether an article exists: an article doesn't need to ever exist for a category to be helpful. Having an article may be a useful addition in providing a more comprehensive coverage of the subject, but it's totally unnecessary for the category's existence. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 07:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We're nowhere close to getting rid of "gay" categories. Anyway, I alerted Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality to this discussion. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And nor should we be. "Gay people who have broken into X field" is a specific area of interest for very obvious reasons. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 21:46, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, as the discussion I linked to shows, I don't agree with getting rid of the LGBT categories. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:36, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Which isn't in any way incompatible with this draft proposal: they're things about which real articles could and probably should be written, at least at the "top level" of the category branch. LGBT's intersection with political office is a good example; something like the Thorpe affair scandal of the 1960 would not be a scandal today because being gay (in the West) isn't exactly scandalous now. Why that's true is article-worthy (especially given the well-populated Category:LGBT heads of government), and not terribly difficult to research. It's actually pretty strange that we don't have the article already, given the size of Category:LGBT politicians and the amount of RS material written about various of them. Category:Lists of the first LGBT holders of political offices even provides convenient timelines to use as a starting place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  04:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The whole article issue is a red-herring: categories for minority people in fields should absolutely not ever need an article to justify the category. It could be a useful adjunct, but there is no logical reason why it must have one, and it would be wildly counterproductive to do so in the mass loss of useful categories. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 07:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've yet to hear a good argument for there not being a "sexual orientation" parameter on Category:People and person infobox templates. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 03:35, 3 February 2018 (UTC)


 * A couple of years ago I created the category Male serial killers as there was already a category for Female serial killers. A proposed deletion message was added to it, the main argument for only having a female category seemed to be female serial killers are significantly rarer than male serial killers. In the end both categories were kept but it was based on no consensus. The discussion is here.


 * I think I am leaning towards keeping the categories. On the one hand scrapping gender categories is an even-handed approach and avoids a binary approach (you're either a pool-player, an actor, a serial killer etc. or you're not), on the other hand it can be helpful in calculating areas where women are under-represented and boosting the number of articles. Women scientists for example. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 03:29, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Guidance on how much to catagorize?
I haven't been involved in categorization much in the past, so I'm a little hazy on the subtleties. I recently published American Bank Note Company Printing Plant. I put it into:
 * Category:Parks in the Bronx
 * Category:Dance in the United States
 * Category:Charter schools in New York (state)
 * Category:Business incubators of the United States

and I'm not sure if those were appropriate. In all of those cases, those categories don't describe the main topic of the article, but things that are mentioned in the article (a park that's nearby, and several tenants of the building). Is that what we're looking for, or should I stick to more core categories? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * We should always be categorizing the subject of the article, not just anything mentioned in or related to the article. American Bank Note Company Printing Plant is not a park, nor is it a charter school, nor is it more than tangentially at best related to the topic of dance. What do you think categories would look like if we categorized merely based on what is mentioned? postdlf (talk) 17:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I've removed the extraneous cats. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:04, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion of in pro coach article
There is a dispute at TM 01:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for telling me about the discussion, Namiba (sarcasm in case you can’t tell). As I mentioned in the edit summaries, Longstaff’s high school coaching stints have been mentioned in each hiring announcement as he has moved jobs. His notability is as a basketball coach and those who coach for a living have career paths - his path to the professional ranks was through high school just as some come through college. In fact, Longstaff’s first head coaching job was in high school and he earned his first NBA job based on his experience as a high school coach. If this were a professor or a politician who happened to have a stint as a high school basketball coach I would agree it wouldn’t be defining. But a basketball coach? Absolutely. Rikster2 (talk) 02:56, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Parent categories for topic categories
I'm confused about appropriate parent categories for topic categories. WP:SUBCAT says "If logical membership of one category implies logical membership of a second (an is-a relationship), then the first category should be made a subcategory (directly or indirectly) of the second." This makes me think that articles in the subcategory would also belong in the parent category, eg. all members of Category:Borders of France‎ also belong in the parent category Category:Geography of France‎. However, for topic categories, I find this is not the case.

For example, Category:France has a parent category of Category:Countries in Europe, but articles in Category:France include France's 35-Hour Workweek, which should not be in Category:Countries in Europe. Similarly, Category:National Science Foundation has a parent category of Category:Independent agencies of the United States government, but only the main article in this category should be categorized as such.

Should members of subcategories always belong in parent categories? Should topic categories be categorized like their main articles? Is there a guideline, essay, or similar somewhere which clarifies these issues? Daask (talk) 20:53, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:CATDIFFUSE. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:04, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that section doesn't answer my questions. As another example, Category:Demidov Prize laureates has a parent of Category:Demidov Prize which has a parent Category:Awards established in 1993, but articles in Category:Demidov Prize laureates don't belong in Category:Awards established in 1993. Daask (talk) 22:10, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * (ec) WP:CATDIFFUSE is part of the answer but I think we need a further distinction between two types of category. There is confusion over whether membership of Category:Countries in Europe means "is a country in Europe" or "is somehow related to a country in Europe".  Editors have been commendably disciplined in limiting pages in the category to the former, but the subcategories contain plenty of articles of the latter type.  I really wish I could say "if article A is a member of category C1 and category C1 is a member of category C2 then A qualifies as a member of C2", even if A does not explicitly link to  (perhaps because C2 is a diffusing category).  Would it be helpful if topic categories could have no parents other than container categories and maintenance categories, i.e. if we split Category:Countries in Europe into one category for actual countries such as France and another for things related to countries such as the members of Category:France and its descendents? Certes (talk) 22:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * x2 Daask, I'm a little unsure what question you are really asking here. For example, you state that the article on France's work week shouldn't be in the category for Countries in Europe --but it isn't in that category.  (And for what it's worth, it shouldn't even be in the France category.  It should be in Category:Labor in France.)  Similarly for the recipients of the Demidov Prize.  I checked a few of them and found that none of them also appear in the "Awards established in 1993" category.  So it seems to me that the rules of WP:SUBCAT are being correctly applied.  Am I not seeing the real question that you're asking?  NewYorkActuary (talk) 22:21, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * France's 35-Hour Workweek is a member of Category:France. Category:France is a subcat of Category:Countries in Europe.  Therefore, by WP:SUBCAT, France's 35-Hour Workweek is a country in Europe.  Certes (talk) 22:28, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Here's another example that might help clarify the question.
 * The Dirty Duck, Stratford-upon-Avon is a member of Category:Buildings and structures in Stratford-upon-Avon, which in turn is a member of Category:Buildings and structures in Warwickshire. I (or an automated tool such as Petscan) can reasonably make the synthesis that the Duck is a building in Warwickshire.
 * The Dirty Duck, Stratford-upon-Avon is a member of Category:William Shakespeare, which is a member of Category:17th-century English writers. But clearly the Duck is not a writer.

How can I or a tool avoid drawing this incorrect conclusion? Is it invalid to link via Shakespeare because Shakespeare is a topic category, and if so how is this status recorded in Wikipedia? Or should Shakespeare not be a member of any parent categories, other than those which classify categories rather than articles? Certes (talk) 12:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The problem is with the assumption you're making about how the category structure works, not in how these things are categorized. There have been many discussions about this in the past, and the basic point is that it's an aid for grouping and networking related articles through topical relationships. It does not establish a hierarchical taxonomy. Category:France is not titled as if it were a group of anything, such as Category:French countries or Category:Countries in France, so why would a human being think that every article in Category:France was a country? "Would it be helpful if topic categories could have no parents other than container categories and maintenance categories...?" No, that would be the opposite of helpful, because it would fragment the category structure and make it harder for readers to find articles. postdlf (talk) 15:10, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's a useful answer. I think the problem is some editors, and tools such as Petscan, have got the impression from pages such as WP:SUBCAT that there's a usable hierarchical taxonomy in there.  It's a shame to abandon the idea when we're so close (it would only need the set categories to be tagged as such), but I agree that it's not useful in its current state and we should stop trying to use it.  Thanks again, Certes (talk) 15:37, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Taxonomy or classification is always a secondary function (where a category has the form of "[X] writers", for example, you can trace the groupings of writers from broader to more specific), and even within so-called "set categories" there may be articles that are clearly relevant but not strictly speaking a member of a defined group (such as European microstates). Also keep in mind that articles only bear the tags of the categories in which they are directly placed, so in no substantive sense is The Dirty Duck, Stratford-upon-Avon "in" Category:17th-century English writers. The way categories function technically is really closer to "what links here", with the difference being the extent to which we limit what is allowed to link up. postdlf (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Sort keys for Thai people/Thai people categories
Hi. There's discussion on how sort keys should be used for Thai people and/or Thai people categories at Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people (specific options outlined below at Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:48, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

"Now, mostly dead is slightly alive."
WP:CATVER says, "Categorization of articles must be verifiable." WP:VERIFIABILITY says, "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material". On 5 March 2018 at 17:37 (UTC), I removed the "living person" categorizations from the article Noley Thornton because the most-recent verified activity by the subject was in 1996, 22 years is a not-insignificant amount of time, and an admittedly-cursory search found no newer evidence. This is not an articular battle, I've not reverted subsequent re-additions of "living" categories, and I have zero intentions of edit warring. I'm only looking for guidance on our assumptions of individual viability, and timetable(s) therefor. —  fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  17:52, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is really the wrong page for this discussion. As far as the WP:BLP guidelines are concerned, any person born in the last 115 years is presumed to be alive unless there is evidence of their death.  As far as the "Living people" category is concerned, Individuals of advanced age (over 90) can be moved out without there being evidence of death.  For a person who was born in 1983, there's no reason to remove that category. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 17:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, my inquiry is concerning categorization, so this seems the correct place. You're correct though, the BLP policy footnote says "People are presumed to be living unless there is reason to believe otherwise."  So then, given the policy emplaces a project-wide status of living (unless otherwise verified or older than 115 years-old), shouldn't this editing guideline say something akin to "Excepting 'living' categorizations, all categorization of articles must be verifiable."  —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  18:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Category:Living people says: "Maintenance: Individuals of advanced age (over 90), for whom no documentation has existed for a decade or longer, may be removed from this category and transferred to Category:Possibly living people." In 1994 Noley Thornton was nominated for a Young Artist Award for performers under 21. That indicates she is at most in her mid 40s. A quick Google search says she is 34. She belongs in Category:Living people unless there is evidence of likely death. One of the purposes of the category is to warn editors that the subject is living and Biographies of living persons applies. BLP editintro is shown when articles in Category:Living people or Category:Possibly living people are edited, so never remove one of these without replacing it by the other, unless there is very good reason to think the subject is dead. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't think to look at the category itself! I didn't realize its instructions would serve as a supersedence to WP:CATVER.  For clarification's purpose, should we not list "living" categories as exceptions to the verification requirement?  —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  18:43, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You seem to think we have to keep searching for evidence that someone is still alive in order to keep them in that category, even where we have no sources reporting their death. Why on earth would you think that? The methodology you describe above to support your inference that someone well within normal lifespan was deceased is nonsensical and, ironically, total OR. postdlf (talk) 01:03, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * fourthords didn't want to replace "living" with "deceased" but wanted to say neither when we don't know. However, we keep Category:Living people up to at least 90 years, and either Category:Living people or Category:Possibly living people up to 115. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:30, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Exactly, though I recommend that WP:CATVER be adjusted to indicate such, since as it's written now, it tells all editors that "living" categorization needs to be verified. —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  16:02, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:CATVER says, "Categorization of articles must be verifiable." Ergo, to say that an individual is living such categorization must be verified.  That's why I would think that.    I'm not inferring anything, nor did I say I was.  In fact, barring reliable sources, I'm explicitly not assuming anything: hence the crux of my inquiry here.  —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  16:02, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You're thinking that you're entitled to change the content of an article just because you have not found anything published after a certain duration arbitrarily chosen by yourself. If nothing new has been published, then the article should not change, and that should be true whether we're asking does John Doe live in Boise, does he have the same job, or is he still alive well within the range of what is humanly possible. The dates on the sources tell us all we need to know about how current the information is, and we only update an article when a source tells us something new or different, not when we can't find a new source confirming that nothing has changed from what we have already verified previously. postdlf (talk) 20:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I removed the "living person" categorizations from Noley Thornton IAW WP:CATVER. After they were replaced, I came to this page for clarification.  That's all I've done.  If you see that as acting out some sort of unacceptable expression of entitlement, I can't help that.  Since my initial inquiry: (a) I learned from  that a BLP policy footnote says, "People are presumed to be living unless there is reason to believe otherwise."  (b) I've simply suggested we clarify WP:CATVER with a few words about the "living" categories—an edit I could boldly make myself, but wanted to get input on to avoid ruffling others' feathers.  —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  16:09, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest not making any changes in this area because you're not demonstrating an understanding any of what I've been saying. The problem is not CATVER, but rather how you are interpreting WP:V. Leaving the status of a subject unchanged when sources have not reported anything has changed does not create an exception to V, but rather complies with it. If anything, it would be an exception to V that we presume death after 115 years where we have no verification of their death, not that we leave someone described as living regardless of whether they continue to be covered in reliable sources. postdlf (talk) 16:27, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My instance-specific question was answered by power~enwiki and their pointer to one of the footnotes of the BLP. Should any editor ever have the same question, and not find an explanation at WP:CAT, I hope that they find this archived discussion, find the 77-byte BLP footnote, and/or that power~enwiki will always be here to answer their question.  —   fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124;  16:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

RfC on the application of WP:SUBCAT
The application of WP:SUBCAT is the subject of a Request for Comments taking place at Talk:Andrew Wakefield. Your input at that discussion will be appreciated. NewYorkActuary (talk) 19:21, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Categorised articles appearing in wrong place
For some reason, categorisation now appears to be adding articles to the end of the initial letter section (e.g. anything beginning with 'A' is added at the end of the 'A' section on the category page) instead of alphabetically. Anyone got any ideas as to why this should be so? -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * There's some behind-the-scenes maintenance going on. See Village pump (technical). -- John of Reading (talk) 09:38, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. That'll probably be it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:40, 10 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The subcategories here Category:Paramilitary organizations by country are not in alphabetical order. Is this the same issue?  Rathfelder (talk) 09:51, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I know none of the details, but it wouldn't surprise me. Keep an eye on that VPT thread, and someone may post when the maintenance is complete. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:55, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I need to report a categorization error, too.
A category I started, Category:World Series-winning managers, is having the same alphabetization issues I've seen discussed on this page. I'm sorry to be a pain in the neck, but I need to know if maintenance can be performed on this category. Mr. Brain (talk)
 * It's outside the scope of this page, see Village pump (technical). -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

I
Hi how are you doing Mohammedhaqq (talk) 04:01, 5 June 2020 (UTC)