Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 9

Extraterrestrial landforms
Do we prefer Mountains of Mars or Mountains on Mars? I'm thinking they ought to be Of just for consistency with everywhere else, but there are also arguments in favor of On. See Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_December_9. -- Prove It (talk) 19:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, for terrestrial landforms, the alternatives are (e.g.) Mountains of France and Mountains in France (i.e. "of" or "in), while for non-terrestrial landforms, the alternatives are (e.g.) Mountains of Mars and Mountains on Mars (i.e. "of" or "on"). Just because the of form is preferred for terrestrial landforms doesn't mean that we should necessarily prefer it for non-terrestrial landforms.  Personally, I would go for Mountains on Mars Bluap (talk) 05:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Confounding the choice is the inconvenient fact that borders are often drawn on watersheds, so mountains may be in two or even three countries. See Mount Everest or Matterhorn for examples.  Then again, in most cases the mountains are more durable than the countries that are overlaid upon them.  Perhaps Mountains now claimed by France would be more appropos.  Considering other eras, some of them are also Mountains once claimed by Gaul or Mountains once claimed by Rome. It's sort of a temporal NPOV. LeadSongDog (talk) 16:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Socio-cultural topics: Society by nationality
The 'Socio-cultural topics' section states that subcategories of Category:Society by nationality should be named under the 'nationality', not 'country' convention. While it is true that the 1st level subcats are named in the '[adjective of country] society' pattern, it is also true that the following subcats are named by country name, not adjective name: Abortion by country, Clubs and societies by country, Crime by country, Demographics by country, Social history by country, Housing by country, Immigration by country, Labor relations by country, Languages by country, Organizations by country, Religion by country and Social class by country. In turn, their subcats are named in the 'xxxx xx [country]' pattern and these names look reasonable. The exception is 'Philanthropists by nationality' and its subcats in the '[adjective of country] Philanthropists' pattern, which also look reasonable.

Question: what to make of all this? Should a change of some type be made to this section of the Naming convention (categories)? Hmains (talk) 22:37, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Sports teams in each country
There currently is a great deal of inconsistency with the way various sports team categories are named. When I read this NC, I interpret that the categories should be in the form ZZZZZZ teams in COUNTRY; but, that convention is rarely followed. The ZZZZZ-ian teams convention is much more prevalent, even though it can often cause confusion.

For one such case of confusion, see, and two subcats and. Where does Montreal Machine (a team playing American football) belong? Since those two subcats are each also sub-catted into their respective ZZZZZian sports teams cats, the obvious answer is wrong.

What I propose is not painless, as scads of categories would need to be renamed; but, I think it is good to codify a standard that eliminates all potential confusion, and requires categories for sports teams in a country to be named as ZZZZZZ teams in COUNTRY. It also may seem a bit extreme, to fix a handful of confusing category names with such a sweeping change; however, most articles and categories for national teams already have eliminated the adjective form; so, this may also be seen as a logical next step. Neier (talk) 22:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with the Neier's proposal to follow consistently the naming conventions by renaming all sports-by-geography categories as ZZZZ teams in COUNTRY. BRMo (talk) 00:08, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The football question is a bad example, given the existence of American football and Canadian Football. So, you would end up with  and, both of which appear redundant on first blush.


 * However, I agree with you on foo teams in Country as a format. That would match how many other category structures are, i.e.:, , etc. Resolute 15:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Television, radio, internet, media and telecommunications
I think categories about these subjects should be named "X in foo" rather than "fooish X" in order to match the associated articles: See also: Categories for discussion/Log/2008 February 21 and Wikipedia talk:Category titles/Archive 4

16@r (talk) 19:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. There is not a single example in the Categories by country section that suggests (National adjectival) foobars.  They are all in nation, of nation etc.  There are a lot of category trees that need to be cleaned up to eliminate this problem; but, policy-wise, it seems very clear-cut to me. Neier (talk) 10:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Look further down the page to the section Categories by nationality, particularly Socio-cultural topics where radio and similar topics are mentioned which use the adjectival form. Tim! (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a different take on this. I think nearly all the direct subcats of the following cats need to be renamed to match the 'by country' naming convention instead of the 'nationality' naming convention.

Category:Television networks by country; Category:Television series by country; Category:Radio programs by country; Category:Websites by country; Category:Television by country; Category:Radio by country; Category:News magazines by country; Category:Magazines by country; Category:Computer magazines by country; Category:Broadcasting by country; Category:Media by country

Hmains (talk) 06:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's OK for me. 16@r (talk) 12:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I've thought about this a bit more. When speaking of culture, be it paintings, music, or radio/television programming, the ZZZZZ-ian form does make sense. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a British radio program, and not a Radio program in the United Kingdom. At the other end of the spectrum, you have TV channels and radio networks, which as companies should be in the of country form. The tricky part is where to draw the line between cultural items and the rest. By listing Radio in the culture section, it is implying that all radio-related articles need to be categorized that way; and, I disagree with that assessment. I'm going to be somewhat WP:BOLD, and make a minor change. I hope that if it gets reverted, we can talk about it here. Neier (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Radio programs by nationality and its nationality subcats remain as they are. Any others from my list above to be changed to 'by nationality'? Hmains (talk) 04:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * ok Category:Radio programs by country should be renamed to

Others' Gods
Why are categories of non-Western Gods such as this in lower case? --Observer99 (talk) 23:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that "God" is only capitalised when it can be regarded as the "name" of a specific god (i.e. the Christian one). Bluap (talk) 01:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Change to nationality conventions
I've noted a change in the naming conventions for nationalities, which has largely developed through consistent results in CfD. For states that do not possess unambiguous (i.e. Democratic Republic of the Congo) or universally-applicable (i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina) adjectives, the convention has changed from using "Foo of country" to "Country foo", where Country is the unamended name of the country. I've made this change to the section Naming_conventions_%28categories%29 since it seems fairly well-accepted via CfDs, though I see it hasn't really been discussed here on this page. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:51, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Songs from films
What is the proper naming of a category containing songs from a specific film? I haven't found anything that says definitively on wikipedia, but most that I can find that have been created are as Category:Songs from Film Title, but there are a number that have been created as Category: Film Title songs. (This already caused some confusion when editors were using Category:Cinderella songs for both the Disney film and the rock band.)

A few of these are Disney films (Category:The Little Mermaid songs, Category:Mary Poppins songs, etc.), some of which probably shouldn't even have categories based upon the notability of the songs that have been added to them. Which takes me to my other question - how many songs (with articles) should a film have to warrant to warrant its own Songs from category?

Based on the responses I get, I'd like to request CfDs to rename or delete some of these categories as appropriate. Thanks. --Wolfer68 (talk) 23:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Based on the topics that were most debated (like BIO), it seems the best way to go about naming conventions is "X of Y", "X by Y", "X [foo] Y". Not sure if others agree with my reasoning, but that's how i usually call it.  So we'd have renamings to Category:Songs from FOO.  In a CFD debate the best arguements would be that we're following the general "X of Y" format and this format prevents confusion (e.g. with Cinderella).  As for "How many members does a category need to be necessary?" that's really subjective.  IMHO, it should be 4 or more when talking about articles or images (but others may disagree).  However with maintenance categories, template categories, list categories, and parent categories - it should ALWAYS be on a case by case basis. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 18:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Extend guideline to cover list articles
I propose that the scope of this guideline be broadened to include list-type articles. SharkD (talk) 01:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions for lists
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions regarding the seemingly recent style of naming lists "List of y ' s xes" or the even simpler "y ' s xes" as opposed to "List of xes of y". It was suggested that the input of people at this guideline be seeked. What is the correct format? To keep the discussion centralized, the link, once again, is here. Thank you, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 00:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)