Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organizations/Taskforce-Categorization

branched discussion
A branched discussion is at Category talk:users_Organizations. --Lquilter 00:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Should we discuss this here, or over there? Regardless, I am fully behind a heavy revising of this. I suggest that the umbrella term should be "organization". From there we can separate into profit/for-profit. I suspect that almost of these organizations will be non-profit, and that the for-profit will really stick out. A for-profit organization is really a business. From there we can narrow them down efficiently. Then again, we may want to include both forprofit and nonprofit organizations in some categories. We'll see as we go along. OptimistBen (talk) 11:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's do it on the category talk page -- this page can help point to discussions. Category talk:Organizations for now, then. --Lquilter (talk) 05:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Users profits/NGOs/Charities etc - what a mess!
I am joining this project due to frustrating with the disorganization of categories related to the above. As I posted in Project Human Rights, this is just an example of the myriad places that organizations are thrown into at the moment.

Presently, human rights organizations can be found in: and I'm sure myriad others. Ideas on where to start or where this problem has been discussed before? Scarykitty 08:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Ideas on where to start? I am concerned that some of the existing trees being proposed perpetuate the unnecessary distinction between NGO and profit organization Scarykitty 08:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:Charities and various subcategories such as Category:International charities and Category:Humanitarian aid
 * Category:governmental organizations and various subcats such as Category:International non-governmental organizations
 * Category:Non-profit organizations which is mostly just broken out by country of origin
 * Category:Human rights bodies, which is confusingly a subset of Category:Civic and political organizations
 * Category:USA Civil rights and Category:Peace organizations
 * Category:delete Advocacy groups


 * I agree - We desperately need to have some clarity about these types of organizations, and not have these largely synonymous (used in different circles) parallel structures. --lquilter 18:32, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Charities, Non-Profits, etc.
There is a major overlap of organizations within the following categories:
 * Category:Charities
 * Category:Non-profit organizations
 * Category:Non-governmental organizations
 * Category:Civic and political organizations

What would a good category structure be like for these? Definitional problems:
 * Charities has at least two common meanings. Part of the problem is that "charitable status" is synonymous with "non-profit status", so that "charities" is sometimes used synonymously with "non-profit organizations". However, charities is also used to mean, more specifically, things like Category:Humanitarian aid organizations, Hospitals, Schools, and other human welfare organizations.
 * NGOs -- The term came, as I understand it, from international organizations (like the UN) that work with NGOs as well as government orgs; so it reflects that perspective. It's a perspective that doesn't specify profit status but is often used synonymously with non-profit organizations.
 * Civic and political organizations - This has just gotten to be a catch-all for all kinds of orgs. "Political orgs" can mean anything from parties to lobbying groups to orgs that have a critical scholarly focus to orgs that do grassroots organizing to orgs that just are involved in community life.

(Anybody else, please note other complicating factors that may affect the organizational structure.)

Just to get started, I'm going to throw out a possible organizational structure.
 * Category:Organizations by establishing entity
 * Category:Government institutions
 * Category:Non-governmental organizations
 * Category:Organizations by legal status
 * Category:Non-profit organizations instead of the term "Category:Charities" for organizations that are in charities because of their charitable or tax-exempt status
 * Category:Organizations by subject
 * Category:Human welfare organizations instead of Category:Charities for organizations that are in Category:Charities because of their educational, scholarly, or humanitarian relief purposes.

I realize that Category:Charities is more commonly used in some places than "non-profit organizations" but because Wikipedia is international, the term is ambiguous (internationally speaking). I hope that "non-profit organizations" is sufficiently unambiguous and well-enough understood internationally.

Orgs may be in both the gov/NGO tree and the nonprofit tree. This I think is proper, because governments can (of course) establish or operate for-profit orgs; and because NGOs might be for-profit or non-profit. --Lquilter 18:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Academies of different kinds
I've found the categorisation of various national academies of sciences rather inconsistent and confusing. I put a suggestion for clearing up a bit at Category talk:Scientific societies, which no one has commented; and (linking to this) at Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 12, which got some positive reaction and advice, but also a "should you really discuss this here?" reaction. At that time, I had not found out any project whis is relevant for the categorisation of academies; now I think that this project is.

Since I got no negative reaction (and my proposed changes didn't involve deleting or renaming categories), I've gone ahead. Thus, most of the national academies (wherever I succeeded to find them, within or without the category:National academies) now are distributed into Category:National academies of sciences and Category:National academies of arts and humanities; in many cases I put an item in both categories. I've simultaneously removed them from direct membership in Category:Scientific organizations, Category:Scientific societies, and Category:Learned societies. I left a few doubtful cases for the time being; I'm thinking of putting some of them in a new Category:National academies of engineering or Category:National academies of applied sciences and engineering or something similar.

If I've confused a clear strategy for how the academies should be categorised, I apology; however, from the confused state of matter, I do not think this was the case. Anyhow, I'll certainly listen to any advice or opinions about these categorisations; and will stop working with this, if you think I should. JoergenB (talk) 20:53, 26 November 2008 (UTC)