Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people/Archive 11

Military service in World War I
WP:COPDEF states that, "As a rule of thumb for main biographies this [defining characteristics] includes [...] military service". But it goes on to say: "Many people had assorted jobs before entering careers or taking the one job that made them notable; those transient jobs should not necessarily be categorized." We are discussing categorisations at Arthur Drewry. Drewry is famous for being president of FIFA and other footballing roles. However, as a young lad, he joined the British Army and served in World War I. This gets two sentences in his article. His military service is not why he has a Wikipedia article. So, should he be categorised on it or not?

What d'you all think? Input at Talk:Arthur_Drewry most welcome. To my eyes, his military service fails WP:DEFCAT: it is not a characteristic "that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having".

The reason why I raise the point here is that vast numbers of men (and some women) of his age served in the military during World War I, and likewise a later generation served in World War II. To include military service in our list of things that, rule of thumb, should be included sweeps a large number of articles into a large number of categories in a manner that seems to me inconsistent with WP:CATDEF/WP:NONDEF. The same could be said for any cases of mass conscription. Yes, for many people, military service is definitely defining. But not all. At least, that's how I see it. But is there further guidance here, or thoughts people wish to share? Bondegezou (talk) 17:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Those undiscussed additions apparently came in under the radar, around a month ago, and were consequently just now reverted by me. Not sure whether that answers your question: if not moot yet, you might rephrase on the basis of the current version of the guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:01, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * These edits that you just reverted describe widespread and longstanding practice. Bondegezou's interpretation does not, and would also make the category system completely unpredictable, arbitrary, and subjective as far as which articles belong in what rather than just following verifiable facts. Yet Bondegezou has been periodically popping all over the place, advancing the same argument as if it hadn't already been discussed before (see here and here, for example). postdlf (talk) 19:32, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * They are neither widespread nor long-standing practice. I think that, e.g., for most Belgians with a military career, that career is not even mentioned in the article, leave alone part of the categories at the bottom of the article (and if it is it might in some cases even safely be called overcategorisation). Your "... was a significant career for them ..." was even worse, definitely what COPDEF wants to avoid. etc. No, the whole change is rejected at this point in time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, the discussions at the (general) categorisation guideline have no effect on the "Categorisation of people" guideline, unless with a proper notification on this talk page, with a link to the ungoing discussion, and the message that the outcome of the active discussion might have an effect on this guideline. Further, as long as such discussion is not actually closed (preferably by someone uninvolved) it is usually premature to start rewriting guidelines based on someone's position in the debate (even if backed by others). --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:05, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. Bondegezou (talk) 23:08, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * , I thought the discussion here was collegiate and illuminating, and helped tidy up at least one article. I wish all discussions at Wikipedia were like that. It seems only tangentially relevant to the particular question I raised here: I don't see that I was under any requirement to mention it. However, as you bring it up, I do suggest that any regulars here might also find it interesting. What we were able to do there, as a community, was to present some data on the typical number of categories articles have. Bondegezou (talk) 23:25, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * True, that discussion is interesting. I only tried to say that the step from "interesting discussion" to "change of the guideline" usually needs intermediate steps, which were short-cut when an essential part of the COP guidance was rewritten (which was part of my rationale to revert that rewrite). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:51, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * We should probably re-think this a bit. "As a rule of thumb for main biographies this [defining characteristics] includes [...] military service" is actually an overstatement. Probably the majority of the time, military work is among "assorted jobs before entering careers or taking the one job that made them notable".  In the US, a large number of people (I almost did it myself) sign up for one tour of duty to get the GI Bill college money, and quite a few women sign up shortly after getting pregnant, for the free medical care (as one of my cousins did). In some countries, military participation is mandatory for some term for all able-bodied men.  If my two surviving uncles were notable, one would definitely have military stuff all over his infobox, as it was during wartime, he has actual medials, it was among the high-points of his career, and it had a major impact on the rest of his life (an injury he's always struggled with, and it strongly affected future work, including running a gun shop, being a sheriff's deputy, and being a gun-range safety officer).  For the other relative, it would not be worth mentioning in his infobox or lead, as it was a one-time, peace-time Navy tour for getting college funding and getting to travel a little on the government's dime, and it had no particular influence on the rest of his later life as an educator, other than perhaps in the inverse (he's avoided being in circumstances where other people were telling him what to do all time).  It's really a case-by-case thing.  It's important that Bruce McCandless II was a military man, since he's from a notable family of military men, and his performance in the military is much of why he was selected as an astronaut. It's not infobox-important that some mid-to-late-20th-century writer or chemist [or whatever] in Germany, notable since the 1960s, had once been a [drumroll please] Nazi army corporal when he was 18; damned near every able-bodied man was conscripted, if not set to some more credentialed work for the Reich.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:DEFCAT and rotten boroughs
Hi, I'm in a little dispute here with over whether or not rotten boroughs are defining of an MP's service. I say they are because those rotten boroughs allowed them to be MPs, while BHG says MPs are notable because they are MPs, not because they bought a seat in rotten borough rather than rotten borough B. Thoughts? ミラP 23:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * And all the discussions seems to have gone here. ミラP 00:43, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

People by time period and nationality only
I've split this discussion from, per 's suggestion. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder whether categories like Category:19th-century English women, or indeed Category:19th-century English people or Category:18th-century Italian people, should only exist as container categories? Is there any point in categorising someone by nationality and period, with or without gender? If they are notable, it will presumably be for something for which there is, or should be, a category. Pam  D  18:05, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * @PamD, I have pondered that question a few times over the years haven't been able to settle on a consistent answer. My thinking is that one extreme, it probably is useful to have such direct categorisation for small sets such as Category:18th-century BC people or Category:18th-century Icelandic people, but pointless for say Category:19th-century English people, because the categories just get too big to be any use.Unfortunately, we have a lot of such huge categories because SADiN was doing massive CatAlot and AWB jobs which appeared designed simply to rack up the maximum number of edits with minimum effort, by dumping tens of thousands of articles into hugely broad categories. I'm not sure what to do with them, but I suggest that it should be explored in a separate discussion, and this section should remain focused on which-time-period-to-use. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It's possible that a 19th-century English woman might be notable for some reason that doesn't warrant its own a category (because of WP:SMALLCAT) – 's scope doesn't necessarily make it a Container category. However and similar should probably all be marked as diffusecat. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * @Mitch Ames, I think that tagging for diffusion is a good path. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:47, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Whats the difference exactly between a container cat and a diffused cat? Is it that the former must not contain any pages, while the latter generally should not have pages but might if the page doesn't belong in any subcat? Is there a doc on this? Thanks, Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 01:37, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:DIFFUSE isn't definitive on this, but my understanding is based on the text that the template itself displays. Container categories, by their nature, only contain sub-categories. Typically they are "X by Y" (see ) so there will necessarily be a "Y" subcategory, hence no article should be in the parent/container category. However Category diffuse means that there are generally subcategories, but there does not necessarily have to be all possible relevant subcategories, so some articles may be in the parent. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:22, 26 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I think with biographies of people further back in time there are quite a lot which are difficult or impossible to put into sub-categories other than nationality or place, and sometimes not even those. But I dont see much point in  for individual articles.   And Levivich is not the only person to find container and non-diffusing categories puzzling.  I think we need to provide  easier and more prominent explanations.   Rathfelder (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

People by time period
A discussion on my talk at User talk:BrownHairedGirl (permalink, but discussion there is ongoing) considered the question of categorising people by historical period, in this case by century. The discussion was started v helpfully by Chris.sherlock, to whom many thanks.

The issue is simple: should be people be categorised by all the periods which in which they lived, or only those relevant to their notability? I propose only the periods related to their notability for doing that notable thing, as a development of the WP:COPDEF principle "Categorize by defining characteristics".

That seemed to be the view of the others who I invited to the discussion.

Two fictitious examples are mentioned there, one written by me, the other by PamD. I list them both here, noting the categories which I think should be applied, and which shouldn't.


 * General Sir Algernon FitzFitz Snodgrass (1841–1922). Noted soldier who retired from the army in 1897. Wrote notable memoir in 1903, designed notable house for himself in 1910.
 * ✅ do categorise as:
 * Category:19th-century military personnel
 * Category:20th-century British writers
 * Category:20th-century architects
 * ❌ do not categorise as:
 * Category:20th-century military personnel — he wasn't a military man in the 20th century
 * Category:19th-century British writers — he wasn't a writer in the 19th century
 * Category:19th-century architects — he wasn't an architect in the 19th century
 * Clarissa Blenkinsop (1850-1910) was an English novelist whose 1908 debut novel Tales from the Boudoir was highly acclaimed and led to much speculation as to whether it was based on the lives of members of the royal family. Little is known of her early life in rural Borsetshire or her life as a vicar's wife in Ambridge until the death of her husband in 1907.
 * ✅ do categorise as:
 * Category:20th-century British writers
 * ❌ do not categorise as:
 * Category:19th-century British writers — she wasn't a writer in the 19th century

I propose to add a new sub-section to WP:COP, as follows:

By time period
People are usually categorized by time period if their activity in that that time period is a WP:DEFINING characteristic.

For example:
 * a writer who lived from 1850 to 1910 and wrote their only work in 1908 should be categorised under Category:20th-century writers. They did no notable writing in the 19th century, so should not be included in Category:19th-century writers
 * an English soldier born in 1590 and notable for military service in the 1620s should not be categorised in Category:People of the Tudor period, since their WP:DEFINING characteristic relates to years after the Tudor period ended in 1603.

Any thoughts on this? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:05, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Fully agree with this proposal including the two examples. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:48, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I support the addition of the proposed sub-section as written. I think this has long been the norm, but has not been written down (from what I can see). Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me &#124; my contributions 14:19, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree. This makes sense (and is also what I understood to be current practice). It would be helpful to have this clearly spelled out in writing. Levivich&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 14:22, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I entirely agree with the approach, but there will still be plenty of subjectivity. I have been taking people born in 1890 out of Nineteenth century people, and people who die in 1905 out of most of the nineteenth century occupational categories unless there are indications that they were still working at the end of their life.  Is that what we want?  Rathfelder (talk) 10:57, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

✅ Since this discussion has been open for 7 days, and all commenters have supported the proposal, I have added the proposed text to the guideline as a new section: WP:Categorization of people. Thanks to everyone who commented, and to Chris.sherlock for raising the issue on my talk and thereby prompting this productive discussion. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:37, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

"Al-" and "El-" in Arabic surnames
Has a consensus been reached for people with Arabic surnames, such as "El-Helwe" and "Al Muwallad"? Should those, respectively, be sorted as "Helwe" and "Muwallad", or "El-Helwe" and "Al Muwallad"? I'm asking, because very often the way Arabic surnames are transliterated varies. Example: جوان العمري has been transliterated as Joan Oumari, while هلال الحلوي as Hilal El-Helwe. It would be odd to sort the first as "Oumari" and the second as "El-Helwe", given that both have the prefix "Al-". Thoughts? Nehme1499 (talk) 04:01, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

How to sort names with special characters at the beginning of the name?
Is there any guidance on how to sort African names which begin with a special character? Example: Johannes !Gawaxab [! before the name]

I know that section 4.4 of the Categorization of people page (under Sort by surname) has the following: "Only hyphens, apostrophes and periods/full stops punctuation marks should be kept in sort values. All other punctuation marks should be removed. The only exception is the apostrophe should be removed for names beginning with O'. For example, Eugene O'Neill is sorted DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, Eugene"

but this doesn't cover my question. I also looked at the Names of Persons document published in 1996 by IFLA but that didn't address it either. I'm inclined to follow the guidance in section 4.4 mentioned above which would give us: DEFAULTSORT:Gawaxab, Johannes

thank you for any help. --FeanorStar7 (talk) 08:41, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Another example: Đorđe Lobačev --FeanorStar7 (talk) 11:35, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Possible error in section 4.1?
While reading the following to find out how to handle the sorting of Portuguese names, I wonder if there is an error: (I bolded the word in question)

"Portuguese names (Portugal only) are commonly composed of one or two given names, and two family names. In a compound family name, the first name is the mother's maiden name, with the second name being the father's surname. These names should be sorted on the last element or the father's name. Francisco da Costa Gomes is sorted DEFAULTSORT:Gomes, Francisco da Costa"

I think the following was meant: "These names should be sorted on the last element of the father's name"...

It would make more sense. Since it would be a significant change, I wanted to check here on the talk page first before making any changes. Thank you.--FeanorStar7 (talk) 10:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:48, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sometimes father's name isn't the last element (instead, usually the second to last element). So, one or the other has to be chosen. Things can be complicated, we expect editors to learn enough about their subject to make a good choice.

Parents, grandparents, relatives
For many years, all of the "by heritage" and "by residence" definitions were kept together over on the Naming Conventions. Over time, some of those definitions were copied here, while others were deleted as criteria that have nothing to do with naming conventions/category names and aren't on this page's jurisdiction, but failed to be moved here.

Recent CfD have again reinstated these criteria, see Wikipedia talk:Category names, expressed for example as:
 * "A single 15th-century ancestor and last name etymology are not defining in terms of descent."
 * "it doesn't appear to be defining in the descendants of those people."
 * "The ethnicity/nationality/residence of grandparents is rarely notable, and umpteenth generations later is not notable or defining."

Proposing addition to the "By place" section, immediately after:
 * The place of birth, although it may be significant from the perspective of local studies, is rarely defining from the perspective of an individual.


 * The residence of parents and relatives is never defining and rarely notable.

I've copied rarely from "place of birth is rarely notable" (WP:CATNAME), allowing well-documented exceptions, such as Jesus of Nazareth.

Proposing addition to "General considerations" section (taken from the original language at Naming Conventions):


 * Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors. The heritage of grandparents is never defining and rarely notable. In addition to the requirement of verifiability, living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage, while historical persons may be identified by notable association with a single heritage.

Again, I've copied rarely, allowing well-documented exceptions. William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:28, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * As an example of how these criteria might be applied, I'm looking at Burt Reynolds, which has the assertion, "His family descended from Dutch, English, Scots-Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Reynolds also claimed Cherokee and Italian roots," which is supported by his obituary in the Independent. Now, his (unfounded) claim to have Cherokee ancestry, along with his claim to have been born in Waycross, Georgia, was part of his public persona, and I can see including that information, properly supported by reliable sources. The Dutch, English, Scots-Irish, and Scottish ancestry seems irrelevant in the article. Am I interpreting this correctly? - Donald Albury 22:12, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:32, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Also, would not categorize by an unfounded claim to Cherokee ancestry, although that could remain in the article with proper sourcing as self-identification. Many people have fractional native american ancestry, but ceased to maintain membership.


 * OK, I support your proposal, but will wait to remove the ethnic categories from Reynolds' article until a consensus is clear. - Donald Albury 22:51, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I didn't comment on the proposal yet, as I didn't understand the OP. I couldn't get my head around what was actually proposed, i.e. which kind of edits it was supposed to prevent or promote. With Donald's example I think I am starting to get an inkling.
 * The proposed guidance text is unclear. To give only one example, it uses the term "notable" – what does WP:NOTABILITY have to do with categorization? Etc, etc.
 * Now that I start to understand, this seems rather something for the WP:OVERCAT guidance. Afaics it is an example of WP:NONDEFINING categorization. Less about whether or not these categories should or should not exist, but rather about not placing these categories in articles where the association is only remote.
 * As for inserting this in the WP:COP guidance, this seems one of a host of possible examples that may illustrate WP:COPDEF, rather than something that speaks about categorization schemes (WP:COP) – the validity of these schemes is not put in doubt, but the fact that a lot of biographical articles are added to these schemes without really belonging there. On the other hand I don't think more examples need to be added to the WP:COPDEF guidance (it is clear enough as it is). Also, I don't feel much for starting a completely new section in the WP:COP guideline about this very specific topic.
 * In sum, I'd invite William Allen (or Donald) to remove all non-WP:DEFINING categories from the Burt Reynolds article, before any guidance is changed. Obviously these categories can be removed based on current guidance (WP:DEFINING etc). Only if that would be somehow problematic (it shouldn't be), can we come back here and see whether an adjustment of this guideline (WP:COP) would be the best way forward. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:08, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Most categories require notability for inclusion. A person who is notable for mathematics is not necessarily notable for Judaism.
 * Agree that some could also be promulgated to WP:OC. Again, this was originally part of naming categories, as we'd included guidance there for populating the categories. Now that COP is a separate guideline, the prior information needs to be moved here.
 * If there was already enough guidance here, then these wouldn't have happened in the past few years after removal from CATNAME.
 * Purging before guidance is not our process. Rather, the decisions come first (at CfD), then we document, then we act. In this case, we've decided (see the discussions listed at Wikipedia talk:Category names). Now we're documenting. Donald Albury correctly indicates he'll wait until documented before acting.


 * Following User:Francis Schonken's comment above, I have now removed the ethnic categories from the Burt Reynolds article. - Donald Albury 16:54, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Looking into this a bit further, the situation seems a bit more complex (or should I say, a bit more simple) than I anticipated. Above, the following text is proposed for inclusion in the WP:COP guidance:"Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors. The heritage of grandparents is never defining and rarely notable. In addition to the requirement of verifiability, living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage, while historical persons may be identified by notable association with a single heritage."I copy that here for easy comparison with a text that is currently found in the WP:COP guideline ( 6th bullet of WP:COP re-positioned to WP:COP-HERITAGE, see below ):"Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors. The heritage of grandparents is never defining and rarely notable. In addition to the requirement of verifiability, living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage, while historical persons may be identified by notable association with a single heritage."So what are we talking about here? William Allen thinks the guidance isn't followed while not included in the COP guidance... I propose another conclusion: the more bloated a guideline is, the less it is followed. People don't read guidance (and even less edit accordingly) when something isn't expressed clear & compact. And that's what is wrong with the newly proposed text (which was in fact already included in the guideline all along). Even proponents of that text were thus far unable to locate it in the guideline. So, imho, it needs to be reformulated in clearer language rather than just added a second time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:25, 6 March 2021 (UTC); 07:55, 6 March 2021 (UTC) William Allen Simpson (talk) 08:08, 6 March 2021 (UTC) William Allen Simpson (talk) 08:08, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree that clarity is needed. The major problem is that categorization of people is split among so many guidelines. Originally, we'd kept everything in one place at Naming Conventions, with sub-pages. I'll propose at CfD merging all the Categorization of People here. There are a few parallel sub-sections at WP:CATNAME.
 * Re. "Originally, we'd kept everything in one place at Naming Conventions" – incorrect: WP:COP was started in 2004 (by yours truly); when WP:CATNAME was initiated a year later, WP:COP already contained at least some guidance on category names. But that's not a very interesting discussion. I don't think a CfD is needed to apply the simple principle of keeping "naming" related guidance in WP:CATNAME, and guidance that has nothing to do with naming out of that guideline (whatever the historical background of how it developed – WP:COP at least has undergone far more intrusive re-organisations over its 17-year history, usually without CfD afaik). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:39, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, the CfD timesink you now organized, deflects attention from another point: I suggested to improve the prose of this guidance, which currently is confusingly formulated, and thus difficult to adopt by editors. Can we concentrate on that a bit? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:58, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * For clarity, I'd try to find a phrasing that avoids the term "notable" if it is used in a different meaning than at Wikipedia's notability guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * the CfD has now been closed for not being in the right place. Can we focus on unresolved issues, such as a better phrasing of the guidance, now please? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:17, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've now re-positioned the guidance in a subsection of the "Categorization schemes" section, with the shortcut WP:HERCAT. Please consider reformulating it to something that is more easily understood, and hence more easily followed by Wikipedia editors. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:55, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I'd thought you'd objected to a new subsection. I've changed the shortcut to match the others on the page (leading COP). Need to be able to remember them all, so "HER" was a bit problematic as it seems more related to sex pronoun.
 * I'm having some difficulty following the discussion above so I have no opinion on most of it, speaking with some other experienced editors including admins offline there are impressions that these are too many rules for no good reason. I do personally object to the potential inclusion of "Heritage and residence by city or region" rules into the guideline because heritage and identity is not coterminous with the borders of sovereign states, and there are frequently sources to attest to specific sub-ethnic or sub-national identities--Prisencolin (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Specific order of categories
Obviously, I know the first three categories that go under an article, that being:

1 - Eponymous category (if availale) 2 - Year of birth 3 - Year of death (or Category:Living people)

After these three, what order do they go in?

Should it be in alphabetical order? Should it be their nationality? Their place of birth? Their most relevant title?

If they live over 100, should Category:Centenarians go fourth?

Is there any specific category that should go last, such as their manner of death? I do a lot of work on categorization, so this would be very important for me to know.

Painting17 (talk) 16:21, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd say that there is no consensus to support statements 2 and 3. --Paul_012 (talk) 21:23, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Bot for Thai name category sorting
Hi. This is a notice of a plan to revive a project previously discussed in March 2018, to have a bot update sort keys for articles in Thai people categories so that they are sorted by given name, as recommended by the guideline.

Some preliminary discussion over the technical aspects has taken place at BOTREQ, where Kanashimi has expressed interest in the project. To summarise, it is planned to have a bot complete the following tasks:


 * 1) Tag the categories listed at WikiProject Thailand/Thai name categories with &#123;&#123;Thai people category&#125;&#125;. These are categories whose contents contain as a majority biographies of Thai people, and should be sorted by given name.
 * 2) Run through the articles listed at WikiProject Thailand/Thai name sort keys, and update their DEFAULTSORT values to the  format for those with regular names, and the otherwise appropriate format as specified in the table for others, if not already so.
 * 3) Add a tracking template to articles, preliminary titled &#123;&#123;Thai name same as defaultsort&#125;&#125; (though the name is open to suggestion), for articles which have special DEFAULTSORT values (e.g. royal names and noble titles), as specified in the table. It is planned to place the template, which will produce no visible output, just above the DEFAULTSORT line.
 * 4) Run through all articles which are members of categories tagged with &#123;&#123;Thai people category&#125;&#125;, and add sort keys (if missing) to those category entries in the format of, for those articles whose titles follow such a format. Articles whose titles don't follow such a format (which can be identified by the previously added &#123;&#123;Thai name same as defaultsort&#125;&#125; template), will be skipped.
 * 5) Periodically repeat (4) at some interval (maybe several months) to update newly missing sort keys.

Since it's been a few years, I'd like to have some reaffirmation that there's consensus for such a task being carried out by a bot.

Note that as the guideline suggests, people with non-Thai names will also be sorted by given name in these categories. See for example Category:Academics of Chulalongkorn University, where Frances Lander Spain is sorted under F. This is the consensus achieved in the previous discussions from 2018, where the main contributors were Francis Schonken, Woodstone, and me. Since I have recently seen some questioning of this suggestion of the guideline, I'd like to invite interested editors to comment on the issue before substantial work on the bot is carried out.

Input is also appreciated regarding the category list and the proposed sort keys. In particular, I've treated boxer ring names as if they were regular names, so Muangthai P.K. Saenchaimuaythaigym has, though I'm not sure if this reflects common practice. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:46, 16 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Since there has been no opposition, I've taken this to mean that the previous consensus for the task still stands. A belated note that the relevant BRFA has been filed at Bots/Requests for approval/Cewbot 7. --Paul_012 (talk) 12:58, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

People from/of or just people
See Categorization of people. This may have been discussed and finalized long ago. Is there a past discussion? Aymatth2 (talk) 12:55, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria and is categorized in Category:Sportspeople from Graz, but is more often associated with the United States, and California in particular. He is categorized in Category:Film directors from Washington, D.C., Category:Sportspeople from Los Angeles etc.. It would be more correct to use Category:Film directors of Washington, D.C., Category:Sportspeople of Los Angeles etc., or simply Category:Washington, D.C. film directors, Category:Los Angeles sportspeople.
 * In some cases, as with governors of colonial territories, the people are clearly "of" but rarely "from" the territory by birth or nationality. We may get a case where a British colonial official is indirectly categorized as a person "from" Palestine, Ceylon and Tanganyika, or (worse) "from" Israel, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, although he died before those states came into existence.
 * We are not entirely consistent."People from Foo" is the most common, but we also have "People of Foo" and "Foo people". People of Ethiopia is not in Category:Ethiopian people. People of Northern Ireland is in Category:People from Northern Ireland. We have Category:People of British India, Category:People of New Netherland, Category:People of Bakumatsu. We have Category:Cornish people (associated with) and Category:People from Cornwall (born there).
 * There is a long tradition of using "People from Foo", but perhaps Categorization of people should say that "People of Foo" and "Foo people" are also acceptable.
 * As far as I can remember this has been discussed often and in depth, and not only for "people", with RfCs etc, in short, the whole works. Can't remember where these discussions can be found (maybe at least some of them in WP:VPP archives?), and, if I'm not erring, not leading to a "one size fits all" solution, thus variant phrasings of "belonging to or associated with a country" co-existing to a certain extent. Don't know if this helps. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:52, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If results were inconclusive, adding a statement like "The form "Category:People from Foo" is the most common, but categories named "People of Foo" and "Foo people" are also acceptable." might reduce time wasted on further discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Do students/alumni at a university count as being from the city to which the university belongs?--3family6 (Talk to me &#124; See what I have done ) 22:56, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Reverted edits by anonymous users
According to the edit history, quite a few edits by anonymous users have been reverted, suggesting a fair amount of vandalism takes place. Shouldn't the page be semi-protected? Marcocapelle (talk) 10:31, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Other than a spurt of vandalism reverted edits in September, there has been one case of vandalism  reverted edit a month for the last few months. I'm reluctant to protect a page to stop that level of potential vandalism. Other admins may be more willing to do so, however. - Donald Albury 13:38, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Edited because I had not (and still haven't) looked at the reverted edits to confirm that they were vandalism. - Donald Albury 15:48, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion for WP:COPSEP
Suggest to add:
 * The reverse also applies: biography articles should only be added to people categories, not to topic categories, unless a parallel people category does not exist. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:31, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * To clarify the scope of the rider, would you mind giving examples, at least in this discussion (not necessarily to be included in the addition)? – Fayenatic  L ondon 23:11, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
 * for example, William A. F. Browne is currently in Category:History of mental health in the United Kingdom and in Category:British psychiatrists. Because the article is already in an appropriate biographical category, it should not be put in the parallel history category as well. By the way, Category:History of mental health in the United Kingdom is currently full of biographies, so I thought to purge the category referring to this COPSEP guideline, until I noticed that the guideline is not explicit about this situation at all. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That's a good example to illustrate the principles at play. Now I would keep that article in that History category, because he was a notable reformer of mental health care in the UK. Whether to include such a biography in such a topic category is a matter of degree and judgment, which in some cases might be worth discussing on the talk page, if their legacy was more limited in terms of region, duration or narrow specialism. But in principle, IMHO it is helpful to include biographies that had a major impact on the topic. I would therefore oppose your suggestion. – Fayenatic  L ondon 23:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Categorizing biographies by cause of death
There is a discussion about categorizing people by cause of death at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Alphabetization for Arabic surnames
Hello everyone. A discussion has been started on the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Arabic page regarding how Arabic surnames should be sorted, as there has been a difference in manuals proposed on this page and the above mentioned page. Please do participate in the discussion there so that both the manuals have same rules of how the names should be indexed. Anbans 586 (talk) 15:01, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Are groups people?
Just a quick check: does WP:SEPARATE mean that, say, a musical group (a band) should not be placed in people categories? — HTGS (talk) 06:23, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, you are asking about musical groups, not ethnic groups as I expected from the heading. At the national level, most countries will have sufficient content to categorise musical (and ethnic) groups separately from people. However, in both cases I would allow some flexibility at the local level. Large cities may have plenty of scope for a useful category e.g., but for a smaller place I would allow a group to be categorised in "People from".
 * Categorization_of_people says it's about persons or groups of persons. As I understand it, the point of WP:SEPARATE is not to restrict categories to individual biographies, but to always separate them from articles about e.g. buildings or events in a location. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:18, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Haha, sorry, I was trying to think in the general, while also asking the specific. To give an example: my presumption is that Daft Punk should not be in Category:People from Paris, primarily because Daft Punk is not a person, so we don’t want to “pollute” categories that way. Maybe things change when the individual members have individual articles, but I don’t like that idea on principle. Groups of homogenous members (all members of Daft Punk are Parisians) should make more sense to categorise in the people categories than non-homogenous groups, but even that feels wrong.
 * I guess in a way I’m starting to answer my own question. — HTGS (talk) 09:49, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Ordering Dutch surnames with affix van
My point is relevant for the section Ordering names in a category. Sort by surname. Dutch surnames beginning with van are ubiquitous in Dutch. For that reason Dutch directories and library catalogs (and other practitioners of Collation) do not order these names by the first letter of the name ("V" in other words), but by the first letter of the noun in the name. Example: "J.P. van der Voort" is ordered as "Voort, J.P. van der". This would also be a useful guideline for use in DEFAULTSORT in my view. I have always used it in my own Wikipedia articles. Other Wikipedians not so much apparently, judging by the fact that in many lists of subjects the "V" category is overpopulated with this type of surname; whereas a Dutchman would look under the first letter of the noun in the name (defeating the objective of sorting on surname). I therefore would suggest an edit of the Sort by surname subsection to this effect. But I do not know if I, a humble Wikipedian, would be authorized to do such a thing. I would gladly leave it to somebody more experienced in this field. As an afterthought, I think this principle (ordering on the first letter of the noun in the Dutch surname) should apply to all types of affixes in Dutch surnames, not only the affix van (though these are less ubiquitous). Other such affixes are the definite articles de (variously inflected) and het (commonly shortened to 't) Examples De Witt and  'tHooft The rule could therefore be: if a Dutch surname is a noun phrase consisting of one or more affixes, followed by a noun. lexicographic ordering should be done on the first letter of the noun.Ereunetes (talk) 22:39, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I found this "rule" in the article:"Generally, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish names do not include lowercase particles in sorting, but do include uppercase particles." This pertains partly to the point I was trying to make. I suppose that the editor means the same thing with "particles" as what I referred to as (family-name) affixes (which I think is a better term) pertaining to the Dutch names that contain them. The "rule" appears to exclude all lowercase affixes, which I also advocate, though in different terms. However, Dutch surnames may also use capitalized affixes, namely if they appear at the very beginning of the surname. And this is very well possible, as in the case of the Van affix, about which I started my intervention, before I expanded it to all capitalized affixes. The problem would not occur, if all affixes in Dutch surnames were uncapitalized, but a major rule of capitalization of Dutch surnames (which is supported in the apposite paragraph 11.18 Capitalization—English versus other languages, of the Chicago Manual of Style) is that a stand-alone occurrence of a Dutch surname always starts with a capital. (Possibly confusingly, if the surname is preceded by the initials, or the Christian name(s) of the person in question, the surname starts with a lowercase letter). This rule is routinely broken in Wikipedia articles. For instance, in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek one finds "Raised in Delft, Dutch Republic, van Leeuwenhoek worked as a draper" already in the Lede. Here a stand-alone instance of the surname within a sentence is incorrectly started with a lowercase letter. A little before this instance "Van Leeuwenhoek" is correctly used, but that is because the sentence starts with this. However that may be (it is a matter for another page in this MOS) it follows that capitalized affixes routinely occur in correctly capitalized Dutch surnames, and so can become "included" in sorting, as indicated by the latter part of the "rule" quoted above. And this should be avoided for the reasons I mentioned.--Ereunetes (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

about 20th/21st-century categories
Please note that my English may not be very good since I am not good at English and I am using DeepL Translator to write here.

When we use the "20th/21st-century singers" category, for example, there are users who use both "20th/21st-century Japanese male/women singers" and "20th/21st-century Japanese singers" categories. However, I do not understand why they use "20th/21st-century Japanese singers" even though they use "20th/21st-century Japanese male/women singers". Since there are "20th/21st-century Japanese male/women singers" referring to gender, the category "20th/21st-century Japanese singers" should be unnecessary. Do we need to use both categories? I have reverted the articles many times. If someone is using "20th/21st-century Japanese male/women singers" and even using "20th/21st-century Japanese singers" even though it is unnecessary, I think you should remove the latter. What do you think?

For example, I revert as shown on this, this and this, etc.

A user named Ser Amantio di Nicolao has been adding unnecessary categories over and over again. --Hatto (talk) 12:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)


 * @Hatto Wikipedia has a concept called "non-diffusing subcategories". As explained in the box you can see at Category:20th-century Japanese male singers, this means that in some cases - often "male" and "female" categories - the usual rule of not including an article in a "parent" category such as Category:20th-century Japanese singers does not apply, so Tomoyasu Hotei is correctly listed in both those categories. If your changes are repeatedly reverted by an experienced editor, it is useful to ask them for an explanation rather than continuing to revert. Pam  D  12:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I made changes here on Mick Jagger and here on Brian May, does that mean I didn't have to revert the articles? --Hatto (talk) 12:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Citizenship versus language versus nationality
Infobox writer has developed separate fields for citizenship, language, and nationality. See MOS:INFONAT. This needs clarification for categories.

In a recent discussion, notes: "Actually I believe that Wikipedia classifies by nationality, but actually means citizenship. In the context of Eastern Europe, I believe that they use the wor[d] nationality in the meaning of ethnicity. In countries like Russia or Yugoslavia, people have (had) a nationality field on their IDs that in fact mentioned the ethnic group they were part of (such as Tatar, Bosnian Muslim etc.), next to the citizenship. I believe this is the way it should be understood in the context of this article."

Over time, primary categorization By nationality and occupation has come to be used as By country and occupation. Frequently performers and sportspersons are primarily categorized by the location of their events or team, then cross-categorized by their citizenship, ethnicity, language, and/or nationality. This is causing a massive number of unmanagable triple, quadruple, and quintuple intersection categories.

Likewise, ethnicity has frequently been merged with or inferred by language. This has been problematic with ancient peoples, where those (philosophers, scholars, writers) using Greek-language are categorized as Greek, even though they are far from Greece, never set foot in Greece, and have no Greek heritage.

Moreover, there are frequent problems with ethnicities that are not associated with extant countries. Roma/Romani is a current discussion.

I'm raising these related issues here for broader discussion. William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:04, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Examples:
 * An Egyption writer after invasion by Macedonia is still Egyption (not Greek), even though the language may change to Greek.
 * An Egyption writer after invasion by Roman Empire is still Egyption.
 * An Egyption writer after invasion by Ottoman Empire is still Egyption.
 * An Egyption writer after invasion by Arabs is still Egyption (not Arab), even though the language may change to Arabic.
 * A Ukrainian writer after invasion by Russian Empire is still Ukrainian.
 * A Ukrainian writer after invasion by Soviet Union is still Ukrainian.
 * How do we best describe these for categorization clarity? William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:35, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Excessive cross-categorization has been a problem for a long time. See the discussion at Talk:Lhasa de Sela, mostly from 2006. I will still argue that categories should only be based on what reliable sources say, and that includes cross-categories. Donald Albury 14:57, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Do you have specific examples of this "unmanagable" issue? Dahn (talk) 17:55, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Well? Dahn (talk) 07:28, 21 April 2023 (UTC)