Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/Archive 8

Broadcasters VS media personalities
What is the difference between Category:Broadcasters and Category:Media personalities? In both, the subcategories Category:Television personalities and Category:Radio personalities seem to contain most of the articles in the tree. I got no response to this question on Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Media. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:00, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Defaultsort for places
What's the best DEFAULTSORT (if any) for places such as La Paz and El Salvador? (Previous discussion: User talk:Fuddle.) Certes (talk) 22:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
 * for non-Spanish speakers it feels like "Elsalvador" and "Lapaz" so I guess defaultsort would not be necessary in these cases. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:14, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Categorizing emigrants and immigrants
Hi there! I believe that we're on the same page about the grammar of emigration and immigration: emigrants are "from" the place they left, and immigrants go "to" the place they're arriving in. This is borne out in article space by titles I've searched. Unfortuately the categories are uniformly backwards: So our entire category tree - all the way back up to Category:Emigrants has, in my view, a problem of grammar. If we reach consensus about correcting the format, we can, and should, apply it uniformly across hundreds and hundreds of categories. Rather than nominate them all en masse at CFD, I've come here for an informal check first.
 * just as an example - see that every subcat is formatted as O emigrants to D. (where "O" is origin and "D" is destination.)
 * Here's a catch: "O" appears to be an adjectival demonym, which seems less than desirable, but may pertain to some conflicting desire for consistency in the category tree.
 * Note that all of the "Immigrants to" categories can be considered correctly named, except for one questionable soft redirect.
 * Therefore, I propose to rename all affected categories from O emigrants to D to the format Emigrants from OO to D.
 * "OO" represents a conversion from the demonym to the origin country's name in noun form.
 * @Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) was possibly involved with this area, but he is no longer with us; perhaps @Johnpacklambert could weigh in on history/reasons/discussions? Elizium23 (talk) 13:37, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

We do have Category:Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the United States and Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States. There are a few other examples.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:25, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

We also have Category:Kingdom of the Two Sicilies emigrants to the United States. Category:Emigrants from British India is not well developed, and I think uses inconsistent names.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:30, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

It has 3 cats that use British India emigrants to x, and 4 that use British India emigrants or migrants. Non use British Indian. British modifies India, not the people. This is another matter we have not teased out well, how to handle changing entities that use the same name. We have some interesting sub-cats under say Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:34, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

In my last example I think the worst is Qing dynasty emigrants to the United States. I think "dynasty" tends to much towards denoting the ruling family, especially since they were not Han Chinese. I think if we want to express that idea it should be Category:Qing Empire emigrants to the United States or even better Category:Emigrants from the Qing Empire to the United States. However I think that this is not needed. I think in the case of China we should use the form Emigrants from China to the United States. I think the Hong Kong Category should be renamed Category:Emigrants from Hong Kong to the United States. I think we should create Category:Emigrants from British Hong Kong to the United States for those who were in the US before the 1997 transfer of control.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:40, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I think this using the from OO to D form would make things a lot better and a lot more clear. There may be a few edge cases where we may need to come up with a way to better that the mess.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:51, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * We may need to come up with a clear and maybe new name for what people were leaving between the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

This would also be a good chance to fix the mess that is Category:British emigrants. If we used Category:Emigrants from the United Kingdom to the United States things would be more straight forward.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:56, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Of course this would also open another question. Should the categories be French expatriates in the United States or Category:Expatriates of France in the United States. I am thinking the later is a better form. I think we also need to establish at least that people do not belong in both trees. I have seen too many cases where someone in Category:Expatriate British sportspeople in the United States or its subcategories was also in Category:British emigrants to the United States or its subcategories. With that tree, if someone comes to the US as a child before they are involved in playing the sport at least at a level that would cause direct recruitment, they belong in the emigrants cat. The extricate sportspeople cat is for nationals of one country who come to play the sport in another country, not for natives of a country who move to a new country and later take up a sport so they become notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:04, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

We also need to make sure cat parenting is correct. Category:British India army offices is one example.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I think it is Category:British Indian Army officers. It was a sub-cat of Category:British people in colonial India. However that was not right because we had multiple articles on people who were not British. So I removed that cat.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:11, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Statistics on Categories
Hi,

Are there any statistics on

- new categories created per month

- list of categories by number of visits? Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 12:35, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization § RfC: should templates and template categories roll up into related content categories. —⁠andrybak (talk) 02:47, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Redundant Cats
Greetings. Cats are really not an area of expertise for me, so I tend to follow along with what other editors suggest on cats on pages. My feeble understanding of cats is that cats are redundant when the cat is a sub-cat of another. For example, you wouldn't put both Category:Silent American comedy films and Category:American comedy films, since the former is a subcat of the latter. You would only put the former, since it's more specific. I've been creating a bunch of articles on old political figures in Arizona, and I was tagging them with the Category:Arizona state senators. Another editor began adding Category:Arizona politicians. Since neither is a subcat of the other, I began to do it to save other editors' time. However, recently another editor deleted the politician cat from one of my articles, stating it's redundant. I really don't care one way or the other, just seeking some guidance so I don't cause work for other editors. Thanks.  Onel 5969  TT me 21:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Welcome to the crazy world that is Wikipedia categorization. Category:Arizona state senators is in fact subcategorized (see WP:SUBCAT) under Category:Arizona politicians, but by several levels of subcatting: Category:Arizona state senators is in Category:Members of the Arizona Legislature which is in Category:Political office-holders in Arizona which is categorized in Category:Arizona politicians. Hope this helps;)  DB 1729 talk 23:08, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you're right. Crazy.  Is there any way to easily tell?  And thanks for responding.  Onel 5969  TT me 23:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It's my understanding there is at least one tool that can do that. PetScan. I was meaning to start using it when I found out about it, but never have. -- DB 1729 talk 23:32, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for all your help. And keep up your good work!  Onel 5969  TT me 23:40, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Category:Paintings depicting the Rosary
Hello, I am not a new editor and have created four categories before now, but I have a question on this one and I wanted to ask to make sure that this one would be correct to make before publishing. I was trying to find examples of artwork that has its own Wikipedia article that depicts the Rosary in it (such as this, this, and this), while trying to improve the page for the Rosary. I had a hard time finding these articles though and it made me think, would a category make this easier? As far as I am aware, categories starting with "Paintings depicting..." do not exist, which is why I wanted to ask here first as to not have the category be nominated for deletion if created. Categories such as "Paintings of..." do exist, but I am hesitant to name the category that, as these paintings do not have the Rosary as the primary focus in them, but they do "depict" them. Any feedback is very much appreciated, thanks!  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 03:20, 13 October 2022 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Rosary with pomander.jpg|thumb|Rosary in a painting]] Perhaps I'm failing to understand the problem, but Wikipedia is not a good place to hunt for images for use in Wikipedia. Most are in Wikimedia Commons. I found this one, for example, in Commons:Category:Christian rosaries in art. It has not been sorted into subcategories for paintings and other art media, as for example Commons:Category:Paintings of baptism has been sorted, but that shouldn't stop you. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:31, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jim.henderson: No, that was a great answer and very helpful 🙂 I'm still curious though, do you think a category like this would be useful on Wikipedia?  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 16:57, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, the more I think about it, the more confused I get, because here in ENWP we have both Category:Images of paintings and Category:Paintings which has a subcategory Category:Paintings by subject. Oh. Maybe I should think more carefully about whom to ask, before complaining that it's confusing. My friend works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and might be able to handle it easily. Until he answers the ping, I can provide the general guidance that the main reason for making a new category is that the parental categories are overstuffed, for example getting near the point that they start overflowing to a second page. There are also many other reasons; in Commons I often make a category when at least one of its parents has a dozen pictures or fewer. This includes structural adjustments for making a complex tree structure more uniform, thus less tangled. As for whether our fellow editors will find these pictures more readily with your proposed category. I guess my only answer is what I said, move the images to Commons. Umm, but as for the articles about the paintings, are there really enough such articles that putting them together will more help the searchers than hinder? One of the powers of a category is that, once an editor finds one picture that's approximately right, the category might lead quickly to a bunch including one that suits the purpose precisely. This function is less effectively served by categories that are either too small or too large. Yes, cat wrangling is a complex skill, and now Wikidata is getting into the action of finding the right pictures, which may bring great efficiency but for the moment is bringing more complexity. Oof, I didn't intend to write so much. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you may be looking for something like this query of paintings depicting rosaries on Wikidata. See more background at Wikidata:WikiProject sum of all paintings.--Pharos (talk) 17:01, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Why just paintings? A category like this is usually called Category:Foo in art, and rightly so. In general such a category is only worth establishing if you are prepared to do a reasonable amount of work filling it. I'd think you shouldn't bother, on the whole. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

❌ Okay after clicking on every result (with a name) from the Wikidata search  suggested, plus the three articles I found before, I am left with six total articles that could be placed into this category, being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I feel like there is enough paintings to warrant the creation of the category and would be helpful for those people who have a very similar search of mine and don't want to search through the Wikidata items, plus it has room for expansion.

With all of that being said though, this would be a very specific category to create, and would not be useful to 99% of readers, and reading over every comment up until this point, none have really supported the creation of the category either, so I don't think I will make it. Thank you truly for all of your help, I definitely learned a lot about categories regardless. Wishing you all the best 🙂  Johnson 524  (Talk!) 01:41, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Overpopulation in football positions categories
It's come to my attention that the footballers' positions categories are quite overpopulated, they range from 15,000+ to 45,000+. Should they be sub-categorised by players' nationalities or clubs? I thought that I would ask here instead of beginning to do sub-categorising and making mistakes. Or are these categories not overpopulated enough - as in, is there a specific limit in which a category is listed as overpopulated? SarahTHunter (talk) 18:44, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Examples always help. Presumably you mean these:
 * All have subcategories, such as . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:25, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Since many people will have several clubs over their careers, & not infrequently multiple nationalities, this would be a life's work. And what would be the point? You will never get them small enough to be "perusable" (say a max of 200). Splitting by century might be easier, still with lots of overlaps, but when categories get this big, it is best imo to just leave them, and most importantly, make sub-cats non-diffusing. Attempts to break up huge categories tend to be abandoned half way through, leaving a proper mess, like Rathfelder's attempts to break down a mere 4,000 Old Etonians. Johnbod (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I wondered this too. When I sieved through working with female freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and medley swimmers it took almost an entire week to get through them three years ago (they all originally had a few sub-cats, the strokes all had American and Canadian swimmers but no other sub-cat for the Dutch - which the freestyle swimmers had a lot of - the swimmers' categories contained 2,000+ that weren't sub-categorised if I can remember). I felt like I had a slight OCD problem when I saw the large numbers of football positions' categories and I thought "wow, this looks so big!". But anyway, clarifying everyone's comments I think I will leave it as I don't want to make it into a big mess and annoy other users into why it's been fiddled about with. Thank you very much for your advice. SarahTHunter (talk) 17:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * All have subcategories, such as . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:25, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Since many people will have several clubs over their careers, & not infrequently multiple nationalities, this would be a life's work. And what would be the point? You will never get them small enough to be "perusable" (say a max of 200). Splitting by century might be easier, still with lots of overlaps, but when categories get this big, it is best imo to just leave them, and most importantly, make sub-cats non-diffusing. Attempts to break up huge categories tend to be abandoned half way through, leaving a proper mess, like Rathfelder's attempts to break down a mere 4,000 Old Etonians. Johnbod (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I wondered this too. When I sieved through working with female freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and medley swimmers it took almost an entire week to get through them three years ago (they all originally had a few sub-cats, the strokes all had American and Canadian swimmers but no other sub-cat for the Dutch - which the freestyle swimmers had a lot of - the swimmers' categories contained 2,000+ that weren't sub-categorised if I can remember). I felt like I had a slight OCD problem when I saw the large numbers of football positions' categories and I thought "wow, this looks so big!". But anyway, clarifying everyone's comments I think I will leave it as I don't want to make it into a big mess and annoy other users into why it's been fiddled about with. Thank you very much for your advice. SarahTHunter (talk) 17:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I wondered this too. When I sieved through working with female freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and medley swimmers it took almost an entire week to get through them three years ago (they all originally had a few sub-cats, the strokes all had American and Canadian swimmers but no other sub-cat for the Dutch - which the freestyle swimmers had a lot of - the swimmers' categories contained 2,000+ that weren't sub-categorised if I can remember). I felt like I had a slight OCD problem when I saw the large numbers of football positions' categories and I thought "wow, this looks so big!". But anyway, clarifying everyone's comments I think I will leave it as I don't want to make it into a big mess and annoy other users into why it's been fiddled about with. Thank you very much for your advice. SarahTHunter (talk) 17:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Alumni of “School” or “School alumni”
Hi, I had noticed that there seems to be tons of categories that are “school” alumni, but some are Alumni of “school”. Is there a proper or perferred manner?

My question was prompted by noticing a category such as Category:Alumni by university or college in the United Kingdom, different from Category:Alumni by university or college in Japan.

Thank you. Ebbedlila (talk) 17:25, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

It's an Eng-Var thing. I think that the UK version is mire logical but cannot get support for it outside the British Isles. Laurel Lodged (talk) 18:27, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Category for Articles with Wikilink Problems
On the community portal page, under the "Fix Wikilinks" heading, there is a list of articles with various problems with links: too many, too few, orphaned pages, etc. But the "more" link below the brief list goes to Category:All_articles_with_too_few_wikilinks only. Is there a way to link to a broader category of articles with wikilink problems instead? 184.67.135.194 (talk) 21:03, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Duplication - categories about people killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I was working on Killing of Mykhailo Korenovsky and thought that Category Civilian casualties was a bit broad, noting that within that category most people killed in wars were in subcategories about that war. So I created Category:Civilians killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and added him to it.

Then I went to see who else should be in the category, and found that Category:People killed in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine exists. But not as a sub category of Civilian categories.

So I see some duplication, and I decided to stop doing anything and get some input from people who have more experience of this.... (talk) 16:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Biathletes
A small question to ask for anyone who is a fan of winter sports: is biathlon a skiing event or something completely different? I've added a sub cat for skiers from Ljubljana in the city's sportspeople category and there is a handful of biathletes who come from the Slovenian capital city. Should biathletes come under the skiers' sub cat or left out? SarahTHunter (talk) 11:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
 * you might rather ask this question at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sports or to individual Wikipedians who edited Biathlon recently. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:45, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, thank you. SarahTHunter (talk) 16:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * biathletes are definitely skiers, as well as shooters. More precisely, they are cross-country skiers. Per main article, 'the biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.' Article Biathlon is found in Category:Cross-country skiing and Category:Rifle shooting sports, and Category:Biathletes is in Category:Cross-country skiers and Category:Sport shooters by type. In my opinion, you can perfectly replicate this structure at lower levels such as the national level. I guess that in the official communication of Olympics events it appears as a separate sport in the full list of events, but then again in the same list the Nordic combined will appear separately from cross-country skiing and ski jumping, or Short-track speed skating separately from speed skating. Place Clichy (talk) 08:36, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Uncategorized Pages is full of Templates
Hi all! The Uncategorized Pages category has been absolutely full of templates for a couple of months now, and it's only getting worse. I'd like to bring this to the group to see if we can come up with a solution. Templates are way harder to categorize since you can't use hotcat, and uncategorized templates are a relatively minor issue compared to uncategorized pages (imo). Is there a way to either remove the uncategorized tag from templates (perhaps creating a separate tag for uncategorized template?) or restructure the category page to exclude templates? Niftysquirrel (talk) 23:10, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It's filling up because has been making edits . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is my ugly handiwork, and there are 8,000 more template pages that lack categories. I have been slowly working my way through this neglected database report, categorizing some templates, moving some to better locations, tagging others, and nominating still others for deletion. If having template pages in the category is a problem, I suggest that Uncategorized be modified to place them automatically into a new category called something like . – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:30, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Sounds sensible - but really half of these should just be deleted, & I'm dubious categorizing them has any point. Johnbod (talk) 21:54, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I've been working on categozing templates using Database reports/Uncategorized templates this month and the number is getting trimmed down a little. I agree many of these should be deleted, but sometimes I find that hard to judge. Sometimes when in doubt I categorize, and sometimes I let it be. Johnbod, do you really think half should be deleted? Is there an effort to do that, because it would help out the cause if that many truly need to be deleted? -- DB 1729 talk 06:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Just a guess, but yes. There's no effort I'm aware of (other than above) - I think the task has no got out of control. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

HowTo:Return deleted category
Hello. The instructions say to ask the editor who deleted the category after a deletion nomination has passed. There is a 2007 category a few editors would like to return, and I've pinged the editor who deleted it in 2007 but they only seem to edit Wikipedia every couple of months. Is there a procedure for returning a long-ago deletion aside from requesting guidance from the original 2007 deleter? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * See Deletion review and Requests for undeletion. Use whichever one is most appropriate. Mind  matrix  13:43, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks . Will have a look at both to see if one fits. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at WikiProject Albums re: categories
Project members might be interested in this ongoing discussion at WikiProject Albums:


 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums

Participation welcome. Thanks! --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 04:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Use of "Deaths by stabbing" versus "Stabbing attacks in" categories in articles and redirects.
Hi there. On the article Killing of Brianna Ghey, I added Category:Deaths by stabbing in England as it seemed to be the most specific category to use. Jim Michael 2 has changed this a couple of times now to instead be Category:Stabbing attacks in England. In the edit summary of Jim's he said "that's for Brianna Ghey redirect".

I asked Jim on his talk page about this, his response was that The Deaths by x cats are for bios. This is an article about a killing, so it should be on the redirect & is. and that it is common practice for Deaths by cats to be for bios & redirects of people's names. When I asked him for the the policy, guideline, or consensus for where that practice was established he was unable to do so.

It's my understanding that articles should be placed into the most specific categories which logically apply based on the article content, in line with WP:CATSPECIFIC. To me that would be the "deaths by stabbing" category, as this is an article about a death by stabbing. Is Jim correct here, that only the Brianna Ghey redirect should be in "deaths by stabbing", and the main article should be in "stabbing attacks"? If so, could someone please point out the relevant policy, guideline, or consensus where that practice was established? Thanks. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's been that way for over a decade. How would I know where it's written? Why do you think that a cat should be on its redirect as well as the article? Death cats are for bios & redirects of people's names. If we put them on articles about incidents, they'd be on earthquakes, bombings etc. They'd be on Bhopal disaster. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It helps immeasurably when referring to an existing consensus if you can link to it, so that editors who are not familiar with it can become acquainted. There's nothing wrong with not knowing where the existing consensus for this is, but if you're going to strongly assert that there is a consensus on this then being able to direct others to it is a good thing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I haven't asserted a consensus. I'm saying that's how it's always been done & it's common sense. There's no case for a cat to be on an article & it's redirect & no-one's saying why one cat & only that one should be on both. There's no case for making an exception for one cat only. No-one wants 2023 deaths on the article. No-one's adding death cats to 2008 Christmas massacres. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that's how it's always been done If this is how things have always been done, then that is a consensus. Because that is a consensus, there must be somewhere where that consensus was agreed upon and established.
 * Now you've already said you can't refer to it, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. Hopefully one of the regulars here can point to that consensus so that I can become familiar with it, and so that the next time someone asks you or I "where was the consensus for this practice established" then we can refer them to that discussion. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Many things (on WP & elsewhere) are done by common sense, standard practice etc. without a written consensus. Death cats are for bios. No cat should be on an article & a redirect. No-one wants the 2023 deaths cat on the killing article. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 22:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There are many non-bio pages on Category:Deaths by stabbing in England today. Clearly it has not "been that way" for 10 years.
 * For the record, Jim Michael 2 received a WP:TBAN just five days ago for similar behaviors. According to the discussion here, There is a clear and overwhelming consensus that Jim Michael 2 has been disruptive and bludgeoning in discussions concerning articles about years and that a topic ban is appropriate. Therefore Jim Michael 2 is indefinitely topic banned from articles about years, broadly construed. Kire1975 (talk) 01:09, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's important to make the distinction between a convention and a consensus. Jim Michael's assertion is that there is a convention - a history of (fairly) consistently doing something a certain away - as opposed to a specific discussion where it was agreed to do that thing. Pointing out a convention is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
 * On this specific example though, if Category:Deaths by stabbing in England is only intended to contain biographies, it is misnamed and should be "stabbing victims" or "people who have died by stabbing" to make that clearer. Wagger<b  style="color:#728">s</b><small  style="color:#080">TALK  11:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Many articles are wrongly categorised. It's irrelevant & unreasonable to mention an unconnected topic ban, or to falsely claim that I've said there's a consensus. Death cats, whether by year, location or cause, are for bios. No-one wants 2023 deaths on the article as well as the redirect. There's no case for a cat to be on an article & a redirect to it. We don't put deaths by IED cats on articles such as 14 October 2017 Mogadishu bombings or deaths by poisoning cats on articles such as Chernobyl disaster; there's no reason to do so for stabbings. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 12:28, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This might be a bit WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but there are lots of non-biography articles in Category:Deaths by stabbing in England, and most of the article names that appear to be biographies are actually redirects to "murder of X" style articles with little or no chance that the redirects will be turned into standalone biography articles. As a general rule, redirects should not be placed in article cateogries. <b style="color:#98F">W</b><b style="color:#97E">a</b><b style="color:#86D">g</b><b style="color:#75C">ge</b><b style="color:#83C">r</b><b  style="color:#728">s</b><small  style="color:#080">TALK  13:54, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The second point would apply here:
 * "Sometimes a redirect is placed in an article category because the form of the redirected title is more appropriate to the context of that category"
 * —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 20:43, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Some of those in that cat are the person redirect & the article, such as Ross Parker (murder victim) & Murder of Ross Parker. As I've said, it cannot be correct for an article & a redirect to it to be in the same cat. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 18:34, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess maybe. But even conventions usually get discussed or documented somewhere, especially when there are edge cases that come up which need to be discussed in relation to the convention. Otherwise how do new editors know what convention applies to a given situation? Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Please see my reply at User talk:Paine Ellsworth Whilst not being the same occurrence, the principle is similar. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I would support the sole categorization of "Deaths by stabbing", since "stabbing attacks" already has "Deaths by stabbing" as a subcategory, and Ghey has most certainly died, either directly through or as of a result of Ghey's stabbing. I think that this is kind of a stupid argument to get in though; we're edit-warring about categories. Really guys?  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 03:54, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The first time it, I figured it was a good faith mistake as there was no edit summary explaining why it was changed. I citing CATSPECIFIC. A day later Jim restored it , I asked on Jim's talk page why he'd restored it, he asserted what I read as a pre-existing consensus, I asked him to link it to me so that I could learn why we catted articles in the manner he was asserting, he was unable to provide that link, so I asked here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 04:04, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't make a mistake; death cats are routinely for bio articles. I've made it clear that it's a long-standing convention that's in line with our categorisation; I don't know whether or not there was a discussion & consensus. I haven't edit-warred over it; I changed it twice. No-one is saying why a cat should be in an article & a redirect to it, nor why no-one wants the 2023 deaths cat on the article as well as the redirect, nor is anyone saying why Deaths by cats aren't on the vast majority of articles about bombings, stabbings, explosions, earthquakes, floods etc. It can't be that such cats should be on all of them but no-one has added them. A small minority of articles being miscategorised is commonplace. As with some other discussions, the size & duration of this one is baffling. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 10:24, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Possible new categories
I am in the process of doing a GAR for Thomas Johnston (engraver). That article has a See also section that gave me some ideas for (I think) new Categories that Wikipedia doesn't have and that I think would prove useful. I'd like to know from this WikiProject how to go about establishing the new categories of American Colonial organ builders, American Colonial engravers, and American Colonial printers. Shearonink (talk) 18:07, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Shearonink, you could create some categories like Category:Lawyers from the Thirteen Colonies. I saw a step by step guide to creating a new category here. Ideally a new category would have at least five potential notable members. TSventon (talk) 18:55, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks - What I ended up doing for now is creating a template, Template:Colonial American craftspeople which you can see on Thomas Johnston (engraver). I don't know if there are quite enough entries for a Category... Shearonink (talk) 20:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

RFC at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism
I just wanted to notify people here of an RFC I started. Quoting the question here: can we categorize an organization as an "organization opposed to LGBT/transgender rights" in an instance where the organization is known for opposing a particular LGBT right, but the sources mentioning that don't say it's a right? For the simplest example: if an organization is known for campaigning against same-sex marriage, are our criteria for categorizing them as "an organization that opposes LGBT rights" based on 1) whether the WP:RS commenting on their opposition to same-sex marriage explicitly call same-sex marriage an LGBT right or 2) whether WP:RS generally consider same-sex marriage an LGBT right? TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:31, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Category:2020s Mexican television series by genre
I created this category back on March 4 and it shows the error message "Invalid page name. Template:Decade nationality television series category is for use only on category pages whose title is of the form "YYY0s Fooish television series", where YYY0s is a 4-digit decade and "Fooish" is a nationality (e.g. "South African" or "Japanese")." Can someone figure this out? Did I do something wrong or does the header templates not recognize 2020s series by genre? WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It's nothing to do with the decade, nor with the nationality. The problem is the suffix "by genre". If you look at any of the other five "2020s Fooian television series by genre" subcategories of you'll see that they all use  as does . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Got it. I added the Navseasoncats. Thanks for the insight. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 18:36, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Black people in art depopulation
I just noticed this edit. @Dancing Dollar, I see you're making many similar edits. Why is emptying Category:Black people in art a good idea? I don't see the sense of it. And other editors, do you agree it's a good idea? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:31, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * No, it's a terrible idea. All these should be rolled back, and the editor probably banned. Johnbod (talk) 16:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I was surprised...the category seemed useful, to me, appeared to have ~180 entries. I looked for some discussion but couldn't find one. I assume Dancing Dollar had a rationale, because they asked me why I thought the category was useful. Valereee (talk) 18:17, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There are around 200 recategorisations here that should be reverted ASAP. I am assuming WP:GOODFAITH here and surmise that Dancing Dollar just got a bit carried away with AWB and made a mass change that seemed like a good idea at the time. A gentle warning should suffice. Cnbrb (talk) 20:01, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Update: it looks like the user is now self-reverting in response to the discussion. No major damage done, we can all move on. Cnbrb (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Glad to see this reversion - I'd already reverted the one change which showed up on my watchlist. Pam  D  20:16, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yup. WP-categories are their own special little world. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I hope so. Just for future reference, if you don't like a category for some reason, put it up at WP:CFD for deletion, merging, renaming or just discussion. We are actually very poor at dealing with out of process emptying, which circumvents all our processes, & should be strongly resisted. Using AWB as an excuse isn't adequate imo. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * See Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 21:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Nothing about categories there. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:08, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

People categorized by nationalities that didn't exist during their lifetime
Olaudah Equiano is in Nigerian people categories, but Nigeria didn't exist until long after his death. Is this permitted? I assume it is permitted for names which were in use before the modern state existed, like "China" or "Germany", but I don't know what is preferred in a situation like this. (Did the name "Nigeria" exist in the 18th century?) —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 03:25, 26 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Conside Barum woman from about 7,000 BCE: I think it's reasonable to include her in Category:Swedish women. I think we can allow "Category:Fooian people" to include "People from the area which is currently Foo" - though I don't know quite how we handle the many Europeans who have lived in several different countries without moving house, as borders have changed around them. Pam  D  06:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, we normally accept, or we should, that Germany and Italy existed as well-understood geographical & linguistic entities long before politics caught up, and in Eastern Europe etc generally allow for more than one option. I don't think "Nigeria" was a concept in the 18th century, but that's still ok. Johnbod (talk) 02:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Lights and freedom For instance, I created the Category:Assassinated politicians from countries that no longer exist, because large empires span many current countries for example (I don't know if the powers that be will delete it though). In other cases I have categorized them in existing countries if their former realms were entirely contained in said countries. Be advised I am kind of new to categorization and I haven't exactly received a warm welcome. Regards,  Thinker78  (talk) 21:20, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not ideal, but in the absence of a category that would actually encompass whatever else he was, categorizing him as "Nigerian" on the basis that he was from an area that constitutes part of Nigeria now is certainly better than not categorizing him as anything at all. Bearcat (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Strange misuse of WikiProject categories
I've been coming across a recurring issue of late which I wanted to bring to the WikiProject's attention. I've previously posted about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France, but got no response there,

For the past several months, there have been at least two or three cases per week of and  showing up (virtually always together) on mainspace, draft or user sandbox articles instead of on the talk pages. Now, obviously, established Wikipedians know how those categories work and would never do that at all — but by and large, these articles are created by new users, and it's rarely if ever the same new user twice.

But it's incredibly unlikely that genuinely new users would even know about the existence of WikiProject categories in the first place, and even more unlikely that so many different new users would repeat the same error over and over again all by themselves unless they were somehow being told that they were supposed to do that. No other WikiProject category ever sees this happen anywhere near as often; Belgium occasionally shows up in the polluted category reports but usually does not (and if it does, it's inevitably also paired with WikiProject Europe on the same page), and it's exceedigly rare for any other "WikiProject [projectname] articles" category to ever show up there at all, but Europe and France have become categories I have to check daily for misfiled articles. (There isn't always a page there every time, but it happens frequently enough that I can never just let it slide a day without checking.) The French Wikipedia does not, as far as I can tell, place WikiProject categories on articles, so this isn't simply a carry-over from established French-Wikipedia practice either. So really the only thing I can think of is that some kind of documentation somewhere is somehow giving new editors the mistaken impression that those categories belong on the articles.

So does anybody have any ideas about this, and how we can make it stop? Bearcat (talk) 20:13, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Any idea if it's the same editor(s)?
 * My other thought is that it could be automated tools mis-set, or gone awry... - jc37 20:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The most recent one is Draft:Ziak (rapper), right? That user looks like they've been around for almost a year, but the categories they added aren't from the French article they say they translated from. Does French Wikipedia have a policy of putting project categories on drafts? Or is WP:CXT somehow doing that?
 * The other possibility that springs to mind (which is why I haven't tagged the user here) is that it's a sock adding categories to articles that are promotional or have had spam links added to them, to make those pages more likely to be found. Not that adding project categories would help that, but spammers often also do ineffective things first to test if they'll be detected. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * There are several categorisation tools, such as HotCat, and I think that AWB can also add cats. Perhaps one of these works from an incorrect list, or is not correctly detecting whether a cat is appropriate for mainspace or not. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Both HotCat and AWB could still really only add categories that the user of HotCat or AWB knows about — they don't add categories all by themselves, they add categories that a user manually programs them to add. So that wouldn't really account for the problem at all, because the categories are still only there if a human user actively put them there. Bearcat (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't say that HotCat and AWB were the culprits, I said that it could be a categorisation tool, and gave HotCat and AWB as ecamples of tools that exist. There are others, and as noted below, ContentTranslation is high on the list of suspects.
 * As a parallel, there are tools that add WikiProject banners to talk pages, and at least two of these (I think that one of them is called Rater) works from a predefined list, and if that list gets out of date (such as by a WikiProject template being deleted at TfD), the tool can still add that WikiProject to talk pages, which then gain a redlink instead of a banner. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:39, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I can't categorically state that it's never been the same editor twice, but it's usually been a different editor each time I've seen it, generally a brand new one with little or no prior edit history (although Ziak obviously proves that that's not always the case either). Socking had occurred to me, but the problem is that since there's generally one or two articles each time I see this, but then I move on and do other things, the incidents become a lot harder to find again in my edit history in order to collect them for an SPI check. (It would be so helpful if there were a way for me to search my contribution history for specific edit summaries I may have used!) Ziak was a draft, yes, but this doesn't only hit drafts, and also hits mainspace articles sometimes as well.
 * I'm not sure the French Wikipedia even has draftspace, to be honest — certainly if I go to WP:AFC and click on its French interlang, I don't get taken to an "Articles pour création" queue filled with "drafts", but to a page for requesting review of userspace sandbox pages. Bearcat (talk) 12:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the French Wikipedia does not appear to have a draft namespace. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I just confirmed that these categories come from ContentTranslation and filed T338360 * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * So if the French article has portal links on it that seem to match up with a WikiProject category, then it "translates" the portal into the WikiProject category. That makes perfect sense, and almost certainly explains what's been happening. Seems odd that this would only happen for French translations and virtually never for anything else, but such is life sometimes. Thanks for the catch! Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Input requested
Hi. I posted a question at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization. If someone knows the answer it would be great. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 02:25, 10 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Please don't post on multiple talk pages with the same question within a day of each other. The answer to your question can be found on WP:CATEGORIZATION, a page that you should consider reading thoroughly. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 03:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thinker78 has not posted on multiple talk pages with the same question, so far as I can tell. They posted on one page, and left the above note directing people to that page. This is permitted by WP:MULTI. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 14:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Assassinated American politicians by state
Hello. I was planning on creating the tree Category:Assassinated American politicians by state (under Category:Assassinated American politicians) and populate it with subcategories like Category:Assassinated California American politicians. My intention is for subcategories not about politicians born or resident of a given state but who were serving or served a jurisdiction in the given state. But given that some of my created categories have proved controversial and been subject to CfDs, I decided to ask for opinions on the matter beforehand. Thoughts? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 00:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Categories views
I noticed that the Category:Assassinated American politicians doesn't get many views. Maybe an average of 5 daily. At first I was thinking it could be that the term is not searched much in engines. According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, there are no valid ngrams to plot. According to Google Trends, there is not enough data to show. One would be inclined to conclude that the search term is at fault.

But then I also noticed that the List of assassinated American politicians in contrast has an average of more than 200 views daily. Then my question is, why the difference in views? How do people land in the list more than in the category page? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 22:03, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Smallcat discussion
There is a discussion concerning changing the text and minimums of WP:SMALLCAT at Wikipedia_talk:Overcategorization. - jc37 16:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Tool exist?
Hello, is there a tool that, given a category that's well-populated on another language wiki, quickly populate the enwiki version of the category with articles that exist on both language wikis?

E.g. Category A on jawiki contains 100 pages and I just created the same category on enwiki, and I want to add all the pages that exist on both wikis to the enwiki version. toobigtokale (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Various category problems
I've come across many different category problems within tennis-related articles (though similar problems exist in other categories too). Here are some examples:
 * Category:2004_WTA_Tour - duplicate categorisation - for example 2004 Italian Open (tennis) is in Category:2004 Italian Open (tennis) and also in Category:Italian Open (tennis). It's also in Category:2004 ATP Tour and so is its parent category
 * Category:2018_Japan_Open_Tennis_Championships - the doubles are categorised under D, but the singles are categorised under R (for Rakuten presumably)
 * WTA_Taiwan_Open is in Category:WTA_Tour and so is its parent Category:WTA Taiwan Open
 * Category:2015_PBZ_Zagreb_Indoors - category keys not set, so the articles are listed under 2015.
 * Category:U.S._National_Indoor_Championships - category keys all over the place - some articles listed by year, some by D for doubles or S for singles, one by K for Kroger.

Each of these examples is a just a representative of many similar occurrences. All of these problems can be fixed manually of course, but there are so many of them, and finding them and fixing them is a very labour-intensive process. Any suggestions on how to simplify or automate or semi-automate the process of identifying such problems and of fixing them?. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)


 * with many articles having the same issue, WP:AWB can be of help. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:19, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm a long-time AWB user, but these sorts of issues don't fit well with AWB's capabilities. For example, detecting which articles have categories which duplicate a parent, or those where the category keys are missing, wrong or inconsistent between articles. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Fractions in category names
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Heads of government versus prime ministers
I notice we do not only have Category:Heads of government but also Category:Prime ministers. The biggest difference that I noticed is that the tree of Category:Heads of government also contains presidents subcats. If that is the main difference indeed I wonder if the heads of government tree is redundant and if we can just keep the presidents and prime ministers tree. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:25, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * what do you think? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It really seems like the head of government categories seem to exist so as to also contain prime ministers, as compared to head of state categories.
 * I wonder how many of the heads of government subcats could probably be renamed (or possibly split) to fit in one of the other trees. - jc37 06:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * With some exceptions, we may just purge presidents subcategories from the tree and rename the remainder from heads of government to prime ministers. For example Category:Assassinated heads of government and Category:15th-century heads of government already exclude heads of state. The challenge is in the many top level categories in the tree, but after we tackle the lower layers that should become more easy too. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. I was just being less specific about it : )
 * Depending on the category it could probably be a rename/merge in one direction or other. - jc37 07:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Marcocapelle @Jc37 I also favour just calling heads of government who weren't also simultaneously heads of state (like the POTUS or some other president) "prime ministers". Some countries like Germany and Austria prefer calling them "chancellor" etc. but "prime minister" or "premier (ministre)" (or "first minister" in Scotland and Canada, or "chief minister" in Sierra Leone) are by far the most common titles for this office. List of spouses of heads of government provides a handy overview.
 * Marcocapelle and I already discussed this in May 2023 on my talk page at User talk:Nederlandse Leeuw/Archive 2, leading to the Categories for discussion/Log/2023 May 13 CfS on 13 May 2023; Marco already created Category:Spouses of prime ministers on 12 May 2023‎, and we split off Category:Lists of spouses of prime ministers on 26 June 2023.
 * Although in some countries the head of state (president or monarch) is largely a ceremonial position and less powerful than the prime minister (e.g. the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria etc.), while in other countries the prime minister is clearly subordinate to the head of state (president or monarch; e.g. France, Thailand, PR of China etc.), we may assume that in countries where the president is both head of state and head of govt, the head of state function is the more important one. (E.g. being commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces arguably falls under the head-of-state Powers of the president of the United States; this is not something that they need to agree on with other ministers in their government, let alone Congress, although he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments.)
 * I think it was established in an earlier CFD, if I am not mistaken actually the 2010 CFD nominated by BHG, that we shouldn't categorise presidents as "heads of government" if they are also already heads of state, the presumption being that the latter is the more important function. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:12, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm I can't find it at Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 27, so maybe that decision was made somewhere else.
 * Anyway, as I said on my talk page: I was thinking I could also BOLDly create Category:Lists of spouses of prime ministers (as a child of Category:Spouses of prime ministers) already? Or should I wait with that? Some people may object that not all heads of government are called "prime minister", even though like 95% are. The advantage of calling every head of govt who isn't simultaneously head of state a "prime minister" is that there can be no confusion whether it also includes presidents who are also head of govt. It won't. That clarity is what we should strive for.
 * Marco and I indirectly agreed on that later: At this point I'm in doubt whether we need Category:Spouses of heads of government by country, because Category:Spouses of prime ministers/Category:Spouses of prime ministers by country seem to already cover this purpose, and not in need of a "heads of government" parent. Its parent Category:Spouses of heads of government still hasn't been created, even though Category:Spouses of heads of state has following yesterday's split. @Marcocapelle are you still planning to do that? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:44, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I agree that Category:Spouses of prime ministers suffices. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:49, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I think maybe there is far more than prime ministers in history. No need to circumscribe the category only to modern countries or the history of industrialized nations. Who were the heads of government of the Aztec Empire for example? What about polities in ancient Muslim societies? The Roman and Greek republics? The Persian Empire? Ancient African nations? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 23:28, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * except for Athens and Rome the answer is simple, the monarch was the government. Neither in Athens nor in Rome there was an office "head of government". Marcocapelle (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no office "head of government" in the USA either. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 03:41, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Disagree. Head of Government is a good general name for heads of government, particularly those who aren't head of state.  Depending on the system, a president could be a head of state or a head of government and head of state.  I think it is a mistake to rename to "prime minister" heads of government with other titles. Newystats (talk) 05:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I just realized this is about heads of government and not assassinated heads of government. If you see the actual category it is populated with many pages besides prime ministers and presidents. Therefore, I don't agree with the proposal. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 19:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Black markets by country
Although we have Category:Black markets, "Surely there were black markets in other countries?" (quoted from the link). Shouldn't we have, Category:Black markets by country under that? Please advise. Mathglot (talk) 23:06, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

==Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth § Should SmallCat continue to be a guideline== You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth § Should SmallCat continue to be a guideline. A smart kitten (talk) 11:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Question
What is the protocol for categories that only have one page in them? While doing some work for WP:Louisiana I noticed someone create a new category for something that only has one page that could go inside. Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer features the information for former coaches which in turn is in the catevory created today that I am concerned about is "Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer coaches".

Ktkvtsh (talk) 23:00, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

"Template:R from deadname" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:R_from_deadname&redirect=no Template:R from deadname] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.

I’m notifying WP:CATP as one of the options is to turn Template:R from deadname into its own rcat, which would then result in the creation of or similar. Best, A smart kitten (talk) 17:45, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

"We Didn't Start the Fire" Category
I was thinking about creating a category for events mentioned in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire," but I can definitely see how that could be considered trivial. Certainly the election of Harry Truman is not most notable for its inclusion in a Billy Joel song, but there are song events that are arguably best remembered for their inclusion in the song (Syringe Tide comes to mind). I feel that this could be a useful category, but would like others' input. Remainsuncertain (talk) 21:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Remainsuncertain Ask Koavf. I have seen them have some interest in such niche cats. Regards, -- Thinker78  (talk) 03:08, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Redundant cat
This categories seem to mirror each other. Category:Crime by century and Category:Crimes by century. Thoughts? Regards,-- Thinker78  (talk) 03:11, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The Crimes ones should be about particular events which were of a criminal nature, such as the Hatton Garden job. The Crime ones should be about more general topics, such as changes to the law and the events that precipitated the change. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 07:13, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it is rather confusing such arrangement. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 19:21, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia categories named after musical groups
Enforcement of WP:OCEPON seems to be particularly focused on eponymous categories for bands (at least when compared to other topics like political parties). I created Category:Greta Van Fleet earlier this year and it was deleted on this basis so I was wondering how big does a category have to be for it to be considered worthy? Charles Essie (talk) 20:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Any way to know number of entries of deleted categories
I was wondering if there is a way to know how many entries a deleted category had at any given time. Specifically in this case, Category:Assassinated American former and incumbent party officials. Regards, -- Thinker78  (talk) 21:45, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * First, you would need to obtain a database dump from the time that is of interest. This is more a WP:VPT thing, not a WikiProject matter. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:09, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Petscan question
I ran a Petscan query including Category:Homicide and Category:Politicians but for some reason, Zeus showed up, no idea why. Anyone knows why and how to find out? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 01:04, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * a) Homicide > Infanticide > Child sacrifice > Cronus > Children of Cronus
 * b) Politicians > Heads of state > Monarchs > Monarchs in Greek mythology > Kings in Greek mythology
 * Both categories have actually more paths to Zeus than those. I had the same question not long ago (but can't remember where), and I was given the code for a query at, and I used that to retrieve the above results. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Incredibly useful answer, I appreciate it! Best regards, Thinker78  (talk) 03:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Categorization
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. Beccaynr (talk) 14:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Archive categorization
Hello! What's the best way to remove the Cuisine by country category from this archive page: Talk:Cuisine of Luxembourg/Archive 1? It was linked by someone in a discussion thread and I don't want to modify any of the content since archive content generally should not be edited. BaduFerreira (talk) 13:37, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It's perfectly legitimate to correct such mistakes. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:43, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Cool, I just copyedited it away. Thank you! BaduFerreira (talk) 13:47, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @BaduFerreira For future reference: When a category is being mentioned, rather than assigned to a page, it needs a ":" before the word "Category". That's what was missing and has now been fixed. Pam  D  13:56, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh okay, I was looking for a way to preserve the linked category without removing it outright but I misinterpreted Michael's comment as to just remove it entirely. Thank you for the heads-up! BaduFerreira (talk) 14:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Request for comment SmallCat
There is a discussion that may be of your interest about a Request for comment on replacement to SmallCat guideline. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 05:47, 24 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Courtesy ping to editors working on the Merge for now essay and author of a previous RfC that deprecated SmallCat and which I analyzed to make the proposal. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 05:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Idea for category or list
A category or list of "Bills left unsigned by US President that became law" would be useful for research.

I am thinking it might be more appropriate as a list but I could use some guidance.

I could not find an existing similar category or list. Mike Richardson (talk) 05:49, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 December 4 § Category:Fair use images
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 December 4 § Category:Fair use images. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

List of all articles of a category and its subcategories?
Dear Categoryographers,

I know how to use Special:CategoryTree to find the tree of subcategories of a given category. But suppose I just wanted the list of articles that belong to a category or its subcategories? For a high-level category like Category:Mathematics, it's totally infeasible to construct this by hand from the tree; is there a better way?

Thanks, JBL (talk) 19:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It sounds like a job for WP:PETSCAN, but that service seems down at the moment. DMacks (talk) 19:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response. It does seem to be down, but I'll check it again later.  FWIW someone else has suggested to me that https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ can also be used for this purpose.  --JBL (talk) 19:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is not down, it is unstableone moment up, next time down, five minutes later up. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Beware that some things that look like subcategories aren't. Most  Many unexpected categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route. Certes (talk) 19:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , as a person who does not think about categories at all (well, maybe on those occasions when I draft a new article), I'm afraid your comment is a bit obscure -- can you spell your meaning out more for me? (If the wmcloud massviews calculation can be believed (I'm not 100% sure), there are roughly 16,000 articles in Cat:Math and its subcats, so it couldn't really be true that most categories belonged in the Cat:Math tree in that case, right?)  --JBL (talk) 19:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Examples:
 * Voyagers! is in Cultural depictions of Albert Einstein is in Cultural depictions of mathematicians is in Mathematicians is in Mathematics
 * Richmond Park is in Bertrand Russell is in 19th-century English mathematicians is in English mathematicians by century is in English mathematicians is in British mathematicians is in Mathematics in the United Kingdom‎ is in Mathematics by country‎ is in Mathematics‎
 * Humpty Dumpty is in Category:Lewis Carroll characters is in Category:Lewis Carroll is in Category:19th-century English mathematicians (then as above)
 * Those articles might not be ones you would expect to find under Mathematics. Certes (talk) 21:41, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes@JayBeeEll Rather than Most categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route., I think what is shown here is that "Most articles are in subcats of Mathematics by some devious route." Not quite the same. Pam  D  22:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I started finding example surprising subcategories but then noticed that the original query was about articles. "Most" may be an exaggeration, but there are certainly surprising subcats.  Some category examples:
 * Mathematics > Mathematical constants > 1 (number) > Solo activities > Individual sports‎ > Category:Boxing
 * Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Applied mathematics > Cryptography > Security engineering > Category:Prisons
 * Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Dynamical systems > Electrodynamics > Light > Category:Vision
 * Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Elementary mathematics > Integers > 2 (number) > Duos > Category:Fictional duos
 * Mathematics > Statistical concepts > Statistical regions > Statistical regions of Serbia > Vojvodina > Languages of Vojvodina > Category:Serbian language
 * These aren't isolated examples; I think a lot of the category tree can be traced back to Mathematics by at least one route where the individual steps are plausible even if the overall effect can be confusing. Certes (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not isolated at all. query/75121 shows why the article Electrothermal-chemical technology is in the category tree Category:Opera. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok interesting, thanks. This seems like pretty compelling evidence that the 16,000 or so articles found by https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ are only a small fraction of the total; maybe it has a cutoff for how deep in the tree it looks (though it seems, based on Certes' examples, that even five levels deep is enough to find some stuff pretty distant from the core topic area).  --JBL (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Circular categories
Category:Fictional doves and pigeons is inside Category:Fictional Columbidae, which is inside Category:Fictional doves and pigeons. Given that "doves and pigeons" is the exact same thing as Columbidae, what should we do? Kk.urban (talk) 03:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You can submit them for merger at Categories for discussion. Place Clichy (talk) 03:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are several other loops where A is a subcategory of B and B is a subcategory of A. I've listed them in User:Certes/Reports/Circular categories.  In many cases, A and B are identical: for example, Category:1939 in gymnastics is a subcategory of itself.  Can I assume that these are mistakes and remove them from themselves (except for esoteric metadata such as Category:Hidden categories which, being a hidden category, is correctly a member of itself)? Certes (talk) 23:36, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Cats that are subcats of themselves are reported at Database reports/Self-categorized categories, something that has only recently been updated after a fifteen-month hiatus. At one period, it was run weekly. The way to deal with these is indeed to remove the category from itself, but that's not the only action - you must also ensure that it has at least one appropriate parent category . There are a few categories which are intentionally members of themselves - two of these are by design: and ; there is also, as a side-effect of using.
 * Apart from those three, there are two main reasons that a category might be inside itself - one is that the person creating the cat page didn't understand the categorisation system (as with ), the other is because of a category merge . Regarding the latter, I have pointed this problem out before, see Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working/Archive 2 and Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 17. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 15:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I just stumbled across Database reports/Self-categorized categories, as you kindly linked it in an edit summary which I found when trying to fix something you'd already fixed.  I'd spotted two of the three deliberate self-categorisations and will make a note of Noindexed so I don't try to "mend" it.  I've applied a few different solutions such as finding better parents or nominating the category for deletion, but will leave it to the experts in future now I know that someone with a clue is on the case. Certes (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * One for the experts is Category:Colleges affiliated to Bihar Engineering University. It consists of a template, which displays a huge navbox listing colleges that aren't in the category and categorises the category as its own single parent and only child. Certes (talk) 20:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That one's easy, see [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Redrose64?offset=20240107224500&limit=4 these edits]. I only added the cat to two articles because those were the only ones transcluding the navbox that weren't categorised properly. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Returning to my first tangent, User:Certes/Reports/Circular categories now excludes categories which include themselves. In other words, it only lists loops of length exactly two, though loops of other lengths may also require attention. Certes (talk) 20:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've started working slowly through circular category pairs. Does this sample of edits look helpful, or should I leave it to the experts? Certes (talk) 22:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We also have User:SDZeroBot/Category cycles, which includes loops of any length. And your edits look good to me. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Some are clear-cut: A is a subset of B but not vice versa.  However, most cases have a Venn diagram with two significant crescents.  For example, Animals of Foo and Wildlife of Foo are similar but only the first includes livestock and only the second includes flora.  These I have left alone, as neither category link is obviously better than the other, though there is a case for removing both. Certes (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They both should be subcats of Fauna of Foo. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Really? I'd have thought that Animals was almost synonymous with (and hence redundant to) Fauna.  Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area, so it could be interpreted as another synonym for Fauna or as a wider class including flora etc. which sounds like a parent category rather than a subcat.  Perhaps the problem is that many categories lack precise definitions (or that I'm too thick to find them). Certes (talk) 22:04, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant Biota of Foo. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Message here BinaryBrainBug (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Alternatives to PetScan?
There seems to be issues with PetScan. Are there alternatives to it? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 05:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Glad to know I wasn’t the only one having issues with it. I thought I must have been using it incorrectly! Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 09:29, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Cirrus search, despite its limitations, has more features than many editors realise. AWB can also produce lists, even if the user has no intention of editing those pages with AWB.  For editors familiar with SQL, there are Quarry and Database report, though both take far longer to code than PetScan.  Of course, we have WhatLinksHere. Certes (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm constantly getting the good old  bug (i.e. if PetScan fails, check all the tabs and fields for "®exp_filter") that's still not fixed. 85.76.13.79 (talk) 12:19, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That bug occurs when one copies the "Link to a pre-filled form...", pastes it into a wikitext or HTML page then views that in a browser (details). Certes (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, but it also sometimes happens in other scenarios, too, e.g.:
 * 1) I opened https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ (so not a pre-filled url)
 * 2) Only filled the fields:
 * a) Categories
 * b) Depth
 * c) Has none of these templates
 * 3) Clicked "Do it"
 * 4) Search failed and I found the "®exp_filter" in the "Links to" field
 * 85.76.13.79 (talk) 14:03, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That is surprising. I've not seen that behaviour before, and it doesn't fit the explanation I gave in the details link above.  Perhaps there are multiple related bugs. Certes (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Since it's happening to me all the time now, I managed to make a quick video to prove that it happens: https://streamable.com/eltfm4 (link expires in 2 days). 85.76.13.79 (talk) 14:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest reposting these details over at Wikipedia talk:PetScan, and then pinging or user talk messaging its maintainer, User:Magnus Manske. He edited a month ago and is still an admin, so may still be around. – Novem Linguae (talk) 03:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Petscan acting out again
Now the situation of Petscan is worse. Can't even access the tool and there is instead some message, "Wikimedia Cloud Services Error. This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project." Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Possible template to expand underfilled categories.
Import from list. Sometimes, a list article has more bluelinked entries than a corresponding category. The idea is that this template would be placed on the category page. Thoughts? Mach61 (talk) 02:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)


 * You sort of didn't explain the use of the template. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 18:30, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Somehow related

 * What we desperately need is a flag to say which categories record a strict is-a relationship and which, although still valuable, record an "is somehow related to" relationship. Then we can have trees limited to is-a links.  However, I'm too lazy to spend the rest of my life adding those flags, so I can't really expect anyone else to volunteer either. Certes (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I would do it for the articles that I work on if it would work reliably, and probably for some others too, but it would indeed be an immense task. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 18:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The vagueness of relatedness is a serious shortcoming of the category method. Wikidata handles such questions by separate properties such as "Instance of", "Part of", "Subset of", "Located in", "Author of", "Parent of", "Influenced by", "Employed by", and so forth. I figure supplementing the cat system with a lot of template flags would take forever and a day, whilst cooking up an easier way to look at the tree through WD might take only half the time. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I do not follow WD development closely, but is there a way to do the equivalent of looking a the category listing? On enwiki, we can walk up and down the tree, but last I knew of WD we could walk up from an article ("A is-a B") but not back down ("what else is-a B?"). DMacks (talk) 02:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The Wikidata Query Service can answer that sort of question but you'd need to write a SPARQL query. Certes (talk) 11:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A utility to show the Wikidata relationship tree in graphical form was written by, I don't recall how it's accessed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * hi! I don't remember writing such a tool myself, but I can point you to a few which do that:
 * the Wikidata Graph Builder is a very versatile tool to visualize the class hierarchy (see for instance their example about physicists).
 * the Wikidata ontology explorer, which you can feed the Qid of a class you want to explore (such as ).
 * the tool it is based on, Wikidata generic tree, which might be a bit less convenient to use because you need to figure out how to tweak the URL for it to do what you need
 * − Pintoch (talk) 10:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have taken the liberty of separating the last few replies into a new section. The big disadvantage of Wikidata SPARQL queries is that they are command lines. If we don't stay in touch with the ancient command traditions of Unix, DOS, and the like, we quickly forget how to do it. A year or two ago, WD had an "Entity Graph" feature. Click on the three dots to the right of the Q number. This created and ran a query to show every directly related WD item, and the Property that relates them, and some of the secondary (related to related) items if there was space enough in the window. The past few months, it has not worked; it always comes back as "Query is malformed". Seems to me the Entity Graph would be a useful feature, but it has been broken a long time. Perhaps a wide gulf has opened up, between WD and WP editors. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Categorisation dispute at Max Mallowan (and other biographical articles added at )
Please see the RFC at Talk:Max Mallowan -- wooden superman  15:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

What constitutes a "Cultural representation"?
@Dimadick and I differ as to of what constitutes a "Cultural depiction", specifically whether a share of a 4 1/2 minutes children's television programme referenced in an article which is about a verse listing people by name counts as a "cultural depiction". (British monarchs, in Mnemonic verses of monarchs in England.) I.e. the point at issue is whether that article should be in every category from Category:Cultural depictions of William the Conqueror to Category:Cultural depictions of Elizabeth II. They added, I rolled back, they replaced. Any views? None of the tree of Category:Cultural depictions" and its subcategories includes any sort of a scope note defining the term. We've discussed at User talk:Dimadick. I've posted a note over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Culture and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts, as those two projects are associated with the parent category "Cultural depiction".  Pam  D  16:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There are too many categories in Mnemonic verses of monarchs in England, see Overcategorization. The per-monarch categories should all be replaced with the parent Category:Cultural depictions of British monarchs, which is appropriate here. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * But most of them are English monarchs, not British monarchs.Dimadick (talk) 23:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There is a contradiction between the list articles and the categorisation. List of British monarchs excludes List of English monarchs, but Category:British monarchs includes Category:English monarchs. You could discuss this conflict at WikiProject British Royalty. However, we are discussing Categorization, and Category:Cultural depictions of English monarchs is a subcategory of Category:Cultural depictions of British monarchs. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:08, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree with the last cmt. In general I'm fairly relaxed about what goes into "Category:Cultural depictions of Foo". Btw Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts is aws dead as a dornail; only the VA one has much life left. Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but just wondering about something!
Okay, hi! I'm really new to editing Wikipedia, so I'm sorry if this is totally the wrong place for this or if this is a subject that has already been discussed to death.

I've been using the "Go to a random page in Category:All uncategorized pages" link in the Task Center to add categories to a bunch of pages (I've probably made a couple of mistakes, I'm sorry if so!) and the majority of the pages coming up are uncategorized Template pages. I wanted to put a dent in this issue so I went to look at Category:Wikipedia template categories, and it's... really confusing/overwhelming to look at. The Talk page is pretty dead (no new posts there since early 2022), so I came here to ask about it instead. Might there be some way to make this category less overwhelming to view/understand? It could be as easy as more clearly visually separating the first 5 items ("Wikipedia templates by...") from... the huge list of random templates.

I just wanted to raise it because clearly keeping on top of categorizing Templates is a bigger issue than categorizing Articles, and making it easier/more approachable might lead more people to contribute to this task!

Thanks for your time everyone :) KRKwrites (talk) 03:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Templates are a very mixed bunch,and I think it's probably more important, as well as simpler, to categorise articles. It might be best to just look at the category Category:All uncategorized pages and pick out the real articles to work on. Pam  D  06:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And it looks as if WP:Petscan ignores templates, by default, so searching on "All uncategorized pages" gets 107 hits. (I thought PetScan was something terribly technical until I actually looked at it and found how simple it is to use!)  Pam  D  07:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair enough! I'm certainly happy to give Petscan a shot. I was just asking because I was thinking I'd be down to go categorize a bunch of templates if that would be useful, but if categorizing articles would be more helpful I'll do that instead :) KRKwrites (talk) 08:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)