Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Archive 8

Deletion
Wikipedia is not paper, so there is no reason for this policy. The more categories the better. Clutter is not a problem, as the categories are alphabetical. If you can follow the alphabet you can find the category you are looking for. With no objections I will send this page to VFD. Bensaccount (talk) 00:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Its been a week of silence. If you care if this project page gets deleted speak up now. Bensaccount (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a long established guideline. Categories are not the same as articles, and "the more the better" has never been the consensus of the community.  Articles with hundreds of trivial or meaningless categories would not be useful to anyone. -- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman  03:48, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Not long or well established. I left it for a week and you are the first person to object. More pages in categories would be useful for people who want to find articles from categories. That is what categories are for. If you object to more categories why not object to ALL categories? Bensaccount (talk) 04:00, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look at the example categories, they all point to the CFD discussions that led to the deletions. This page documents the norms of categorization, has existed for years, and was created after quite a bit of discussion.  If you disagree, try recreating some of these categories and see how far you get.  If you seriously want to change the nature of categorization, you should start a conversation at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. -- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman  04:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * You seem intent on appealing to bureaucracy to prevent any reasonable changes here (and on other pages). I will try to find someone who can provide a reason for keeping this. Just because something exists and has been discussed doesn't mean it should exist. Bensaccount (talk) 04:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You may nominate this for deletion if you'd like. Ignoring all rules is one thing, but ignoring all the people who work on categorization is another.  Wikipedia's categorization system is not a free-form tagging system.  It has evolved to be what it is -- which I will be the first to admit is a flawed system -- by balancing several different world views on what a categorization system should be.  You can try and totally change that if you'd like, but I don't think you will get far, and that is why I responded as I did. -- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman  04:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that this page should stay (though it could doubtless be much improved). We need something that at least attempts to demarcate the line between categories that should and should not be created. (And if the intent of the deletion would be to make it acceptable to create unlimited numbers of categories, then I'd certainly be opposed. Adding lots of less useful categories detracts from the value of the more useful ones, by making them harder to find.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * What we really need is a way of organizing categories. Which should be a software fix. Like on my user page I would like to divide it up into say music, literature, etc. Nevertheless, the categories serve primarily to find the article from the category. Not the other way around. So unlimited categories is still an improvement. Bensaccount (talk) 14:12, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't know what you mean by a way of organizing categories. It sounds like you want your own personal tags.  You can do something like this by creating lists of articles by your own organization scheme and keep the lists in your user-space.  So you could have User:Bensaccount/Music and User:Bensaccount/Literature.  You can add links to whatever articles you want.  This is also useful for creating watchlists. -- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman  00:17, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I mean it should be possible to move them around on the page and organize them. I am using my user page as an example, but its the article pages that matter. Bensaccount (talk) 01:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdenting) How does moving them around the page have any effect on how articles are being categorized? What do you have in mind? I've seen some proposals that would allow pull down lists and hierarchical arrangements of categories. There have been lots of proposals that could have an effect on categorization. I've worked on some of them myself (see WP:CI). If any of these proposals become a reality, which is to say that a developer makes them happen, then we may have to consider changing the categorization guidelines accordingly. WP:CI for example, would necessitate some major changes. But until any upgrades happen, we have to work with the system we have. -- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman 10:34, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Lol—any proposals to eliminate the deletion of categories should probably be run by WT:CFD. Such a proposal won't be seen by many eyes here—CFD is where the action on this front is. You might also want to recognize the notice at the top of this page, which directs you to cite CFDs in making proposals. That should be a pretty clear sign that this page is a secondary reference page for that work project. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:25, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It should also be remembered that much of over-categorization involves inprecise categories. A category like Category:Tall people is not only peroblematic because it is unclear if it is a notable characterization, but "tall" is an arbitrary adjective where we can not determine if someone is or is not tall, even on the rare occasions when we have their height.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Bold change: Award recipients
I have just made a rather WP:BOLD change, to reflect what looks like clearly developing consensus at a number of CfDs, e.g. the one for Category:Prize-winners of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition at Categories for discussion/Log/2010 January 7,  rewriting the text as follows:
 * If the winners of a notable competition are most of them not  individually notable, there should normally be only  a   list, not a category. However,  if the recipients are mostly notable enough to have individual Wikipedia articles or being obviously qualified for articles, a list and a category are both necessary.   This is especially the case If the award is so important that all those receiving it will necessarily have a Wikipedia   article.

I think this will provide a more appropriater guideline than the previous text, and avoid the need for multiple CfDs.  DGG ( talk ) 21:27, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And per WP:BRD, I have reverted the change.
 * Fistly, it's better to seeek consenus before changing a guideline rather than afterwards.
 * Secondly, it;s very dodgy to rewrite a guideline to suit your POV in an open CFD
 * And thirdly, it's downright sneaky to to claim an "emerging consenus" at a CFD which has been extensively canvassed in these edits, as you well know, since you are one of those canvassed. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I oppose the proposed change. This proposal goes against years of consensus in dozens of CFDs. (Annoyingly extensive list going back to 2005 available here.) The overwhelming majority of cases where award categories are nominated results in deletion of the category. The proposed criterion arbitarily sets the delete/keep boundary at "most", which presumably means 50%+1. We shouldn't be locked in to such a formulaic method, since often individual circumstances do matter. Incidentally, I had to close the discussions in question as being tainted by extensive canvassing, so as BHG says they are probably not the best thing to base an "emerging consensus" upon. But even if the discussions were valid, I don't see a consensus there that supports this circular reasoning. DGG was the only one to express it, as far as I can see. It is expressed more clearly here than in some of the discussions, where it was phrased in an entirely circular manner of logic. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll be continuing to argue for keeping all such categories at CfD that are in any way reasonable. I find that's usually the best way to  start to change consensus. But just for clarity, the word "most" at Wikipedia usually does not imply a fixed, but rather an approximate boundary, & I';d be glad to change the wording to  more clearly indicate that. And actually, I considered that a compromise--I'd prefer a lower boundary,  at about 1/4, not 1/2 notable.    Things are otherwise too busy to open another general discussion now, but I'll be back.     DGG ( talk ) 05:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It would seem to me that any setting of a boundary—even if approximate—would be arbitrary. It's open to you to argue that consensus should change but you can't change the guideline that represents past and current consensus without some evidence that it has indeed changed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

DGG's proposal also confuses the notabbility of the competition with the notability of the winners; the two may sometimes be connected, but it ain't necessarily so, -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC) I think this needs your attention, there is no example given for deleted awards categories, whereas every other section has at least one. I have looked over the recent edit summary and could find no trace of this line disappearing. Is this an oversight or are there no examples as there is some disagreement as to what awards categories should be deleted?  Captain Screebo Parley! 14:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Support The current wording is entirely unworkable and arbitrary. Kudos to DGG for offering an effective compromise here despite the usual obstinacy to any meaningful change at CfD. Alansohn (talk) 04:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Suggesting other users are "obstinate" is inappropriate. Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Good Olfactory. Guidelines exist to record consensus, not to change it, and as Good Olfactory notes, the consensus against categories of award-winners is long-standing. DGG is quite entitled "to argue for keeping all such categories at CfD that are in any way reasonable", but not to rewrite the guidelines until consensus changes.
 * Support DGG's changes actually make sense.  Why have categories for the big awards people will most likely notice any attempts to remove, but not for other awards?   D r e a m Focus  08:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Support The principle behind DGG's proposed changes is sound. The wording needs tweaking to deal with awards that are not competitions. --NSH001 (talk) 15:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose By their nature people can win a great many wards. This can lead to a category getting cluttered with a great many award categories.  In general it seems best to just avoid award catgories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:36, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If we are going to create a rule allowing awards categories maybe they should be generally limited to the top awards in the field. Otherwise we have the potential of having people in many categories for progressively more prestigeous awards.  However I am not even sure if this is a good idea.  I really think that listifying most awards winners is the best answer.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

A possible exception to WP:OC

 * Adjectives which imply a subjective inclusion criterion should not be used in naming/defining a category. Examples include such subjective words as: famous, notable, great, etc; any reference to size: large, small, tall, short, etc; or distance: near, far, etc; or character trait: beautiful, evil, friendly, greedy, honest, intelligent, old, popular, ugly, young, etc.

The project page states that there are occasional exceptions to what's there, and I think I've found one. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, certain poets became known for their awful poetry. I don't mean just a bad critical reaction. I mean the badness of their poetry was so celebrated and laughed at and remarked upon that it was the reason people read them. Wikipedia's articles on these poets (all dead) note in the lead sections of each that the awfulness of their poetry was the basis of their notability, and sources are in each article. There really is nothing more important about the subjects of these articles than the fact that they were so bad they were laughed at. In one case, James McIntyre (poet) the subject appears to have been in on the joke. In all cases, the universal reaction was that their typical poetry was not only awful, but laughable.

I created Category:Poetasters -- "poetaster" meaning "bad poet", but the category has a description further limiting inclusion: This category covers poets who achieved fame for typically writing verse widely viewed, almost universally by critics and commentators, as utterly awful. There are three hoops for an article to jump through to be included: "typically writing" (eliminating poets who occasionally write an awful poem) "verse widely viewed, almost universally by critics and commentators" (eliminating poets whose work is panned by only some critics) "utterly awful" (eliminating simply negative reviews). All of these criteria can and should be sourced.

The category is up for deletion here and editors familiar with this guideline could make very good contributions to that discussion, or critique my reasoning here. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:07, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Categorising by every country in the region.
I have noticed a tendency for addition of many food by country categories on regional foods. Hummus falafel, dolma and baklava are examples where some of us fight a constant battle to keep things under control. I could imagine a similar thing with other regional cultural items. Is it worth having a section about categorising by the highest applicable category?--Peter cohen (talk) 21:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The standard practice is to diffuse into sub-categories, and while I can see a good case for making an exception to that principle in this case, the issue here does not seem to be relevant to WP:OC's purpose of whether the categories should exist; instead, it is a question of whether they are being correctly used. So I think that this discussion belongs at WP:CAT. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:49, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Change of focus?
I have just reverted a good faith edit by Alan Liefting which added a new section at the top called "Overcategorising articles", and made the existing sections sub-heads of a new heading "Inappropriate category creation".

I can see that Alan was trying to ensure that the guideline addressed both aspects of the subject of overcategorisation, and at first glance I thought that was a good idea. However, when I thought about it further, I'm not so sure.

This guideline has always been focused on creating categories. The second sentence of the lead states that "not every verifiable fact (or the intersection of two or more such facts) in an article requires an associated category" ... and this guideline has set out to explain the consensus on various types of categories which should not be created.

Alan's changes shift the focus to the inappropriate population of categories, rather than their creation. Introducing a brief note about misuse of existing categories may nonetheless seem like a good idea, but unfortunately the brief new section in Alan's draft oversimplifies the consensus on that subject: it does not address WP:DUPCAT or WP:EPON, buth of which are important exceptions to the principles of only using the most specific category.

I cannot see a way of clarifying Alan's new section without expanding it significantly and thereby creating a fork of the main guidance in WP:CAT. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Article categorization by style characteristics
WP prefers consistency in some article style characteristics. Two characteristics which come to mind are national variety of English (American english vs. British english, etc.) and Notes/References/Footnoting/Citation style choices (e.g., Harvard referencing vs. footnoting, use of shortened footnotes, use of list defined references, wikitext citation methodology &mdash; use of hand-crafted vs. templated cites (and, if templated, choice between vs. citation), etc.). The language styles are generally alternatives, the others are a mix of some alternatives and some style approaches which are not mutually exclusive.

It strikes me that it might be useful to categorize style choices in articles where such choices have been made (which would likely include all Featured articles). Doing that would identify in the article which styling preferences should be observed, and also would enable navigation to articles using particular styles.

I haven't thought this through, but thought it might be useful to offer it up for discussion. This seemed like a better place to start than WP:VPR. Comments? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Eponymous musician categories
I have asked for input at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians on the need for such categories for musicians and musical groups based on WP:OC. I'm searching for some kind of standard or consensus on the subject, so if you have any opinion on the matter, please follow the link to the WikiProject talk page. Thanks. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Need Rfc
See Basilica Cistern category and discussion. Student7 (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

"category clutter"
In the first paragraph I find the sentence:

"Such overcategorization is also known as 'category clutter'."

I suggest changing it to read:

"Such overcategorization may be referred to as 'category clutter'."

We are only suggesting terminology, therefore "may be" is more appropriate. Bus stop (talk) 13:57, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

People by location
What would you generally say about categories such as, where "Foobar" is some not particularly notable village? Per WP:SMALLCAT, is this overcategorization or is it fine as a "part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme"? I'm not aware of this scheme being generally accepted for people by location, i.e. that it is agreed that all populated places should have their own people subcategory. GregorB (talk) 12:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think sub-categories are primarily intended to break up categories with a large number of members. I personally think that we should avoid sub-categories with few members (say, less than 5). -- Donald Albury 21:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I recently came across this in two aspects: first someone created subcategories of the "People from Croatia" category based on modern-day 21 Croatian counties - this seems to make practical sense, geographical articles are split analogously. But the county names aren't old toponyms, so when you see such a category on an article about someone from the Middle Ages, whose place of birth happens to be part of a modern-day county with a modern name, it looks really anachronistic. Lately people started further subcategorizing these per-county categories into per-municipality categories. This actually improved the situation because municipalities are more consistently named after villages, whose names are usually old toponyms. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 19:27, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * IMO in Croatia's case municipality-based categories are alright, probably better than using the modern county subdivisions and at the same time large enough geographic unit to merit a standalone category. '' Timbouctou 19:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * People by county categorization is at best unnatural (noone is going to describe him/herself as e.g. "coming from Požega-Slavonia County") and at worst anachronistic, as pointed out. But what about simply "People from Slavonia", "People from Međimurje", "People from Lika", etc? I already see several problems with this categorization too, but it seems roughly workable to me... GregorB (talk) 20:33, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Without arguing one way or the other on WP categorization, I'll observe that characterizing persons as "from xyz county" isn't uncommon in some parts of the U.S. I recall having encountered this in routine interpersonal interaction in re Dade and Broward counties in FL, Cook and DuPage counties in IL and King County in WA, and I have no doubt that it is as common in re other counties of various US States. Some quick googling at google Books turned up, and other items which might be relevant to the discussion here. The googling also turned up publications which apparently repackage "people by county" categorization data from WP; e.g., , , , etc. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 19:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, some context: Croatia is a country of 4.5 million, with 429 municipalities. This might be too finely grained. GregorB (talk) 20:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It makes more sense to say "People from Austro-Hungary" or "People from the Holy Roman Empire" or whatever nation prevailed at the time. Cities okay too. if they are continuation of older city. Considering "Julius Caesar" as being from "Italy" is a bit of a stretch (for example). Student7 (talk) 21:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * People by county in the US makes sense since most of the articles about people from that county are going to be about people who came from the county after it was organized, so anachronism is rare. Croatia is a different case, with problems associated with many people pre-dating the current names.  I would say this is an issue that needs to go to CfD for specific issues.  In general people should be categorized by county or equivalent when the next highest People from X (in the US People from State, but it varies by country) is too large.  Then People in "People from County X" should probably only be split if either A-the city they are from is widely known, or B-the people from County X category is just too large.  This seems the general rule to avoid too many categorizations.  Villages are rarely the next level below the state/province/department in cases where categorization by state/province/department lead to too large of categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In the Croatia case it might be possible to categorise as Category:People from Yugoslavia, Category:People from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Caetgory:People from the Holy Roman Empire, with these various past categories subdivided by the subdivisions they actually used as a need arouse.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:59, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

GRS moved to EGRS in 2009
Back in 2009, GRS moved to EGRS. I've updated the links. The language was slightly different than currently at EGRS, so I've noted that the language here has different emphasis. It's hard to keep two pages synchronized as folks elsewhere make tiny cumulative changes without discussion. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Better yet, instead of two nearby references to the same page, just have one full cite in main. This could be considered "summary style" of the main page. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:19, 6 March 2011 (UTC)