Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 11

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Categorization. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Should all members of a distinguished category be a subset of the parent category ?

From wp:categorization# Subcategorization it isn't clear if all or just some the page members of a distinguished category are supposed to be a subset of the page members of the parent category. Which is it, all or some? Also, could I have a couple of content category examples of the "perfect" or "ideal" distinguished category? Maybe I can glean the answer from the examples and learn some other things about content categories in general. Pknkly (talk) 05:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

In theory, yes. In practice, we're a very, very long way from it. Category:Utah is in Category:States of the United States. Not everything in Category:Utah is a state. This problem could be fixed, by putting the article Utah into Category:States of the United States, and putting Category:Utah into something like Category:United States topics by state. Is it worth the trouble? Hesperian 05:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, this is covered by the eponymous categories section (indeed the article on Utah should be put into the category). Since these matters are causing so much confusion, it seems we have to try rewriting the guideline again to make everything finally clear.--Kotniski (talk) 09:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Debresser (talk) 09:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That's not a "problem", because no one should expect Category:Utah to contain more states, unless it were called something like "Utah states." Obviously Category:Utah contains Utah-related articles and categories. postdlf (talk) 12:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy criterion #6

Where did speedy criterion #6 come from? Debresser (talk) 11:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, it grew out of some repeatedly repetitious full discussions on if and when to disambiguate "Georgia" in category names. After probably dozens of discussions, I think someone proposed a general rule here or on the CfD talk page, which was supported by consensus, that disambiguations should be consistent throughout a parent–subcategory heirarchy regardless of the context of the rest of the category name. In part it was thought to be a good thing in that it would bring predictability and consistency to the naming conventions for categories. It's probably at least a year old now; I can't remember exactly when it was adopted. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:05, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't notice it till after the edits two days ago. If so, then much of the present discussions at Cfd is redundant. Actually, I've been wanting to say for a while that now that we have more participants, we also have more nominations on a daily basis. It is a good thing we should start using #4 and #6 more extensively. Debresser (talk) 21:59, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Which discussions are redundant? We can probably just process them after two days if they have attracted no opposition. (But note that it only applies if the eponymous parent category is disambiguated; it does not apply if only the corresponding article is disambiguated but not a parent category.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so there's a reason for the strange naming of Category:Georgia (country) at the Olympics, on which I once commented on its talk page. It still feels very funny though... —JAO • T • C 07:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

All those song and band names, no? Debresser (talk) 10:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The ones I nominated were eponymous categories themselves, so it wouldn't apply to those. If those are renamed, though, then their subcategories for songs, albums, etc. would be eligible. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I see. It is all very confusing. Debresser (talk) 03:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't No.6 now be regarded as being redundant to No.4? This would after all be a "...rename bringing a category or categories into line with established naming conventions for that category tree."? (a standard disambiguator could after all be considered a 'convention', even if that is not the traditional way we have interpreted No.4) Or is this being a little too expansive?

Xdamr^talk 04:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion that would be too freely an interpretation of #4. Even I never intended such. Debresser (talk) 04:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably best. --Xdamr^talk 04:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Category:Pairs

The just-created Category:Pairs contains Crime and Punishment, Fire and Ice, Religion and politics, and more. Is this a helpful category? Is this the right place to ask, or am I supposed to make up my own mind and take it to WP:CFD? Johnuniq (talk) 08:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Probably best to take it to CFD. Doesn't sound a very helpful category to me, but some people might have different opinions.--Kotniski (talk) 09:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it should be discussed at CfD. (In the meantime, I had to add pork and beans: scandalously not included.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:54, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As can be seen by the red link above, the user who created the category asked for it to be deleted, and it's all cleaned up. Johnuniq (talk) 21:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Eliminate or otherwise adjust speedy rename criterion #6

There is an ongoing village pump discussion about this here. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

People from [Location] categories

Inclusion criteria What are the criteria by which a category of the sort (e.g.) Category:People from Chicago, Illinois may be added to an article? That article reads "The following people were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with the city of Chicago and its surrounding metropolitan area." Is this normative for other such categories? Can someone point me to a policy/guideline/consensus about this matter? Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Though "from" is such a wishy-washy word that just about any connection merits inclusion in practice, there should still be accuracy. An easy solution is that you remove any location category from an article that doesn't bother to mention it.

But the problem is that when the location categories are cut so finely as a single city, it's likely that they are going to be "from" multiple intersecting places given the patchwork of separate municipalities that make up most metropolitan areas. Particularly when we're dealing with notable, accomplished people, people's lives don't limit themselves to municipal boundaries (and there are even a smattering of neighborhood categories!). Where was I "from" during the two years that I lived in Arlington, VA, went to school in D.C., hung out in Alexandria, VA, and dated someone in Silver Springs, MD? All in a day's commute. If I merited an article, I'd have ten "from" categories just for where I've lived in my not-so-long lifetime. Plus probably another for my birthplace, where I never even lived. Which is one of the main reasons I really detest subnational people categories and wish they'd all be listified, but I'm unfortunately alone in that understanding. One step towards controlling it would be to categorize at no finer a level than a metropolitan area, which would address your problem here too. postdlf (talk) 18:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If a normative category doesn't exist then a template for creating content category pages entitled "People from (city),(state)" should be created. It could include narrative as required by wp:Categorization#Category description. The template would automatically use narrative similar to the one used by Chicago, but it would stay clear of vague terms or phrases such as "otherwise closely associated". It should use examples and let people know what not to include within in. A clear narrative about what should be included and what should be exuded would support Postdlf's suggestion of pulling the category from articles that do not clearly mention, with a good citation, the criteria given within the narrative of the category. Pknkly (talk) 07:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, the only truly effective way to change or narrow a category's inclusion criteria is by renaming it. Category tags can be added by people who have never even bothered to look at the category's description page, so if the limitation is not obvious from the name it will generally get ignored. postdlf (talk) 16:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Quick summary edits

An edit summary for paragraphs 2/3 and 3/3 of the Quick summary section:

Moved the sentence A category page is a page in the Category: namespace. to the 3rd paragraph to tie in with the idea of the :colon prefix. That also gives us a chance to re-iterate that the links do not appear, which is worthy of repetition because it is a unique characteristic of the topic and needs to be learned by the reader.
Removed the sentence The target of this link is a page called "Category:Name", and to retain audience level, I created a link to what wikilinking is, by substituting the word "Including" (paragraph one, word one) with "Linking".
Included the concepts of what links here and rendering in the second and third paragraphs.

The minor changes are suitable for correction without the need to revert the multi-paragraph copy edit. — Cpiral Cpiral 00:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:CatDiffuse

{{CatDiffuse}} has been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 28

70.29.209.91 (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The result of the deletion discussion was keep.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Attention: Template:This is a redirect has been Nominated for deletion

Please see: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_15#Template:This_is_a_redirect for a Tfd discussion related to this WikiProject. (related to the above notification)

Not positive I have the terminology correct, but believe this is whats called a 'meta-template', a template used to create other templates. The template: Template:This is a redirect was created by User:Lenoxus, a member of the Wiki_Redirect project. The template allows easily creating a specific template used to put TYPE redirects into a specific redirect category - "redirect of TYPE", e.g. "schools" and "hospitals", or "from alternative spelling" and "from alternative name". Categorizing redirects may also serve to facilitate disambiguation.

Template:This is a redirect directly supports intentionally entering the disambiguation categories indicated on the disambiguation guideline, which as a new editor here, I find straightforward. This approach both prevents overcategorization, but does not auto-categorize. -MornMore (talk) 02:54, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Templates that auto-categorize

Feedback wanted from anyone interested in template programming and categorization.

Some templates add categories to the pages they are used on. This unfortunately also means they usually add categories to pages where they are only tested or demonstrated. So we have a how-to guide about how to avoid this problem. And some templates also need to use different categories in different namespaces, which can be tricky to do. So now we have made a meta-template that will make it much easier to handle categorization in templates. Here's the relevant links:

{{cat handler}} – The new template. We'd like some feedback on this template and its documentation before we deploy it. Comments and questions are very welcome on its talk page.
Wikipedia:Category suppression – The how-to guide. There's a discussion on its talk page about which parameters we should standardise for category suppression, more comments would be welcome there. By the way, some of the methods in that guide will probably become outdated once we deploy the above template.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Category Suppression – Personally I think a WikiProject for only category suppression is a bit overkill, but the project is going to widen its scope so perhaps it is okay. See its talk page.

Oh, and please don't start a discussion here, instead use the talk pages of the above pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:43, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The term "list category"

We really, really need to do something about the term "list category" in this guideline, as it causes endless confusion with the concept of "category of lists". In the discussions and RFC on eponymous categories this summer, this was very clear; I just noticed that there was a late answer at Talk:Saskatchewan#Category:Provinces and territories of Canada vs. Category:Saskatchewan, the discussion that initiated the RFC in the first place, which even more clearly shows the confusion. I also see here that Debresser commented on the same thing yesterday. The term needs to be changed to avoid further confusion. "Set category" would be most logical, but I doubt most people would think of a set as in mathematics; perhaps "collection category", "item category", "membership category"? I'm sure someone has a better suggestion, but "list category" must go. —JAO • T • C 10:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

"Set category" works for me. But then, I'm an old mathematician. What about "group category"? Debresser (talk) 10:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, either works for me. Another term I've seen used in this sense is "index category". (We could also do with better terms for "distinguished" and "non-distinguished" subcategories - would "non-diffusing" and "diffusing" be any better? They seem slightly more meaningful.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That is even more confusing. Debresser (talk) 11:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I like "index category" as a replacement for "list category". If we make a change like that, we should be sure to catch it everywhere it appears, or it will cause even greater confusion. --RL0919 (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

What about "series"/"group" category, to indicate that it contains multiples of similar things—members of a series or group, as opposed to a "topic" category, which contains subtopics related to a singular thing. The distinction should be clear from the category's name: plural versus singular titling. Category:European countries is a group of countries; Category:Europe is a topic with subtopics. Subcategory members of a group category may in turn be further subgroupings, or topics in their own right; and subcategories of a topic category may also be subtopics that are singular topics or groups themselves. postdlf (talk) 13:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok. 3-0 in favor of "group category". Now the relevant Wikipedia pages should be updated with the proper definitions and the right term in the right place. Debresser (talk) 14:31, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually I said I liked "index category". But I'm fine with "group category" as well. As to pages to update, it appears that in addition to WP:CAT, updates would be needed for WP:FAQ/Categorization and WP:FAQ/Categories (and possibly others, since I have not done an exhaustive review). --RL0919 (talk) 14:46, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I like both "index" and "group" as well. Great development on this! Thanks all, —JAO • T • C 14:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it is a reasonable change -- but I don't think less than a day of discussion and agreement by a small number of participants is a warrant to implement the change yet. The confusion has been there for a long time, there's no need to rush. older ≠ wiser 14:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I dunno. "group" is too generic. Techincally all categories group articles. I think what is trying to be conveyed is that it's a group of nouns which are of type x, rather than a group of nouns which fall under a certain topic. It would seem a rather fine distinction, depending on how it's phrased.

This is a good point. Categories by function "group" and "list". So, we may be jumping from one bad reference, "list", to another, "group". "Group" may be just as difficult to grasp as is "list" for the same reason - categories already "group". Pknkly (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

How about "grouped by topic" and "grouped by sub-type"? - jc37 15:27, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, how about adapting those for brevity: "topic category" (as now) vs. "type category" (instead of list category). Thoughts?--Kotniski (talk) 10:39, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

That conveys precisely the opposite "all topic-related articles". I stick to "group category", and do not agree with jc37 who thinks that is too generic. Debresser (talk) 12:20, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I think "group" is too generic (see above)).Pknkly (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggest Subject category - I was just looking at list categories where it seems to say that "list categories" are "subject categories". So, why not make them a "subject category". I liked the advise given above by one of the editors about using nouns. Stay away from verbs or words that may be interpreted as verbs (e.g., group, index, list), especially verbs that describe what a category already does. If we use "subject categories" it would compliment "topic categories". Pknkly (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Unconvinced - I think for most people "subject" and "topic" are synonyms, so having those two terms in opposition would be confusing.--Kotniski (talk) 17:52, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I like "set category" - I don't think that's too mathematical, IMHO. "Index category" seems a bit vague (isn't any WP category an index of sorts?) and "group category" seems a bit nebulous too. Letdorf (talk) 19:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC).

"Approximate" acyclic directed graph

I'm curious: How can a graph contain "approximately" no cycles? I thought "The category system" is intended to describe the desired state of affairs, rather than the "impurities" due manual labor. Spill paint over the hood of a Ferrari, and you still have a Ferrari. BTW, finding cycles looks like a job for CatBot. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 20:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The category system is acyclic and directed. Cycles indicate errors, or at least suboptimally muddy thinking. Here, therefore, we should described it as directed and acyclic. Hesperian 05:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I agree that's how it should be, but we can't claim that it is. Many people put categories into other categories just because there's some relation between them, not because one's actually a subcategory of the other (eponymous categories being the most obvious example). If we want to ensure there are no cycles, we must make a rule that the subcategory relationship is really a subcategory relationship, and that will upset a lot of the categorization schemes currently in use (and so will doubtless run into opposition).--Kotniski (talk) 11:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

We can't claim that it is, no, but I think we can safely claim that it is best practice; which is surely the purpose of this page. Hesperian 11:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, all right, try it and see if people object. (Many people don't object explicitly but would nevertheless object to the consequences, because they don't really get it.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that some categorization schemes currently in use contain cycles by design?

I finally found out what has been bugging me: "Acyclic directed graph" is too general, the category system has the same structure as a DAWG. Paradoctor (talk) 13:20, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it is a concept lattice. Hesperian 13:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

For what the guideline used to say some time ago, see the old version of the guideline (the section "Cycles should usually be avoided"). When I rewrote the page I took the passage out because it seemed to be a lot of words saying nothing (it first says that we don't like cycles, but then goes on to say that some cycles - no particular clue as to which - are acceptable). I mentioned it at talk at the time and no-one commented, but if anyone wants to belatedly reinsert that passage now, so we can perhaps work on changing it to say something more useful, then that would be fine.--Kotniski (talk) 15:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Question: Would Category:Categories that do not contain themselves contain itself?

Seriously, let's declare cycles to be the epitomy of evil. Either the text will stand, or someone will come up with a cogent counter-example. Win-win. Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Erm, what are "meta-fields"? Judging from the text, the only acceptable loops seem to be trivial self-references of a category to itself. I'm not sure I understand the use of that. Anyway, since cycles are generally considered a bad thing, this should be explicitly mentioned on the page among the "Things to avoid". There is a problem, though: I don't think there is a way for editors to determine whether a bad cycle exists, other than by manually checking. That's tedious at best, error-prone, and not necessary. As sugggested in my initial remark, there should be a tool that detects cycles, so contributors can diagnose such a problem, and identify affected categories. This is important, as creation of cycles is the result of uncoordinated collaboration. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 15:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

_{edit conflicts are fun |-()}Oy, I noticed two more: "form a hierarchical structure, consisting in effect of overlapping trees". In a hierarchy, all elements are comparable wrt level. Here's a subgraph, which can (and presumably does) exist in the category graph: A>B>C & A>D>E>C. Is B on the same "level" as D, E, both, or none? Furthermore, "overlapping trees" does not specify how the trees overlap, allowing the possibility of different roots.

I suggest we reformulate the intro thusly:

"Wikipedia's categories resemble a rooted tree, the difference being that subtrees may overlap.",

and drop the technical stuff about DAGs/DAWGs/CLs/whatever in the second sentence, or stuff it into a footnote. This is a guideline, not a course in graph theory. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 15:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It does not in any way resemble a rooted tree. It is a lattice, which is completely different. Saying it is like a tree will only confuse people.

And even if we were going to go down a "They resemble a tree except..." line, it would be must easier to understand if you phrased the exception as the logically equivalent "the difference being that categories may have more than one parent category". Hesperian 11:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see where the second extremal element required for a lattice comes from, there is no "bottom" category corresponding to the other extremal element required for a lattice. Neither is it a lattice graph, except in the trivial sense of choosing a sufficiently high-dimensional lattice.

As regards "logically equivalent", I agree. But if it is equivalent, what makes it better? This is an expositional text, which is read mostly by people who do not share our specialist knowledge, and are mostly interested in how-to instructions. Actually, the tree metaphor is slightly misleading, maybe "bush whose branches may rejoin" conjures a more appropriate image. A diagram might be helpful here. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 13:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm afraid I'm out of my depth now as far as the graph theory goes... "Directed acyclic graph" I could understand - can you explain why that's not the appropriate technical description? And isn't something like "set of overlapping trees" an appropriate description for the intelligent non-specialist?--Kotniski (talk) 15:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

To say it's a DAG is not wrong, it's just too general. It's like describing your car by saying "it's a Volkswagen". Ok, but is it a Lupo or a Constellation? With a general DAG, clicking the parent categories of a category repeatedly will lead you to different roots depending on your choices along the way. With our system, you'll always end at the same node, category:contents in our case. That's because every category must be in another category (except the root, of course). I have not yet found a proper name within graph theory for this type of graph, so rooted tree with overlapping subtrees is the best description I can come up with. The problem with the "overlapping trees" is the same as with DAGs, it is not clear that there is a common root. HTH, Paradoctor (talk) 17:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, I see. So what about "rooted directed acyclic graph"? And "set of overlapping trees with a common root" for the second audience (though there it's not necessary to be so precise).--Kotniski (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Errm, what you call the "second" audience is actually the one this guideline is written for. Imagine an art historian reading "rooted directed acyclic graph". She/He might understanded the sense of "rooted" used here, and can probably manage to clear "directed", but I think "acyclic" is where the fast forwarding will begin. As I said, as a footnote I have no problem with whatever precision you care for, but the "second" audience is the one we work for. If you'd like a few numbers, check out the traffic stats for the article page and the talk page, you'll see that the traffic differs a factor of ~20. This means that hundreds of people view the article each day, of which the vast majority doesn't know and care less about DAGs, rooted or not. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 18:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, I'd agree with that... So to rephrase, is "rooted directed acyclic graph" OK as the description we give for the specialist (minority) audience, and is "set of overlapping trees with a common root" a good enough description for the majority audience?--Kotniski (talk) 18:22, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't speak for anybody else, but my vote is o|‾|_ <utter, complete and total submission> Paradoctor (talk) 20:07, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The people we are writing this for aren't going to care about the global structure. The number of root nodes is irrelevant because it does not affect them. It doesn't even affect me, and I've been working in categories for years. The people we are writing this for are going to care about local structure: how the category system looks close up. All that matters is that any given category can contain multiple categories, and can itself be contained within multiple categories. At this scale, the structure of our category system looks nothing like a tree, and it is only after deep consideration that ones recognise "set of overlapping trees" as an accurate description. Hesperian 23:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, for me it seems quite intuitive given the way people often approach categories - you have an overall category (say "Villages"), this is broken down by country, then by region, then perhaps by district, forming what is obviously a tree. But the trees are seen to overlap when one category fits into more than one parent category ("Villages in X" is under "Geography of X" as well as being under "Villages").--Kotniski (talk) 08:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

My sentiments exactly. Also, the multiple vs. single root issue does affect users in the form of the commandment "Every Category Shalt Have A Parent". We could of course just lay down the rules and be done with it, but that's not going to work in a community of peers. There will always be some with bright ideas, or those who just don't like rules they don't understand. Paradoctor (talk) 11:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Appropriate categories for a "List of..." article?

There has been some edit-warring behaviour over the last month regarding the categorization of the List of Volkswagen Group factories article. One editor (78.32.143.113 (talk)) is adamant that the article belongs in categories such as Category:Motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany, Category:Truck manufacturers, Category:Bus manufacturers and Category:Motor vehicle engine manufacturers and has reverted multiple attempts by myself and another editor to rationalize this article's categories, despite attempts to discuss the matter. My opinion, based on the existing membership of these categories and similar articles such as List of Ford factories, is that the appropriate article to include in these categories would be the one about the company itself (i.e. Volkswagen Group or Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles), and not this related "List of..." article. The only WP guideline regarding categories for "List of..." articles I can find is You can add a suitable subcategory of Category:Lists at the bottom of the page (WP:LIST), which doesn't really provide much guidance. Anybody care to comment? Letdorf (talk) 13:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC).

Well, I agree with you. A list of factories is not a manufacturer of anything, nor is it even a list of manufacturers - it clearly doesn't belong in those categories.--Kotniski (talk) 14:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That depends entirely on the intended use of the category. See list-and-topic ctegories. So, check whether the categories state their intended use. If they do, you'll know. If they don't, start discussion to get consensus about it. HTH, Paradoctor (talk) 15:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Of the six categories in question, three are described on the category page as list-type categories, and three have no description. However, judging by the current member articles, the implicit consensus seems to be that they are list-type categories too. Letdorf (talk) 19:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC).

Don't look at me. It's 78.32.143.113 (talk) that's cruising for fishsticks. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 20:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Terminology section

I added a terminology section. It was necessary in order to keep the "Quick summary" short, and in order to understand the terminology in "The category system" section. Happy editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 05:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Er ... it's not exactly clear. I consider myself reasonably familiar with categories and categorization, but I didn't find it at all easy to understand. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Familiarity is the problem. As a newcomer I do not find the article easy to understand. — Cpiral Cpiral 17:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I never claimed the article was easy to understand, but I honestly didn't find this to be an improvement. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Then it was not an improvement, but the article might yet be made easier understand. — Cpiral Cpiral 21:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Um, yeah—that was my point. It was not an improvement. Perhaps I was not blunt enough, but I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:11, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I also found these clarifications closer to obfuscations. I revert these edits for the mean time. Let's discuss it here first. Debresser (talk) 13:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's the unclear section, with salient sentences broken-out with numbers for discussion purposes.

Depending on the context, the term category has three possible references.

The title of the category page is a category in name. When the category page is rendered, it is that category that must be spoken of, and we will call it category or category page.
Each article that links there is a category of that category name, and we will call it category or member page.
Each category page that links there is labeled a subcategory and listed separately, but because there is no "subcategory page", there is no subcategory entity, and we call it category or subcategory depending on the context.
It's all relative to the category page of interest.
The category item on a list on a category page that is a link to an article so categorized will also be termed a member page because the page that you would go to if you clicked on its link is a member of the category (the named category, the title of that category page).
Because the title of a category page is a category name, "a member page of a category page" is a "member of a category" is a "category", just as a subcategory is a category: depending on the context.
There is no such entity as a subcategory page, or even a subcategory.
There are, on a category page, subcategories. But these are only links, and they are links not to subcategory pages, but to category pages full of categories.
Thus the description of the category system has no further use of the concept of a subcategory, other than to say they are the way categories link to themselves.
A subcategory is an item on a list on a category page that is a link to another (related) category page.
Subcategory is as equally relative of a term as category.
If it is not a member page it is not a member of the category, but a subcategory of the category. A member page is linked to an article, and the non-member pages are linked to other category pages.

Because a subcategory is a non-member, that term is not used to discuss of the category system.

(I changed the last sentence to remove the word salient.)

Here are some sentences from the first real section "The category system":

Categories are of two basic types, topic categories, and list categories.
Wikipedia's categories form a hierarchical structure.
If the articles of one category logically also belong to another category...

Sentence 1 has reference 2. Sentence 2 has reference 3. Sentence 3 has reference 1.

May our opinions meet no urgency in the answering, but find the importance of consideration nevertheless. Thank you very much for your consideration of these matters, and I look forward to a leisurely discussion concerning the wording of this article, and how that pertains to it's accessibility, to future categorizers, and to Wikipedia.

— Cpiral Cpiral 17:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

@Debresser "referent" is correct, check out the lede of reference. The problem with that "clarification" is that it attempts way too precise language, and fails at it. In a terminology section, I expect to see a list of terms and their definitions, discussions only when a term is difficult. E. g.

category: a collection of Wikipedia pages
category page: a page listing all members of a category
member: any and only those pages that contain a link of the form [[category:X]] are members of category X
subcategory and parent: a category X may be a member of another category Y, in that case we call X a subcategory of Y, and Y a parent of X
... and so on

Paradoctor (talk) 17:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. It's certainly easier to have category have the one referent, the category namespace referent. Now if we could only take that consistency and clarity to the article, I'd no longer own my proposal, with the aim of improving the wording of the project or adding a terminology section to match the wording of the article. — Cpiral Cpiral 21:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, an attempt to be overly precise is often contra-productive. But I welcome your initiative, so let's see what we can incorporate in the project page. Debresser (talk) 18:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I might have digested and honored the tough article if category was one, new concept with the occasional use of it's borrowed sense (from it's home namespace). — Cpiral Cpiral 21:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Category system - description too narrow

I've had the impression before, but now it's official: The section is way to narrow in its description of applications of categories. Check out this section on on category headers. One thing that should be kept in mind is that categories are basically just sets, and seeing that almost all of mathematics can be expressed in terms of sets, it doesn't make sense to restrict categories to being navigational aids for the readers. Rather, rules for categories should be described in relation to a specific application. Paradoctor (talk) 10:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Templates in article categories

The issue of having templates as an entry in a category that is otherwise for articles is still an ongoing problem. There is no explicit guideline on it. Convention, which is occasionally ignored, is to place all templates in Category:Wikipedia templates and its subcats. Categorising templates is an administration task and they are not needed in content categories. For previous discussions see:

I would like to have this guideline added:

"User pages and templates should not be in categories that contain encyclopeadia (content) articles."

Or suchlike. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

That wording would exclude templates from "administrative" categories that contain content pages. What about making a clear distinction between "user" categories and others by requiring a (possibly invisible) {{navcat}} tag, and leaving propagation/enforcement for the subcategories to the bots? I. e. just tag articles and appropriate others in contents as {{navcat}}s, and make a bot with these tasks:

tag as {{navcat}} every subcategory of a category tagged as {{navcat}}
flag/zap/whatever any inappropriate content in any category designated as {{navcat}}

How does that sound? Paradoctor (talk) 19:59, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

That would entail ALL categories having to be tagged. That is a lot of work. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:27, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Previous discussions notwithstanding, I find it very handy to have the template close at hand when I am browsing a category, so I oppose this proposal and any other like it on said grounds. The only exception I would make if that if there is a template category available, then obviously the template should be in it and not in the content category. Debresser (talk) 21:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you give an example of what you mean? Paradoctor (talk) 23:14, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

We need to look at it from the perspective of the reader, not as editors. Templates are for building WP and readers need only see them on content pages (or content categories) and not as an entry in a content category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:27, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong. Any reader is also a (potential) editor on Wikipedia. If he has made it to a category page, he is already outside article mainspace, and I see nothing wrong with showing him that there exist relevant templates also. Debresser (talk) 10:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I really like having templates in the same categories as articles. I mean I really like it. A lot. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 11:44, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I would counter that argument by saying that I really don't like it... No, I agree with Alan - article categories are there for readers (except for maintenance categories etc., which ought to be hidden from readers if they appear on article pages), and so shouldn't contain pages which have no meaning for readers and will just bewilder them. Editors can find templates without any problem by other routes. (Or if there really are a lot of templates associated with a particular category, then nothing wrong with a discrete link from the category page to the equivalent template category.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

My point is this seems to be simply a matter of personal preference. Both Alan's points and Debresser's points are valid—they just reflect a different approach to the question. I like them in categories. Others may not. I don't think there is enough of a clear "correct answer" to the question to justify making a guideline on it one way or the other. Unless someone wants to set up a poll and find which approach is the consensus view, if any. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 12:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Since there is no clear consensus an RfC and a poll is the next step. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you make a good case. I could support doing what you propose, despite my own preferences, especially if others agree. Actually, I see that I'm only one of two who have expressed the opposing view. I wouldn't consider my opinion as an impediment to just going forward without an RfC, since really it's just personal opinion and I have no good arguments apart from that. :) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

To say that I am wrong show that we have a different opinion as to where WP should be heading. So what is right and wrong here?? I edit WP in a manner to make it easy for the reader, who is by far the most common visitor to WP. It is irrelevant that every reader is a potential editor in this discussion. A reader has plenty of resources available to become an editor so we do not have to clutter what is a navigation aid for readers with an editors resource. Note that we should make a distinction between content categories and administration categories. To say that a reader is outside of the article namespace once browsing a category is irrelevant. A reader should always be presented with content only regardless of whether they are in an article or category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I might agree with the proposed addition, but only because it has a link to WP:Content to make itself valid. I don't yet understand the important usefulness Debresser and Ol’factory try to express, but did I rewrite tbhe WP:Content. There were two misspellings on the Content page; there were critical phrasing inconsistencies, and structural problems. Please pay special attention to the re-write phrases "for the reader" (stated twice), "wish to see", and "wish to view", and the phrase "categories and templates". OK? — Cpiral Cpiral 21:26, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

You mean the line "the content that they are wish to view"? Or "Content is what the readers, who are the largest group visiting Wikipedia, wish to see." I really think you are editing things that were off just fine without you. Debresser (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

What do you think about Exchange of material with Help:Category in the next talk section? — Cpiral Cpiral 04:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Some extra notes

Images have their own category and the guideline is to not have them in article categories. That same should apply to templates. Wikipedia articles rarely make reference to the administration pages. There are exceptions - eg. hatnotes such as in image etc. The same should apply for content categories. As things currently stand the content categories do not have a clear separation from administration. For example:

the presence of {{catdiffuse}}
having stub categories displayed
the addition of a random selection of templates
having a link in {{catmore}} that goes to project namespace even though the template is used on content categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:07, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

It is not recommended that articles be placed in ordinary content categories by using templates. — Cpiral Cpiral 06:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a whole other subject. The discussion here and now is about placing templates themselves in content categories, not about how to add categories to articles. Debresser (talk) 15:17, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

how to add a subcategory?

How do you add a new subcategory to a category? I thought this would be a simple thing, but I can't find any explanation on how to add a subcategory. Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 23:20, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

The same way you add an article or other page to a category: Place [[Category:Name]] on the article/page/subcategory. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

so, define the subcategory first as [[Category:Newcategory]], then categorize your new [[Category:Newcategory]] in the Parent category the way you would categorize any article/template/etc. Got it. Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 00:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Exchange of material with Help:Category

The difference between WP:categorization and Help:category determines the content and sizes. I'd like to discuss the intentions of the content of the two, and propose moving some things from here to there to get both articles to about 30kb in size. Categorization is 42kb, and category is only 24kb.

I think the namespaces are like this:
Help is hue-collar: task-oriented, how-to-ish, procedural.
WP is white-collar: managing, guiding, conceptualizing, planning, and engineering.
Categorization should be understood for the most part, and then the Help:category article shows the tools.

Indeed WP:categorization is linked more often than Help:category. I checked out what links here and what links there.

Here a section outline in this article that belongs there, and would shave off 9 kb.

3 Display of category pages 
3.1 Form of entries
3.2 Sort order 
3.2.1 Using sort keys
3.2.2 Typical sort keys
3.3 Split display
3.4 Category description

Both articles discuss sorting, and both articles discuss hiding categories.

Here is the outline for Help:Category, a 24kb sized article:

1 Summary
2 Putting pages in categories
3 Category pages
4 Hiding categories
5 Sort order 
5.1 Default sort key
6 Categories and templates
7 Categorizing redirect pages
8 Moving and redirecting category pages
9 Applying "Related Changes" to a category 
9.1 Detection of additions to a category
10 Comparison with "What links here"
11 Category considerations
12 Extended tools 
12.1 List of all categories
12.2 Visualizing category trees
12.3 Dynamic page list
12.4 Category intersection, union, etc.
12.5 Category flattening
12.6 Count
12.7 Retrieving category information

There we should give-up 7, Categorizating redirect pages. There we should move 11, Category considerations to the lead section there telling them to come here first.

Here is our outline:

1 Quick summary
2 The category system 
2.1 Categorizing pages 
2.1.1 Eponymous categories
2.2 What categories should be created
2.3 Subcategorization 
2.3.1 Duplicate categorization rule
3 Display of category pages 
3.1 Form of entries
3.2 Sort order 
3.2.1 Using sort keys
3.2.2 Typical sort keys
3.3 Split display
3.4 Category description
4 Project categories 
4.1 User pages
4.2 Images
4.3 Hiding categories
5 Categorization using templates
6 Redirected categories
7 Interlanguage links to categories
8 Tips 
8.1 Displaying category contents on pages
8.2 Retrieving category information
8.3 Linking to categories
8.4 Searching for articles in categories
9 See also

We should lose 5, Categorization using templates to Help. Sections 7 and 8 are also their territory. They are short, 2.7 kb.

That would make categorization 30 kb and help 35 kb, but... the redone-dancy will square, and all will be well.

Also, we should interact more with WP:classification. We could discuss WP:classification more here. We barely mention the name. The classification article is 7.8 kb, and has both theory and practice content.

— Cpiral Cpiral 01:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your general idea, that technical parts are mostly better included in the Help page than the Wikipedia project page. But the argument about making the pages equally long is in my opinion completely trivial.

As to the details:

Moving 3 from here to there is a good idea. Part of it is contained in 5 there.
Moving 7 and 8 from here to there is also a good idea.
I'd keep 5 here, since it talks more about the idea than about the technics.
I agree that moving 7 from there is a good idea (the only one that I think is really necessary).
I propose doing these things first, and then talk about 11 there, because that section includes several subjects, and needs to be dealt with separately.

Debresser (talk) 07:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Descendant

Based on some recent discussions, I wonder if there should be some established criteria for inclusion in descendant categories. Currently inclusion is rather arbitrary since you can include anyone who has ancestors from a place. Let's ignore the issue of this characteristic being defining. Should someone who is 10 generations removed from a place still be included as a decedent? How about 2 generations. What percentage of blood, remembering that someone in the first generation could only be 25% by blood and at the second generation it drops down to 12.5%. If we go with something, we probably should create a template for these categories to explain this or link to the guideline. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:46, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that as long as sources still mention it, that is a sure indication that we can (and probably should) do so as well. Debresser (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Which means that inclusion needs to be sourced. In the few I have looked at of late, there is a mention but never a source. So am I free to remove all of those? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:13, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't ever remove it. After all, that is what we have Category:Articles with unsourced categories for. Note that in most articles the descent category is not sourced. I meant to say the other way around: that sources are a sure reason to add the information to the article together with the appropriate category. Debresser (talk) 12:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Categories in article text or infobox

Is there a MOS that applies to linking to categories in the article text or infobox such as Template:Nationfilmlist if not can can users offer there opinions Gnevin (talk) 11:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any guidelines on this, but having just looked at Cinema of Vietnam, it seems to me that this is a rather good idea in principle. However, it would be better to use #ifexist to check whether the category exists, rather than having redlinks in the infobox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Sort key for descriptive titles with human names

For an article like Murder of Piotr Stańczak and similarly named titles, what should the sort key be? A survey of a few reveals no consistent scheme being used. After moving this article upon a requested move I changed the sort key to {{DEFAULTSORT:Stańczak, Piotr, Murder of}}. Is this best? Something else?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks good (all its categories are either people categories or executions categories, so the word "Murder" either isn't relevant to the category or is insignificant within the category, if that makes sense). But it should be with just an ordinary "n", not an "ń", to keep the ordering right.--Kotniski (talk) 13:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Without diacritics. DEFAULSORT should contain no diacritics at all. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:26, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks guys.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Talk Pages

I have seen category boxes covering the last post on the last discussion on talk pages. Us441 (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

New criterion to C2

There's a proposal on adding a new speedy rename criterion for categories at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion. Feel free to comment. Jafeluv (talk) 08:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Catmore link

I have left a message at Template talk:Catmore#Change link. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI

Since this page gets more traffic than WT:CATP, be advised that I've fixed a number of annoying inclusions of project categories in content categories; see discussion at the wikiproject for details. I've also added a shortcut to the "Project categories" section, and mentioned it in Template:Wikipedia category. Pcap ping 23:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

What is a category?

In the category namespace category conveys the concept "a collection of pages". But according to the wording of the article,

Category:music contains a list of categories (i.e. member pages)

a category is also a member page and a subcategory. I don't think category should be used as both the container and the contained, unless we say so in a terminology section. Rather, if we adopt Paradoctor's simple terminology for the term category —this subject is a branch off the previous subject [WT:categorization#Terminology section]]— we could then be consistent (to a reasonable extent, Debrresser) with that term in the article.

This article needs lucidity concerning the word category because it is an article about categorization, and because categorization is an important craft to teach and use. The new concept for first time readers of Categorization is category. Really and sincerely, in your opinion must category mean both container and contained, both category and subcategory?.

Appropriately for a talk-page I must say category currently has four referents: (1) the category namespace one "collection of pages", (2) the category namespace one "member page", and (3) the category namespace one "subcategory", (as in If the articles of one category logically also belong to another category, then the first category is made a subcategory or as in such eponymous categories are considered distinguished subcategories (in fact they are not true subcategories at all) (4) the main namespace one wikt:category. If two, three, and four are the same, we should explain that in a terminology section in a way I, posing as a newcomer, could understand.

The very first sentence: Wikipedia's categories form a hierarchical structure could be read incorrectly as "A collection of pages forms a structure." I'm sure you would agree that if you were struggling with a new concept, that it might just as easily be written "The set of category pages forms a ... structure." I predict this will all take some time, and I am in no hurry on this. I want to volunteer to help improve this article.

Peaceful editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 21:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

<soapbox> One of the things I really like about Wikipedia is the range of interesting people I meet. :) </soapbox>

I think you're asking a question that needs not be answered here. You can use a watch without having the slightest clue as to what makes it tick. Consistency can comfortably take a backseat to what works. A version of the page that is clear to you will confuse the heck out of the majority of readers, IMHO. Exhibit #1: Good Ol’factory's and Debresser's reactions to your first edit. Exhibit #2: I must read your stuff carefully to understand it, and I occasionally edit on wikis where I can't even read the alphabet!

You might like the Harmonious Editing Club. Regards, Paradoctor (talk) 22:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Pardoctor. I'm gonna use extra pixels to be extra clear, and I'm gonna stick with your definition pf category, and Debresser's warning about "terminal" precision, and I'm sure Good Ol'factory's nose will be nearby for quality assurance. It all seems very clear and simple to me now. Happy editing! — Cpiral Cpiral 05:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

> I don't think category should be used as both the container and the contained

There's nothing unusual about containers containing other containers. Technically speaking, a category is a set of things that share some characteristic. On Wikipedia, categories are represented by web pages and the pages they link to. Sets can contain subsets, so categories can contain subcategories. —Codrdan (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of articles in (distinguished) ancestor categories

Categorizing pages contains these two statements, which seem to be contradictory:

Articles should be placed in the lowest level category possible. They do not need a category declaration toward every category that would logically contain it.
An article should be placed in all the existing categories to which it logically belongs, subject to the duplicate categorization rule

The first statement seems to say that articles should not be incuded in distinguished ancestor categories, while the second seems to suggest that they should. Duplicate categorization rule seems to agree that articles should be added to distinguished ancestor categories:

If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.

Also, User:PennySpender1983 mentioned in the Error in "Duplicate categorization rule" section discussion that some parent categories explicitly state whether or not articles should be added to them. Is there an established rule to include or exclude articles from distinguished ancestor categories? If so, can the rule be overridden for individual cases? —Codrdan (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Now you are confusing me. Category = Ancestor = Parent. Subcategory = Child = Descendant. So what is a "distinguished ancestor" category? Where is this term in the project page?
And the answer is Size. If a category becomes too large, it needs to be systematically broken into distinct "non-distinguished" subcategories.
But the answer is also "this is not a rule." This page is a guideline, not a WP:POLICY. Do your best to follow it. If you have a reason not to follow it, discuss it on a talk page. Please see Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 04:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

> what is a "distinguished ancestor" category?

An ancestor that happens to be a distinguished category. My impression is that systematic categories aren't supposed to contain articles from their subcategories, only the subcategories themselves. My question is whether and under what circumstances articles should be added to ancestor categories. I say "distinguished" ancestors only because those are the only ones I don't feel sure about.

> the answer is Size

Good. So it sounds like the default is to add articles all the way up the ancestor chain until you get to one that's too big. Is that the current consensus? Is the first statement I listed from "Categorizing pages" incorrect?

—Codrdan (talk) 04:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

No! Absolutely not! For a given property of a topic, we put the article on the topic into the most specific category for that property. This does indeed lead to rare cases where one might categorise into a category and an ancestor of the category. For example, if a plant occurs in West Nong and East Nong, and we have parent category "Plants of Nong" and subcategory "Plants of West Nong", but no subcategory "Plants of East Nong", then the most specific available category for "it occurs in West Nong" is subcategory "Plants of West Nong", and the most specific available category for "it occurs in East Nong" is parent category "Plants of Nong".

You still haven't defined "distinguished; can you give an example of a distinguished ancestor? Personally, I don't believe they exist.

Hesperian 05:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

> put the article on the topic into the most specific category

Alright. So "all the existing categories to which it logically belongs" doesn't refer to ancestors? The wording seems misleading to me. And the statement in "Duplicate categorization rule" is incorrect?

If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.

> You still haven't defined "distinguished;

I'm just asking about regular categories that are ancestors of other categories. By "distinguished" I mean "non-systematic". —Codrdan (talk) 05:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Clearly "all the existing categories to which it logically belongs" doesn't refer to ancestors, since the rest of the sentence is "subject to the duplicate categorization rule stated below." There is no contradiction there, if you bother to read the entire sentence. As for "By "distinguished" I mean "non-systematic.", I can't imagine a more opaque comment. I don't know what you mean by "distinguished", nor "non-systematic", and I'm beginning to think you don't either. Hesperian 23:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

> I don't know what you mean by "distinguished", nor "non-systematic"

Subcategorization describes two kinds of categories:

Intermediate categories may be created as ways of organizing schemes of subcategories.
Not all subcategories serve this systematic "breaking down" function; some are simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest ...These are called distinguished subcategories.

I'm talking about the second kind: categories that are distinguished subcategories of their parents and don't serve as "systematic" organizing schemes. I don't know why this is causing so much confusion. The text says "subcategory" instead of "category", but all subcategories are categories, and, except for the root category Contents, all categories are subcategories. What would you call them?

Anyway, I don't understand why the duplicate categorization rule says "If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A" if we're not supposed to add pages to parent categories as you said. —Codrdan (talk) 00:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Now I know what you mean. I think the line you've quoted above is rubbish and should be removed. I think pages should be excluded from Category:Bridges in New York City on the grounds that they belong to Category:Toll bridges in New York City. While I appreciate the distinction between distinguished and intermediate, I don't think the terminology is in use. I think these are neologisms that someone invented in order to make this guideline more complicated than it needs to be. Hesperian 01:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you that the guideline is overcomplicated. This question of listing parent categories in articles is why I read the guideline in the first place, so it would be nice to see it addressed clearly and correctly. —Codrdan (talk) 01:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

> I don't think the terminology is in use.

At 05:45, 3 February 2010, User:Wool Mintons deleted a parent category from Get Over It (film) with the reason "rm cat:romantic comedy films, already under non-distinguished subcat 2000s romantic comedy films." I undid the change because my reading of the guideline's definition was that all subset categories are "distinguished" and the duplicate-categorization rule says to include the parent in that case. Most of the people in this discussion seem to be using the word in the same sense as Wool Mintons, to mean "not part of a systematic breakdown". —Codrdan (talk) 08:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is flooded by enthusiastic ignorant over-categorisation - its like a sport - an editor who has worked on an article puts the appropriate category originally - correctly - then finds hot cat and puts the parent category as an after thought - some parts of wikipedia are tainted by massive parent child category co-existence through thousands of articles and category pages - to allow for any usage of the mix is tantamount to not understanding the pointlessness of any category overlap - child and parent categories should not be seen on the same page - if one editor was to trawl wikipedia to undo the mess it would be a lifetimes work - it is more mind boggling than BLP Satu Suro 00:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

> child and parent categories should not be seen on the same page

So are you agreeing with Hesperian that only the lowest-level applicable categories should be listed in articles and ancestors of those categories should not be listed? And if so, what does the second part of the duplicate-categorization rule mean? —Codrdan (talk) 00:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I would not support the removal of the duplicate categorization option. I think that when some basic/elementary users click on Category:Bridges in New York City they will have an expectation to see all of the bridges in New York City. This is not unreasonable as it is not an overly large category. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 02:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Same here. We shouldn't make users page through subcategories any more than necessary. —Codrdan (talk) 03:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

User:Codrdan pointed here because of my deletion of the category:romantic comedy films from the article Get Over It. The category 2000s romantic comedy films was already present, which was why I deleted the parent category. The entire romantic comedy films category has been broken down systematically into decades. (In fact, all of the general genre film categories, drama, romance, westerns, etc. have been broken down into these decades subcategories.) All romantic comedy films fit into one of those decades subcategories, there's no way they can't. The romantic comedy category has been systematically broken down, therefore making each of those decades subcats non-distinguished. They fit into one or the other. WP:FILM, under categorization, includes as example that lists 2000s comedy films, not comedy films. These genre cats would be enormous had they not been broken down somehow. Something like category:comedy of remarriage films is a distinguished category; you can't categorize all films that don't fit into it as category:non-comedy of remarriage films. I would take the duplicate categorization rule to mean that if something is in the comedy of remarriage distinguished category, it would also be listed under the decade-appropriate romantic comedy films category. Wool Mintons (talk) 08:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi WM, thanks for posting.

> The romantic comedy category has been systematically broken down, therefore making each of those decades subcats non-distinguished.

This is incorrect. The existence of sibling categories has nothing to do with whether or not a category is called "distinguished". Subcategorization defines distinguished categories as "simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest". The interesting (distinguishing) characteristic of 2000s romantic comedies is that they are released in the 2000s. They are a subset of romantic comedies. If there were a category called "Romantic Comedies By Decade", THAT would be non-distinguished, or "systematic", or "intermediate", because categories like that are "ways of organizing schemes of subcategories". Most systematic categories have "By" in their name to indicate the characteristic they use to break down their parent category. All non-systematic categories are distinguished.

> genre cats would be enormous

This is the real reason for not listing Romantic Comedies. We shouldn't be using the DCR as a reason for not listing parents of regular "subset" categories, since these are all "distinguished" by definition.

The guideline says to use a "verylarge" template when "a category is so large that it ought to be broken down into subcategories." But a category doesn't have to be big to be subdivided. As PennySpender mentioned, some users might want to know about subset categories even if there aren't very many articles in them, while others might want to see all of the articles in the parent category. There should be a template that says the parent is too big to contain its articles directly. Of course it would have to have a complete set of subcategories to hold all the articles, but the logic shouldn't work the other way: Having a full set of subcategories shouldn't imply that articles can't be added to the parent.

—Codrdan (talk) 13:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The DRC films should probably be listed under the subcategory:romantic comedy films by decade. Just because they aren't {the category doesn't exist yet, one would have to go through every genre category and create the genres by decade cats) doesn't mean that they aren't non-distinguished. Breaking them into decades IS systematic. Marking a film as a 2010 film doesn't make it distinguished because it's made in 2010, it's separated because the films by year category has been broken down systematically BY year. Every film can fit into one or another. Separating them by decades isn't because they're interesting. It's for organizational purposes only. Wool Mintons (talk) 18:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I meant DRC = Duplicate-Categorization Rule. That's what I get for using abbreviations :)

> Just because they aren't [listed under Comedy films by decade] doesn't mean that they aren't non-distinguished.

Yes it does. The guideline is crystal clear about that. The Subcategorization section calls every "subset" category "distinguished", no matter where it is or what siblings it has.

> Breaking them into decades IS systematic.

I agree with you a hundred percent, but you're still misusing the guideline's terminology. The good news is that we're not disagreeing about anything substantive yet. If we can agree on some kind of common language, this discussion should be more productive. I won't respond to your other points because we're still talking past each other so far, but please stop using words like "distinguished" and "systematic" based on your own experience when they're explicitly defined in the guideline. If you don't like the guideline's definitions, let's talk about that. —Codrdan (talk) 19:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I give up. I'm creating the Intermediate Category: Romantic Comedy films by decade and placing the subcategories in it. (There, I used the terminology from the guidelines.) They're still not distinguished subcategories, and therefore pages contained in those subcategories should not also contain the general cat:romantic comedy films. (And by the way, nowhere does it say that every subset category is distinguished. It states that subsets that "have some characteristic of interest...are classified as distinguished.") Wool Mintons (talk) 20:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not going to create it. I think something like that should be brought up over at the Film project, which is what I'm going to do. If it does get created, it's going to alter the entire categorization for the WP:FILM project. Wool Mintons (talk) 20:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

> nowhere does it say that every subset category is distinguished. It states that [distinguished] subsets ... "have some characteristic of interest."

I would say every "subset" category has some characteristic of interest. 2010 films are interesting to anyone looking for films released in 2010. I equate "interest" with "notability". I don't think the word "interest" is meant to indicate anything more. If the original author did mean something more, then I don't like the writing style and I'd like to see it cleared up.

PS: I dislike the phrase "of interest" in either case. If I'm right, then it confused Wool Mintons. If he's right, then it confused me.

—Codrdan (talk) 21:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I promised myself I wouldn't come back to this, but I have to try and fix this. Going back to my point about just because they're not listed in an Intermediate category doesn't make the subcategories non-distinguished. The subcategories were created by WP:FILM in order to prevent the parent categories from getting too large. It doesn't matter if you think that they're distinguished because they're 'notable or interesting', or they may 'go along' with the distinguished subcategory guidelines. WP:FILM doesn't view them as distinguished subcategories, only as ways to prevent the genre cats from having thousands of films and not being helpful, which also goes along with my point earlier. They didn't intend for them to be viewed as distinguished, merely as a way to break down the categories, and categorize the films with the most specific subcategory, not the parent category. The entire reason I'm over here is because you listed the article back in the parent category, when that goes against the WP:FILM MOS, in addition to the suggestions of Wikipedia:Categorization, when it says that if something isn't indicated to be a "distinguished category," to "determine the status of a subcategory by common sense and observation of the way existing articles are categorized." Thousands of film articles that I've never touched, including those that are featured articles, are categorized this way, with only the subcategory, and not the parent category. In short, with all of the guidelines that WP:FILM sets forth for the article in question, Get Over It should only list Category:2000s romantic comedy films, not Category:Romantic comedy films. If you don't agree with WP:FILM's guidelines, I'd suggest you take it up with them. Wool Mintons (talk) 22:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I have added a category description to Category:Romantic comedy films because this guideline says that each category page should have that. With a proper description, an editor does not have to use common sense to determine where individual film articles belong. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

> WP:FILM doesn't view them as distinguished subcategories

I'll tell you what. Since you seem to be upset, and since you seem to be more interested in films than the category system, I'll drop the subject with you. For the record, you're just causing yourself more grief by using the word "distinguished" when I've already told you that I disagree with you about its meaning in the context of the Wikipedia category system. Anyway, thanks for pointing out WP:FILM to me. Most specific categories says 'articles ... should not be placed directly in a "parent" category.' I'm sorry to see that. It works against the principle of making websites as user-friendly as possible. Category size is a legitimate issue, but readers shouldn't have to page through subcategories any more than necessary. Thanks for participating, WM. Have a nice day. —Codrdan (talk) 00:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I am removing the {{contradict}} templates that have been placed on the guideline. The discussion so far shows that only one editor (Codrdan) does not understand the guideline. This discussion can continue and if others start to weigh in that there is a contradiction in the guideline, then we can either fix the text in the guideline or put the template back. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment of the situation. Debresser (talk) 01:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

If you all understand the guideline so well, could someone explain to me how it defines "distinguished" subcategories in a way that they stop being distinguished when related subcategories are added to the parent category?

Nevermind. Thanks for all the help, guys. You've been great. —Codrdan (talk) 05:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

BLP articles lacking sources category

Could someone add from month year subcategories to Category:BLP articles lacking sources, thank you. Mattg82 (talk) 16:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

That could easily be done by changing {{BLP sources}} a little.

{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources}}

to

{{DMCA|||BLP articles lacking sources|from|{{{date|}}}}}

And then create the categories with

{{Monthly clean up category
 | toc     = toc
 | type    = BLP articles lacking sources
 | cat     = BLP articles lacking sources
 | hidden  = y
 | message =
}}

I agree it is high time, with over 16,000 pages in Category:BLP articles lacking sources. Debresser (talk) 23:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This guideline does not reflect current practice.

There are no rules in Wikipedia. Guidelines don't exist to declare rules; they exist to inform newbs about current practice. I assert that it is current practice throughout Wikipedia to disperse articles into the most specific available categories; and that this guideline is therefore terribly inaccurate.

If the guideline said that is was occasionally okay to put an article into a category and its parent, that would be acceptable. But in fact it goes far beyond that, and as a result it appears that some people are now using this guideline to push the very opposite of current practice. There is a problem here that needs to be fixed.

Hesperian 23:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you be more specific, please? Debresser (talk) 02:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The "duplicate categorization rule" states that in the majority of cases (the majority of categories being "distinguished"), it is appropriate to place an article into parent categories of a category that it is already in. I am of the view that it is long-standing and widespread practice on Wikipedia to remove such parent categories as redundant. There are exceptions, but the exceptions are exceptions. Hesperian 02:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Better to be redundant than user-unfriendly. Readers don't want to flip through pages of subcategories when they're interested in an entire parent category. —Codrdan (talk) 05:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The job of this guideline is to describe current accepted practice, not your personal opinion. Hesperian 05:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Good point. —Codrdan (talk) 06:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Hesperian. In my experience, it's quite normal to delete as redundant the parent category when parent and child category are both applied to one article. What should be the case is a different issue. What does exist is a general sense that redundant categories are removed. The guideline should be reworded to reflect that. (And let's make it understandable—as currently worded, it's a bit confusing.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:41, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What a relief - the general trend of the conversation above was quite disconcerting until Hesperian and Olfactory clarified the issue Satu Suro 06:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a "distinguished" subcategory is. (That's not a particularly good name, I know.) It's not true that the majority of subcategories are distinguished. In my experience, it's very hard to find an example of such a thing. The vast majority of subcategories are systematic (non-distinguished... someone come up with better terminology please) - breaking down the parent category by decade, by year by country, etc. - and therefore in practice you should hardly ever get a situation where an article is in both parent and sub category. Except in the notorious case of eponymous categories, which are dealt with in the section after the duplicate categorization rule. Perhaps we could think of some rewording along that line of thought.--Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Well then count me amongst the confused. I thought it was fairly clear (as clear as that waffle can make it, at any rate) that "distinguished" categories group articles and subcategories according to some property or characteristic shared by the article topics; whereas "intermediate"/"systematic"/"non-distinguished" categories group subcategories according to their place in some categorisation scheme. So "Foos by year" is "intermediate", but "Foos of 2010", "Foos of 2009", "Foos of 2008", "Foos of 2007", etcetera, are all "distinguished". To put it loosely, "non-distinguished" categories are categories that can't contain articles because it simply wouldn't make sense to put an article into it. It follows that this guideline can be paraphrased as "put articles into parent categories unless it is complete and utter nonsense to do so". Hesperian 10:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you get that out of the present wording - "non-distinguished" is not the same as "intermediate". The intended understanding is: "Foos by year" is intermediate, "Foos of 2010" is non-distinguished, and "Nobel prize-winning Foos" is distinguished.--Kotniski (talk) 11:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand how you can get anything else out of "These are called distinguished subcategories." This is a simple declarative sentence. It doesn't say they're distinguished if there are one or two of them but they're nondistinguished if there's a complete set. It says they're distinguished, period. —Codrdan (talk) 12:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see how this is being misunderstood. To make it clearer (for the moment, until we do a better rewrite) I've swapped two paragraphs, to avoid the impression that "distinguished" means "anything that isn't intermediate".--Kotniski (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Instead of "distinguished", maybe we should just call those categories "dignified", or "stately". Maybe we can get them to grow mustaches? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 12:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

How about "diffusing" (for non-distinguished) and "non-diffusing" for distinguished?--Kotniski (talk) 12:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with Hesperian's assessment, that having one article in the most specific category and in its parent as well is less common than having it only in the most specific category.

In addition I would like to ask Kotniski to get into the habit of getting consensus for his edits before he makes them. Debresser (talk) 12:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What part of WP:BRD do you not understand?--Kotniski (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The part that says that you should always be the one to do this on Wikipedia:Categorisation, and while discussion is still in process. If my memory doesn't play tricks with me, that idea is more about making changes that were not under curent discussion. Debresser (talk) 23:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I get it now. I would say that "intermediate" versus "non-intermediate" is the sharper and more fundamental division. Within "non-intermediate" there is a spectrum running from categorisations that divide a topic any-old-how in order to break up an over-large parent, to categorisations that divide a topic into inherently interesting subtopics. The ends of this spectrum are called "non-distinguished" and "distinguished" respectively, but I would argue that there is a big grey area in the middle. Case in point: the example of "Bridges in France", which is given as "non-distinguished", whereas I see it as thoroughly "distinguished".

I remain of the opinion that the guidance given here—to place articles in every category up the ancestral chain until you arrive at an intermediate or non-distinguished category—does not reflect current practice. And personally, I am glad of that. I think the thing to do is to ditch this particular point of guidance; and hopefully that would allow us to ditch all this "distinguished" silliness too.

Hesperian 13:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What about parent categories that have no systematic subcats at all? If you don't display articles from the subcats in the parent, you wind up with a partial listing of articles in the parent, i.e. only articles that have no lower-level category. But that's misleading: It creates the impression that the articles without subcats are all of the articles in the parent. Shouldn't it be all or nothing, so if there are any articles that absolutely have to be listed in the parent, then all articles are listed there? If you don't like that, shouldn't we at least create a full set of systematic subcats by placing a heading over the articles with no subcat that labels them "Other foos", so the reader knows it's not a full list of the parent's articles? —Codrdan (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

When I have read this guideline, I have always understood that the preference is to have an article in only one category in a tree, unless there has been some established purpose to establish a subcategory to meet the "duplicate categorization rule. I have also read "distinguished" to mean "marked as different" or "characterized." Looking at more detailed definitions on the web, I see where distinguished can also mean "separated by logical division." I now see just how poor the word "distinguished" is for describing this situation. Maybe Organizational subcategory would be better name for Foos of 2010, Foos of 2009, etc. Characteristic subcategory would be better for things like Nobel prize-winning Foos. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 18:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

>"distinguished" to mean "marked as different"

That's how I initially read it. —Codrdan (talk) 19:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The changes you made here have not made it clearer to me. You have now added the name systematic categories. Why? I suggest this edit be reverted until there is more agreement. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 23:23, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right, the text uses that word for subset categories. Is it better now? —Codrdan (talk) 23:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? —Codrdan (talk) 13:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
(moved Q to new section. —Codrdan (talk) 14:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC))

It seems the above discussion has collapsed into attempts to figure out exactly what all that waffle means, and to rephrase it to make more sense. My point stands that the section describes a fictional practice. Why bother rephrasing something that is rubbish no matter how we phrase it? Does anyone here truly believe that the duplicate categorisation rule actually describes current practice? Nuke it from orbit! Hesperian 23:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I think there is reason for duplicate categorization, but if this discussion ends in concensus to eliminate it from the guideline then the templates {{Allincluded}} and {{Distinguished subcategory}} will need to be deleted and each of the categories that rely on thewm will need to be updated. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 04:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, duplicate categorization should be handled by the software. Articles should be automatically added to all ancestor categories below some agreed-upon maximum size. That maximizes user friendliness and minimizes wiki redundancy at the same time. —Codrdan (talk) 04:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, all sorts of things should be handled by the software, but no developers seem remotely interested in improving the functionality for categories (which, frankly, is pretty rubbishy at the moment). I don't agree with Hesperian's proposal to ditch the rule entirely though - it would mean that (in the rare cases where it applies, for example the bridges in New York), we would either have to (a) delete the toll bridges category; (b) not allow the toll bridges to appear as a subcategory of the bridges; (c) take the toll bridges out of the category of bridges. For me, all of these things would seem to hamper rather than help navigation. However since this is in practice such a rare circumstance, I think we could reword the rule to say that "pages are not placed in a category if they belong to one of its subcategories, except in the cases described below under eponymous categories and XXX categories" (and make a new section called XXX categories, where XXX is whatever term we decide on as a replcement for "distinguished").--Kotniski (talk) 09:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm okay with that. Hesperian 11:49, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

See the next-but-one section for the question of what XXX should be.--Kotniski (talk) 12:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Is that different from the DCR, or are you trying to say the same thing in different words? —Codrdan (talk) 14:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Questions requiring answers

These are things that have been discussed before but, I think, without any answers being reached:

What term should we use instead of list category (meaning a category of things of a certain type, in opposition to topic category)?
What term should we use instead of distinguished category (see discussion above)?

I would also have another general suggestion for this page, which seems too long at the moment: move all the technical help to Help:Category (it should be there already anyway), making this page just for guidance on proper use of categories (i.e. what to do, not how to do it), and then simplify it to make it more practical and less of an academic discourse. What do people think of this idea? (Make that question 3.)

Suggestions please.--Kotniski (talk) 12:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

If someone objected to "list category", then I missed it. What is the problem with this name?
I still say this concept is not well-defined. I argued above that whether "Bridges in France" is distinguished or not is entirely a matter of opinion, rather than a matter of definition; and no-one has disabused me of that notion yet.
On reflection, I think that the criterion for including articles in categories further up the category tree is simply category tree population: if a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories. The reason we have gotten bogged down in complicated definitions is because the question naturally arises, "why should such an underpopulated category tree exist at all? It ought to be upmerged, right?" The answer, as you know, is that this situation legitimately arises whenever the subcategories were created not to diffuse the parent's articles, but because they are inherently interesting. But we don't need to say this! Our task is to identify situations where it is okay to include articles in not-the-most-specific categories, not to give a long-winded and hideously complicated explanation of how such situations come about! All that is required is to say "If a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then it is permissible to include articles in parent categories as well as most-specific subcategories." And if we absolutely must go on to explain and defend the existence of such underpopulated category trees, then at least make it a secondary paragraph.
I reckon "simplify it to make it more practical and less of an academic discourse" is the most pressing need right now.

Hesperian 13:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Re 1: For some people this name sounds as if it ought to mean "categories containing lists".

Re 2:That sounds a possible way to go, though we'd need some concept of "safely" (we've always been very vague about what an appropriate maximum size for a category should be, and I don't think we're likely to agree on one now).--Kotniski (talk) 13:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Re 3: I've created Wikipedia:Categorization/Draft, on which we can try out improvements.--Kotniski (talk) 13:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

> If a category tree contains so few articles that it could safely be upmerged to its parent, then ... include articles in parent categories

But what if the category's siblings have a lot of articles? We need to stop focusing on individual subcategories and discuss the parent directly. How about this:

~~If a category contains fewer than the maximum allowed number of articles, then it may list its articles directly.~~

If a category contains more than the maximum recommended number of articles, then its page should not list its articles directly.

—Codrdan (talk) 15:23, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

"list category" should be "set category", since the name directly denotes a set, or simply "category", because that's all a category is: a set of things defined by some property. If that's too simple, it could be "X category", where X is "standard", "simple", "proper", "regular", or some other word indicating that there's nothing special about it.

"topic category" is okay. I would give some consideration to calling it simply a "topic", but technically speaking it represents the category of things pertaining to the topic.

—Codrdan (talk) 14:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Kotniski, what would happen under the duplicate-categorization rule (and your new rule if it's different from the DCR) if a parent category has a complete set of "systematic" subcategories for one characteristic but only a partial set of "distinguished" subcats for another? Would you add articles from the incomplete set to the parent even though you're not supposed to add them from the complete set? In other words, would you add Nobel-prize-winning foo articles to Foos even though you have a full listing of foos for every year? —Codrdan (talk) 14:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

No, because it's not "otherwise appropriate" (as the rule says). It's for this reason that duplicate categorization is so rare in practice - even if you do have a distinguished subcategory, the parent is usually also diffused into non-distinguished subcategories anyway. (The "new rule" is Hesperian's rather than mine, so I'll let him explain.)--Kotniski (talk) 15:00, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for answering me, Kotniski. In that case, I'd like to suggest a few things:

I agree with Hesperian that the DCR needs to be ditched (if that was his opinion).
The logic that decides what is "otherwise appropriate" is the real rule that we should be discussing.
The terms "distinguished subcategory" and "systematic subcategory" should be ditched completely along with the DCR. We don't need new synonyms for them, we need to talk about different ideas.
Specifically, we need to stop talking about individual subcategories and address the parent directly. Other than the total number of articles in the parent category, the "otherwise appropriate" logic mentioned in the DCR is basically the question of whether or not the parent has at least one set of related subcategories that collectively contain all of the parent's articles. The parent should list its member articles directly if it does not have at least one of these sets of subcategories.
If a parent category does have one or more of these complete sets of subcategories, I would call the parent "systematized", "fully subcategorized" (although that conflicts with current usage), or something equally pretentious.
If that's not enough terminology for you, sets of subcategories that collectively contain all of their parent's articles could be called something like "full", "complete", "exhaustive", or "comprehensive".

—Codrdan (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's so unusual, though, for a parent category to be partially systematized (containing some of its member articles directly, but with others - most - of them put away into aubcategories). We have to take that situation into account in our wording.--Kotniski (talk) 16:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

If a parent page lists any articles at all, I think it's extremely important for them to be listed under a heading that indicates whether they're all of the articles in the category or only a subset of them. If we have to discuss the subcategories that contain the rest of the articles, I would prefer wording like "standalone subcategory" (instead of "distinguished") that explicitly says the subcat is not part of an exhaustive set of subcats. As a reader, I want to know whether or not I have to page through the parent's subcategories to find all of the parent's articles. Also, I think it's important on the parent category page to visually group full sets of subcats together under a heading with the same title as the equivalent "intermediate subcategory", so readers know they can find all of the parent's articles without having to look in other subcats. —Codrdan (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not really possible to add headings within the subcategory list, but yes, there ought to be better explanation on category pages to help readers and editors use them properly. (I once made a template for doing that - see User:Kotniski/Catdesc - but it was deleted as people considered it too complicated; however it's something we could come back to.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:06, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Then I would make it a high priority to put each full set of subcats into an "intermediate subcat" and make sure editors add new subcats as needed to keep the set complete. The template looks like it might not be too bad if it's simplified a little, but I'd like to clear up some other things before discussing it. —Codrdan (talk) 18:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed that Commons are calling "intermediate categories" meta categories.[1] 23:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

That's pretty good. I was going to suggest the more mundane terms "category list" and "subcategory set", but I guess that's what a metacategory is. —Codrdan (talk) 00:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

At Commons:Commons:Naming categories#Categories by CRITERION, they refer to "Category:Spheres by colour" as a meta category, and "Category:Red spheres" as a matching category. Hesperian 01:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds a bit weird to me. "Meta" sounds like it's to do with MetaWiki. I don't know where "matching" came from.--Kotniski (talk) 07:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not nearly as weird as "intermediate category". Not only is an "intermediate category" not a real category, the word "intermediate" says almost nothing about it.

A metacategory is a category of categories. In this case, it's the categories that are defined by some given property, each with a define value or range of values, in addition to those of the parent. I don't think "matching categories" is meant as an official term. I think the author just means that each category matches a color in the example. —Codrdan (talk) 08:58, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Categorising templates

Templates are categorised in Category:Wikipedia templates regardless of whether they are for main/admin or contain content links. Some editors that I have come across insist that templates containing content links (used for navigation with a topic) should be categorised in the related category. I disagree with this stance. Template pages are of no use to readers as a member of a content category. Editors are able to find useful templates in Category:Wikipedia templates or when pages relating to the template are viewed. I would like to see the Wikipedia:Categorization guideline modified as follows:

remove " "τ" for categorizing templates."
add the following text:
- "All pages in the Template namespace must be categorised in Category:Wikipedia templates and its sibling categories."
- "Template pages must not be in content categories."
- "Templates relating to WikiProjects should be added to the related WikiProject categories."

The rationale for this proposal is to ensure separation between content and maint/admin. Readers, who are the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia, have no interest in the existence of template pages. See also Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Templates_in_article_categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 08:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment. If there is disagreement on this point ("Some editors that I have come across insist that templates containing content links (used for navigation with a topic) should be categorised in the related category."), why are we trying to establish a guideline that comes down on one side or the other? Guidelines are supposed to reflect pre-existing consensus, not enforce a "should be" over which there is disagreement. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:17, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a consensus and my proposal is a reflection of that consensus. I would like to see those who are not aware of the consensus and use the lack of an explicitly stated guideline to carry out edits that are contrary to building a quality WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

What's the evidence for the consensus then? Of what you have said, I only see evidence of a lack of consensus. If you're running into people who disagree with you on the issue, that should say something. The only thing you've said that "proves" there is a consensus is that you've said, "there is a consensus". Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:56, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Would you consider the lack of reverts when templates are removed from categories as consensus? Vegaswikian (talk) 10:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Kind of. I'd rather see editors say, "I agree with this approach" when asked directly about it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of the evidence would be in my edit history. Feel free to do an analysis of it. Over the thousands of template category removals I have done there have been very few reverts. Also, when looking at content categories it is very unusual to see template pages. A 99% (thereabouts) consensus looks like a consensus to me. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Can we get back to the point? Since an RfC has been advertised, clearly this is an attempt to establish consensus over an issue which ought to have an answer one way or another.--Kotniski (talk) 12:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Support. There's no reason to throw things into inappropriate categories just because of a vague relation. Relevant templates can appear on the category page or be linked from there if really important, but we shouldn't be mixing up editing tools with encyclopedia articles in the same category - we ought to be categorizing like with like. --Kotniski (talk) 12:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Figuring out how to access content related templates is one of the bigger hurdles for new readers/editors. It is very helpful to have easy access to a template in a category in which most if not all of the content of the category is in the template. For example, I think it is completely appropriate for Category:Big Ten Conference football to contain Template:Big Ten football. In principle, it'd make little difference whether the templates were categorized in the category or if they were listed as part of the editable content of the category page, but it is far easier to maintain by inclusion. It is a mistaken presumption to dictate that reader/editors should not (or will not) look to categories for such content. older ≠ wiser 13:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Is template access really a problem? The example you give actually shows how easy it is to access templates. View, discuss and edit links are available on the template itself and therefore visible on all the pages it is used on. Therefore there is no need for it to be in the associated category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you mean the cryptic v d e letters in the corner? Sure, for those in the know, those are useful shortcuts, but I disagree with your assessment that there is no need for it to be in the associated category. The distinction between templates and content is not particularly intuitive, as the distinction is based more on the technical mode of presentation than the actual content that appears within articles. older ≠ wiser 21:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Disagree with the general idea of this proposal, and therefore with its details as well. The main reason I disagree is that I see no reason categories should be restricted to content. I expect a category to contain links to WikiProjects and related templates as well. One of the reason for my opinion is that categories serve not only the reader, but the editor as well. Especially on Wikipedia, where any reader is a potential editor. Moreover, we at Wikipedia try to turn readers into editors. Having categories include templates greatly simplifies the editor's work, and is very helpfull in allowing the reader to turn into an editor, while even experienced editors like me greaty profit from this. Debresser (talk) 18:26, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I am saying content cats should be restricted to content. WikiProjects should not be in content cats either. The WikiProjects are one click away on the Talk pages. WP exists to serve the reader who are by far the largest number of visitors. They should not have to sift through the clutter of editing pages to find content. Wannabe editors are already served extremely well. The barriers to becoming an editor are VERY low, hence all the vandalism but that is another story. Content cats should be for the reader and project categories are for the editor. They should be kept separate. This does not make it any less difficult foe wannabe editors. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 20:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

> They should be kept separate.

Separate is a great idea. Template and maintenance categories should be included in (a) separate section(s) at the bottom of the page. They could even be hidden (collapsed) by default. This would be the "best of both worlds", since it provides info for editors without distracting the casual reader. —Codrdan (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Pages can have hidden categories. Categories cannot have hidden pages. The cat sort key it not always used and we end up with templates scattered throughout the content pages. I am cleaning up Category:Evolutionat present. I have got rid of a lot of templates but two are still stuck there. It is quite distracting. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. I essentially agree with the position set out by older ≠ wiser. I don't see a reason to make it more difficult for users to learn how to access relevant templates. I personally prefer to have any relevant templates in category space, as long as they are sorted under "τ". I also find the artificial distinction between readers and editors unhelpful. Readers are editors and editors are readers—that's one of the things that makes WP what it is. If there was a consensus for the proposal I would happily go along with it, but I'm not convinced that there is. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

There would be no additional difficulty for users (editors). Templates can be found on the relevant pages and in the template categories. Since the vast majority of readers don't become editors and the barriers to editing WP are very mow there is no need to use content categories for maint functions. Also, categories do not get a huge amount of traffic so using them to attract editors will not be very effective. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I would find it more difficult if I were learning to use templates, and as an anecdotal case, I actually got into learning about templates and how to use them after seeing them in categories and playing around with some. I don't see how this can benefit things; it only causes potential harm. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

There is an essay at Wikipedia:Readers First. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 08:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know about "readers first", but I disagree with the artificial distinction between readers and editors, as I said above. Readers become editors, and editors are readers. I was a reader, and became an editor. I don't see how the proposal assists readers, anyway. If anything, it seems to take away something that they might potentially find useful or interesting. To suggest that they are "of no use" to readers is to assume quite a lot and to make a fairly broad statement about a group of people who are bound to have different motivations and interests in consulting Wikipedia. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Categories are more useful to everyone the less irrelevant junk we put into them. Why not put the user pages of all French editors into the "France" category? Conceivably someone might be looking for them, and might usefully learn about the concept of user pages as a result. But by filling up categories with such distractions, we make it more awkward for the vast majority of users who simply want to find encyclopedia articles.--Kotniski (talk) 08:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing artificial about saying that many people read without editing. It's just as artificial to say that everyone who reads also edits as it is to say that no readers edit. Reducing the clutter of a user interface by hiding technical information is a fundamental way of making websites and software user friendly. —Codrdan (talk) 09:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess we just disagree about the issues involved. It goes back to my original idea some weeks ago, that this is essentially an issue of personal taste and shouldn't be subject to a guideline unless there's a clear consensus preferring one way or the other. I don't believe there is a right or wrong about these, because any opinion makes important assumptions about vast numbers of users. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 11:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Draft ready

OK, I propose replacing the text of this guideline with the version at Wikipedia:Categorization/Draft. Consequences:

A lot of well-meaning but largely incomprehensible "explanation" (particularly that added a couple of months ago) will be eliminated, slimming the page down so that people can find the useful information more easily.
Technical help largely eliminated, to be moved to Help:Category if it isn't there already, again slimming this page and keeping it focused.
"List" categories renamed to "set" categories (still open to discussion; there doesn't seem to be a name that everyone will be thrilled with, but we have to call them something).
"Distinguished" subcategories renamed to "notable-feature" subcategories (same remark as above; but this concept now plays a more secondary role - see next point).
The "duplicate categorization rule" no longer stated as a rule - we just say that pages are placed at the end of a branch, referring to the "notable-feature" and eponymous cases as exceptions to that principle.
Some other minor rewording, reordering of information, mostly with brevity in mind. Nothing of substance should have changed.

I'm not claiming the new version is perfect, but I believe it's much clearer than the one we've got, so I propose making the substitution and then working on any proposed further improvements.--Kotniski (talk) 11:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Strongest oppose The "new version" is actually a complete rewrite (see [2]), into which User:Kotniski has made changes to content that were not discussed, and are unlikely to conform to consensus. Debresser (talk) 14:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean? What have I incorporated that was not there before? (Or taken out that was there before? Except for things that were put in not long ago without discussion or apparently with anyone understanding.) You seem to be implying that because the words have changed, the content has changed. Not so, I hope, if you examine it.--Kotniski (talk) 14:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I right away paid attention to one content change that wasn't discussed. From this I infer that your new version can not be relied upon. Debresser (talk) 15:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

What content change?--Kotniski (talk) 15:39, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't matter. The point is that you did not make a new version of an old page, but did a complete rewrite. And you wrote it with minor (and perhaps not so minor) changes that do not reflect consensus but your point of view. Discussing just one of them is besides the point. Debresser (talk) 15:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. Most of the text is the same, or the same meaning in different words. If you think I've changed the substance, then just tell us about it - it was almost certainly an accident (except for the things I've listed above, which are obviously open to discussion already), and can easily be put right. --Kotniski (talk) 17:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

The passage "some are simply subsets ... These are called notable-feature subcategories" is incorrect based on both current usage and the rest of the guideline. It clearly refers to all regular subcategories, including both "distinguished" and "systematic" categories.
Everything on Wikipedia is supposed to be notable, all categories are distinguished from others in one way or another, and being a part of a systematic set of subcats doesn't make a subcat any less important, notable, or "distinguished". "Distinguished" subcats should be called something like "standalone" or "ad hoc" to indicate that they're not part of a complete set of subcats. Complete sets could be called something like "systematic subcategory sets", and the parent could be called "systematized" when it contains at least one systematic set of subcats.
I think the duplicate-categorization guideline is still incorrect. Whether or not a parent category lists articles directly should be based on whether or not it's systematized, not on whether or not it contains ad-hoc subcats.

—Codrdan (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't care what we call these things - call them ad hoc if you like, as long as we call them something. I don't know exactly what you mean by your objection number 1 - I presume you understand what that sentence is trying to say, can you word it better? But your approach to this systematization is still a bit wrong - it's not necessary for there to be a complete set of systematic subcats (most topic categories, for example, contain some articles directly, but don't contain all the articles from all of their subcategories). In other words, partial diffusion into subcats is possible - however we formulate this must take account of that possibility.--Kotniski (talk) 18:35, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

> I presume you understand what that sentence is trying to say

There's no question about what the sentence says. The problem is that it doesn't say what you are trying to say. Here's some text to consider, with temporary multiple suggestions built in:

If a group of subcategories collectively contain every member article of their parent exactly once, they can be called a "full", "complete", "exhaustive", "comprehensive", or "systematic" set of subcategories. Such a set of subcategories systematically subdivides the parent category according to some additional criterion. They may be placed in their own Wikipedia page, which is listed in the parent category's page in place of the individual subcategories. If this is done, the separated set of subcategories can be called a "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory".

Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list ~~either~~ all its member articles ~~or any member articles that are not contained in at least one subcategory~~. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.

> it's not necessary for there to be a complete set of systematic [sic] subcats

It is if you don't want to list member articles on the parent category's page. A systematic set of subcats is guaranteed by definition to include all the parent's articles. This is true regardless of how many ad-hoc subcats are present.

—Codrdan (talk) 20:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I haven't got the time to go into detail, but I noticed that you changed "It is not recommended that articles be placed in ordinary content categories in this way." (refering to categorisation through templates) by "However, articles should not be placed in ordinary content categories using templates in this way.". That is a rephrase which changes policy from "not recommended" to "should not". Was that discussed? Is that consensus? If you have done such things, surely we can't trust the rest of the text. Debresser (talk) 21:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding articles to categories automatically can lead to duplicate categorization. —Codrdan (talk) 23:40, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

That we all know, but changes in the text should be discussed. And it is not as if the previous text was in favor of it. Debresser (talk) 11:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there some background personal issue here that I'm not aware of? Kotniski put a lot of effort into cleaning up a dreadfully over-complicated and waffly page. I'd say he's taken us 95% of the way to a good outcome. All that is required is the identification and repair of any objectionable sentences. I can't understand the hostile reception. Hesperian 23:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Comments. I think that the draft looks pretty good and is largely a reflection of consensus. If there's a question about whether the "Categorization using templates" section is supported by consensus, we could just use the pre-existing and softer, "It is not recommended that articles be placed in ordinary content categories in this way." I don't really know the background of that issue and if it's been discussed in detail. Per the above discussion, I disagree that there is a consensus to prohibit categorization of templates in otherwise article-dedicated categories, but I would be fine if that too were included with a softer phrase that says it is discouraged, since there are users that are convinced that doing so is not a good thing. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have anything against Kotniski personally, but the current terminology is tragically misleading and the "Notable-feature subcategories" section is just plain wrong. I've already proposed some text for the Subcategorization section that I think is clearer, and I would be happy to provide more. —Codrdan (talk) 01:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Re "it is not recommended that" versus "should not" - if we list ten good reasons not to do something, I think it's pretty clear that we mean that people shouldn't do it. But it really doesn't matter to me - put back the slightly longer wording if you think it makes a difference. (Good Ol'factory, I'm not sure, but I think you may be confusing two issues - what we were talking about before was putting templates into article categories; what's been raised now is putting articles into categories using templates. Two completely different things. Sorry if I misunderstood you though.)

Re Codrdan's first paragraph: the separated set (the "category list", "subcategory set", or "metacategory") is a category, right? (Of the Category:Foos by country type. So whatever we call it, I think it needs to be a "something category", otherwise we will really confuse people. (Again, sorry if I've misunderstood.)

Re Codrdan's second paragraph: it seems at first sight not to be saying anything. Obviously a category lists member articles that are not in any subcategory, otherwise they wouldn't be member articles. But if you mean "or only any member articles..." (which seems necessary to give the statement any substance), then we needlessly prohibit partially diffused categories from having ad hoc categories in addition to the diffusing ones. --Kotniski (talk) 07:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't phrase what I said too well and can see how you would interpret what I said as maybe confusing the two issues into one. But no, I actually wasn't confused about them in my own head. I just thought I'd say that as long as we are making the one statement less definitive, I would also be OK using some soft wording on the other issue about putting templates themselves into categories. On the first issue, using templates to apply categories, I don't have a personal view one way or the other. On the second, putting templates themselves in categories, I feel that it shouldn't be absolutely prohibited by guideline, but I'm OK if we want to include it to say it's discouraged or not recommended. I just wanted to compromise on the latter issue and give some ground after my opposition in the section above. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:15, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for clarifying. In fact I don't think either the draft or the present guideline says anything hard-and-fast about whether templates can be in article categories (WP:PROJCATS kind of implies it's a bad thing; the equivalent section in the draft is if anything less categorical on ths issue). --Kotniski (talk) 08:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Less categorical. Har har. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Intermediate categories/metacategories

> whatever we call [a category list (metacategory)], I think it needs to be a "something category", otherwise we will really confuse people.

Really? What do you think would be confusing about calling it a list of categories? —Codrdan (talk)

It makes it sound like it's on an ordinary article page, not in the "Subcategories" section of a category page. But "metacategory" could be OK (though I still prefer "intermediate category" - it's an intermediate node between the category and some subcategories, while "metacategory" makes it sound like it's outside the category system somehow).--Kotniski (talk) 09:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry about that, Kotniski. People will get used to it. There's nothing about the word "list" that implies "articles" rather than "categories". You're just unfamiliar with it. As for being an intermediate node, a node is not a category. The current terminology has already confused me, and I'm a well-educated native English speaker. The things you're calling "intermediate categories" are not categories, so the term is confusing and misleading. People will understand that a category list is in the category system, because it's a list of categories, not a list of articles. —Codrdan (talk) 02:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but Wikipedians know lists as things in article space; things in category space are called categories. We won't change that (nor do I see any reason to try). I still think "intermediate category" tells the story slightly better than "metacategory" - but maybe someone will come up with a better name.--Kotniski (talk) 09:25, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see that you're so rigidly against improvement, Kotniski. I think you underestimate the ability of most Wikipedians to learn. Did someone put you in charge of dictating to other contributors what things we will or will not change? And "intermediate category" doesn't tell any story better except that whoever coined the term doesn't think very well. —Codrdan (talk) 14:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Me against improvement? I've just spent quite a lot of time rewriting the page to make it much clearer - it's your objections that are holding up putting the improved version in place (in any case the faults you think exist with the draft version exist already with the current version, so they're hardly an argument against going ahead with the change). If you're just going to be insulting, I don't see any point in continuing to talk to you. (Or maybe you didn't know it was me who coined the term. All right; so what's defective in my thinking when I call a category that's intermediate between two things an "intermediate category"? Maybe there's a better name; but the one we've got is perfectly acceptable in the meantime.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

> what's defective in my thinking when I call a category that's intermediate between two things an "intermediate category"?
What's defective is that you don't seem to realize that "intermediate categories" aren't categories at all, and you're simply ignoring my explanations instead of answering them seriously. I've already told you several times that an "intermediate category" is really just a list or set of categories, but you've insulted me by treating my comments as if they're not even worth responding to directly. —Codrdan (talk) 18:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought I'd already dealt with that, but let's do it: an intermediate category is a category (in the sense of the kind of visible object in the software that everyone calls a "category"). It may not fit your particular philosophical notion of what "category" means (there are many such notions), but in the Wikipedia context, it would be highly confusing to adopt a notion of "category" other than the one offered by the software. Here, as everyone knows, categories are the things listed at Special:Categories and whose associated pages begins with the word "Category:".--Kotniski (talk) 07:31, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Distinguished/ad hoc categories

> Codrdan's second paragraph ... seems at first sight not to be saying anything.

Excellent point! How about this:

Any parent category that does not contain one or more systematic sets of subcategories should list all of its member articles. Subcategories that are not part of a systematic set are called "ad hoc" or "standalone" subcategories.

What I'm trying to say is that the duplicate-categorization rule should be based on the presence or absence of at least one systematic set of subcats. That's the only thing beside the size of the parent category that determines whether or not it should list its member articles. —Codrdan (talk) 09:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

That can't be right if you define "systematic set" to mean a set covering the whole of the category. In fact these sets could have only one member. I don't see how we can avoid the problem of saying that some subcats cause diffusion while some don't, and trying to explain which ones are which (using something akin to the "notable feature" language). Top-of-the-head example: Category:Voivodeships of Poland has the subcategory Category:Former voivodeships of Poland; it might theoretically also have a subcategory Category:EU medal-winning voivodeships of Poland. The first one takes members away from the parent category; the second one wouldn't. Explain the difference.--Kotniski (talk) 09:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

> if you define "systematic set" to mean a set covering the whole of the category [they] could have only one member.

These are sets of subcategories, not sets of articles. That's why they're called "category lists" and "metacategories". Nobody's saying that one category should contain all the members in the parent. The parent already does that.

> I don't see how we can avoid the problem of saying that some subcats cause diffusion while some don't

We avoid it by not saying it. All subcategories subdivide the parent. Systematic sets do it fully, and ad-hoc subcats do it partially. Incidentally, I prefer "subdivide" over "diffuse". Diffusion is associated with continuous media, whereas "subdivide" explicitly suggests distinct subcategories.

> and trying to explain which ones are which (using something akin to the "notable feature" language).

"Systematic set" is well defined. It's a subdivision of the parent, based on some property, into a set of subcategories that collectively contain all of the parent's articles. It's easy to explain, and it has nothing to do with notability.

> [Former voivodeships of Poland] takes members away from [Voivodeships of Poland]

First of all, why can't there be a Current voivodeships of Poland subcategory, and second, what does this have to do with what we're discussing?

—Codrdan (talk)

I think we must be misunderstanding each other quite fundamentally. For me, the error that runs through everything you say, and that I keep trying to point out (including with that example), is that it's not only all-inclusive systematic sets of subcats that take pages away from the main cat, but also (sometimes) partial systematic sets or simply single subcats. (But not every single subcat - our task is to define which.) --Kotniski (talk) 11:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

> we must be misunderstanding each other quite fundamentally.

Yep.

> (sometimes) partial systematic sets or simply single subcats [take pages away from the main cat].

What do you mean by "take pages away"? A parent category's page should display either all of its member articles or none of them. It could display only some of them if it clearly labels them as only a subset, but even then, various ad-hoc subcats might list the undisplayed ones in more than one place, which is inconvenient for the user. My point is that the parent should display its articles until a systematic set "takes" them all away, in which case users know they can find all of the parent's articles listed in each systematic set exactly once.

> (But not every single subcat - our task is to define which.)

Why not? I don't understand that.

—Codrdan (talk) 11:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

All right, so it seems you're actually proposing something quite new. I can see the attraction of this, but it would mean very significant changes to the category structure, and I think certain exceptions would inevitably arise in discussion (as you seem to acknowledge with your "It could display only some of them if..."). Perhaps this should be a separate discussion, then, with an explicit proposal - but what I was hoping to discuss in this thread was whether the draft wording (or some other wording) adequately describes the way of doing things which is accepted at the moment. Are there any further objections (from anyone) in that regard?--Kotniski (talk) 12:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

> you're ... proposing something [that] would mean ... changes to the category structure
Nope. The duplicate-categorization rule as I described it can be implemented manually by editors, so the software doesn't have to be changed, and it seems to be the current practice anyway, so the hierarchy doesn't have to change.
> exceptions would inevitably arise ... (as you seem to acknowledge with your "It could display only some of them if...").
I was suggesting an alternate guideline. It has nothing to do with exceptions.
> whether the draft wording (or some other wording) adequately describes the [current] way of doing things
The "Notable-feature subcategories" section doesn't describe anything adequately. In addition to being one of the most confusing attempts to define terminology I've ever seen in my life, its description of the duplicate-categorization rule isn't even what editors are currently using. At 05:45, 3 February 2010, Wool Mintons removed cat:romantic comedy films from Get Over It (film) with the reason "already under non-distinguished subcat 2000s romantic comedy films", even though the film is also in the "distinguished" (ad-hoc) subcategory American romantic comedy films. This is exactly the rule I've been proposing: Whether or not an article is listed in a parent category page depends on whether or not the parent has a systematic set of subcats, not on whether or not the article is in an ad-hoc ("distinguished") subcat. So the current wording doesn't even reflect current practice. —Codrdan (talk) 18:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

You're not understanding the intended meaning of the current wording. Don't know if that's the fault of you or the wording, but please try to understand. What Wool Mintons did is perfectly in accordance with both your proposed rule and the current wording, so it doesn't tell us anything. The fact that an article is in a distincuighed/adhoc/notable-feature subcat doesn't mean that it has to be in the parent cat, only that it shouldn't be excluded from the parent cat for that reason. If you can say it better, please do, but please stop saying that the current wording or the draft wording is "wrong" - it's your insistence on talking about complete sets that's wrong, as you'll see in almost any topic category, where the category won't list all of the articles in its subcategories, even though it lists some of them (the topic article, at the very least) which are not covered by the subcategories.--Kotniski (talk) 09:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

> please stop saying that the current wording or the draft wording is "wrong"

Wikipedia:Categorization/Draft#Notable-feature subcategories says this:

Not all subcategories serve the "diffusion" function described above; some are simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest ... These are called notable-feature subcategories.

How does "subsets which have some characteristic of interest" include ad-hoc subcats but not "systematic" subcats? I can't think of a sane interpretation in which that makes sense. At first I thought Wool Mintons was making excuses for the author when she said the phrase "of interest" is meant to indicate "not part of a systematic set of subcategories", but maybe I was wrong. Is that what you meant, Kotniski? Is the phrase "of interest" really supposed to exclude subcategories that happen to be part of a systematic set of subcategories? Because I don't see how the presence or absence of related categories makes one particular category any more or less interesting or distinguished or notable.

Also, this is the second part of the DCR:

If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.

Whether or not an article is listed in a parent category has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is included in an ad-hoc subcategory. Therefore, while the second part of the DCR may not technically be "wrong" (and I didn't say it was), it's utterly worthless because it doesn't help describe current practices. The only effect it can possibly have on readers is to confuse them.

> almost any topic category ... won't list all of the articles in its subcategories, even though it lists some of them ... which are not covered by the subcategories.

Are any of the articles listed because they are in ad-hoc subcats?

DCR part 2 seems to be replaced with this text in the draft:

[notable-feature subcats] sometimes provide an exception to the general rule that pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory: there is no need to take pages out of the parent category purely because of their membership of a notable-feature subcategory.

Is there a rule somewhere that says "pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory"? I don't see any point in having one. As far as I can tell, the current practice is that articles are listed or not depending on whether or not there's a complete set of subcats. I would delete the above text from the draft and replace it with any information available about what really makes an article an exception to the rule.

—Codrdan (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Well yes, there is a rule that says that, and it's omnipresent in our categorization practices. In the present guideline it's the part of the DCR that talks of non-distinguished subcategories; in the draft it's the second paragraph of the "Categorizing pages" section. The rule has two exceptions: the eponymous category case (which is far more common and problematic in practice, though we haven't been discussing it here this time), and the "distinguished/ad hoc/notable-feature" case (which is rare, but it's the one we've been discussing). These two exceptions are pointed out in both the current wording and the draft; the draft presents them both as exceptions to a rule rather than presenting the second as one of two cases in a single rule, but it all comes down to the same thing. It's nothing to do with complete sets of subcats - try to expel that idea from your mind. Often there are complete sets (particularly with list/set categories), but the principle applies just the same when there aren't (as is usually the case particularly with topic categories).--Kotniski (talk) 17:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, on the question of what's meant by "of interest": it has to be read in the context of the foregoing "not serving the diffusion function" and the word "simply". I.e. there are subcats which are only "of interest", as opposed to being of interest AND serving the diffusion function. I'm sure it's possible to word this much better, and I invite you or anyone to try; but it has to be understood that not only complete sets can serve a diffusion function.--Kotniski (talk) 17:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

> there is a rule that says ["pages are not placed in both a category and its subcategory"] ... it's the part of the DCR that talks of non-distinguished subcategories
That's not the same thing. You said there's a general rule that all articles (with exceptions mentioned elsewhere) are excluded from parent category listing. DCR part 1 doesn't say that. It's really just an indirect way of saying what I've proposed: Pages are not listed in parent categories if the parent has one or more full sets of subcategories.
> The rule has two exceptions: the eponymous category case ... and the "distinguished/ad hoc/notable-feature" case
But the "distinguished" case isn't based on whether an article is in an ad-hoc subcat. Wool Mintons already showed that. She deleted an article's parent category declaration because the article is in a systematic set of subcats, even though it's also in an ad-hoc subcat. I don't know how you can have so much trouble understanding that. Membership in ad-hoc subcats has no effect on whether or not an article is listed in the parent category page.
> It's nothing to do with complete sets of subcats - try to expel that idea from your mind.
It's entirely about complete sets, and if no one else here can see that, I'll have to expel this entire guideline from my mind as an exercise in muddled thought and bad writing.
> the principle applies just the same when there aren't [complete sets]
You mean articles are normally not listed in the parent if there's no complete set of subcats? That doesn't sound right. Why wouldn't they be listed in that case, and if they're not, why would Wool Mintons cite membership in a full set as her reason for removing the article from the parent listing?
> "of interest": it has to be read in the context of ... "not serving the diffusion function" and the word "simply". I.e. there are subcats which are only "of interest", as opposed to being of interest AND serving the diffusion function.
Hold on a second. Why should we worry about the context if you've just agreed that both ad-hoc and "systematic" subcats are "of interest"? Your explanation isn't even self-consistent! Now it looks like your definition of ad-hoc subcats is the word "simply": You define ad-hoc subcats as being "simply" subsets, while "systematic" subcats also serve to subdivide the parent. Do you seriously expect readers to differentiate ad-hoc subcats from "systematic" subcats from the one word "simply"? I just don't understand how anyone could support such tortured logic. As far as I'm concerned, all categories are "of interest" in some way or other, and all subcategories serve to partially subdivide the parent, so there's no such thing as a subcategory that is "simply" a subset without at least partially serving to subdivide the parent.
The guideline confuses readers even more by not bothering to define "non-distinguished" in older versions and by not even mentioning "systematic" subcats in the draft. So it defines category lists (with a misleading name that calls them "categories"), and it defines some subset categories (ad-hoc/"distinguished"), but it completely ignores the remaining subset categories ("systematic") and provides no name for subset categories as a whole. The confusion and muddled thinking of the text is breathtaking. I can't support it under any circumstances at all.
> I'm sure it's possible to word this much better, and I invite you or anyone to try
All you have to do is read, Kotniski. My text is already in the current document.
> it has to be understood that not only complete sets can serve a diffusion function.
Exactly. Even ad-hoc subcats serve to partially subdivide the parent. Have a nice day, Kotniski :)
—Codrdan (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

You say "Membership in ad-hoc subcats has no effect on whether or not an article is listed in the parent category page." Yes!! This is the point! Membership in non-ad-hoc subcats does have an effect, membership in ad-hoc subcats doesn't! That (as far as I'm concerned) is the definition. Now all you have to understand is that non-ad-hoc subcats don't have to form complete systematic sets, and we will be on the same wavelength, and will be able to start cooperating on finding good wording.--Kotniski (talk) 07:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

If another example would help, try Category:France (though almost any other topic category would do). This category certainly does not list all articles that come under it, yet it doesn't have a complete systematic set of subcategories. Certainly not complete, anyway, since certain articles are not included in those subcategories and are listed in the parent category directly. (Admittedly in this case probably only France and Outline of France should be in the parent directly, but that's still some, and in other cases where not so many subcategories have been created - like the voivodeship one I mentioned earlier - the number will be higher.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

How do we tell

So tell me, Kotniski, how do we determine whether a subcat is distinguished or systematic? —Codrdan (talk) 08:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is the thing that no-one's ever put satisfactorily into words - maybe we'll come up with something now. Generally speaking I think the majority of subcats are systematic (disregarding the eponymous categories case, as discussed at WP:EPON). It's the "distinguished" ones which are unusual. They're the ones illustrated by the examples in the guideline - toll bridges among bridges, Oscar-winners among actors, etc. I can intuitively see (I hope others can too) why it would be pointless to exclude these from the main listing. If you're interested in bridges, you're not going to be any less interested in a particular bridge because it happens to be a toll bridge. So if we have a listing of all bridges (and we might not, because it might already be completely broken down by some other criteria, but if we do) then we wouldn't want to exclude the toll bridges. By contrast, if you're interested in Voivodeships of Poland, it's quite likely that you would be less interested in former ones than the present-day ones, so it makes sense to move the former ones into a subcategory so that they don't hamper browsing of the more interesting ones. (That's not the whole story, but it's a start.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible for a subcat to be both systematic and distinguished? —Codrdan (talk) 09:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't think so (though maybe someone will surprise me with an example). Systematic schemes are always set up as a way of subdividing (diffusing) the parent category. Non-systematic subcats may or may not serve that function.--Kotniski (talk) 14:15, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

"Non-systematic" sounds like a weasel word, Kotniski. I think this is the first time in our entire conversation that anyone has used that term. Obviously anything that is non-systematic is not systematic by definition. I asked you if a subcat can be both systematic and distinguished. —Codrdan (talk) 15:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

How is a negative a weasel word? Non-systematic means not systematic. I answered your question - I don't know why you're now telling me that you asked it.--Kotniski (talk) 15:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

> How is a negative a weasel word? ... I answered your question

It's confusing when you use the word "non-systematic" in your answer to a question involving the word "distinguished". Writing "non-systematic" instead of "distinguished" suggests that what you really mean by "No" is "It is not possible for a subcat to be both systematic and non-systematic". This would be an insult to my intelligence, since it's obviously a trivial identity. If you really did mean "It is not possible for a subcat to be both systematic and distinguished", then using the word "non-systematic" in your reply is just another example of bad writing: The text following your answer makes it harder to understand, not easier. —Codrdan (talk) 20:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, let me see if I understand what you mean by "distinguished" and "systematic". We don't really have a way for users to determine whether a given subcat is distinguished or systematic. New York toll bridges is distinguished because it's interesting, and Former voivodeships of Poland is called "non-distinguished" because it's "not interesting". Your answers to my question about whether a subcat can be both distinguished and systematic seem to suggest that "distinguished" and "non-systematic" are synonymous, which would imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are also synonymous. But "Former voivodeships of Poland" doesn't sound very systematic to me, even though you clearly placed it in the "non-distinguished" category by saying its articles should not be listed in the parent page. So again your writing has confused me.
Meanwhile, the duplicate-categorization rule says "the non-distinguished (systematic) subcategory Category:Bridges in France", which also seems to imply that "systematic" and "non-distinguished" are synonyms. Kotniski, don't you think you're insulting French people by calling their bridges "non-distinguished" if what you mean by that is "not interesting"? Some of the most breathtaking bridges in the world are in France. How is it appropriate for an encyclopedia to gratuitously play favorites by giving some articles duplicate categorization and hiding others based on the personal tastes of one or more editors, when the "interesting" articles are already listed in their "distinguished" subcategory? —Codrdan (talk) 20:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's say it like this - "distinguished" means interesting AND not systematic. Hence "non-distinguished" means not-interesting OR systematic. Is that clear? Now think of a better word than "distinguished".--Kotniski (talk) 08:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Relevant category?

If a person is x and y, but is only known and notable for y, should he be categorized under both or only under y? Maurreen (talk) 11:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it depends what x is - whether it's something that you'd expect people to be notable for. If x is "a writer", then I think it should only include people who are notable for being a writer. (I presume that's the sort of situation you mean.) But if it's "born in 1968", then it should include all articles on people born in 1968, since we don't expect people in that category to be notable for being born in 1968.--Kotniski (talk) 11:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, that's what I expected. Maurreen (talk) 12:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Error in "Duplicate categorization rule" section

How is Category:Bridges in France not a distinguished subcategory of Category:Bridges? —Codrdan (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It's just an ordinary subcategory, part of a scheme by which "Bridges" are broken down into smaller categories - in this case by country. We've decided before that the present wording isn't very clear, but we've never got round to improving it - perhaps we could come back to this now.--Kotniski (talk) 21:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

> It's just an ordinary subcategory, part of a scheme ... the present wording isn't very clear

The wording of the guideline is worse than unclear. It's unequivocally misleading:

Not all subcategories serve this systematic "breaking down" function; some are simply subsets which have some characteristic of interest ... These are called distinguished subcategories.

This text obviously states that some subcategories serve a breaking-down function and others are subsets, and that the subsets are called "distinguished". There's not one word here to differientiate between subsets that are part of a breakdown scheme and subsets that aren't. I apologize for not reading your response more carefully, but it never occurred to me that the guideline could be so neglected or poorly written that it doesn't even define the terminology as it's currently used. —Codrdan (talk) 04:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

If you read the description of Category:Bridges, it clearly says that "articles about individual bridges can be found by looking in the subcategories." So bridges that belong in the Category:Bridges in France don't show up in Category:Bridges. Where Category:Bridges in New York City is described as "all bridges in New York City are included in this category. This includes all bridges that can also be found in the subcategories." This means that all bridges in New York City that collect tolls are place in the subcategory Category:Toll bridges in New York City.
I will take a shot here at some new language.

If a page is contained logically in both a category and a subcategory of that category, it must be considered whether it should still be placed directly into the first (parent) category. The rule normally applied is as follows, based on the definition of distinguished category as given above:

If category B is a non-distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B (directly or through further subcategories) are not placed directly into category A. (See also Eponymous categories below.)
If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.

For example, Angers Bridge is not placed directly into Category:Bridges, because it belongs to the non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategory Category:Bridges in France. This is because articles about individual bridges are systematically broken down into distinct geographical categories. Each bridge is placed into a category based on its location (although bridges that cross borders between countries might be placed into two geographical categories). (If all of the articles about individual bridges were placed in Category:Bridges, that category would be too large to be useful.)

On the other hand, articles are not excluded from Category:Bridges in New York City on the grounds that they also belong to Category:Toll bridges in New York City, since the latter is a distinguished subcategory. This is because there is not a Category:Non-toll bridges in New York City and because the Category:Bridges in New York City is not so-large as to need to be broken into non-distinguished (systematic, or distinct) subcategories.

Information to determine if a category is distinguished or non-distinguished is found in the category description, which should be found on the category page as noted above.

Would that work to explain why there is no contradiction? - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 22:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi PennySpender. Parent categories can specify whether or not articles should be added to them, but they can't change the nature of the categorization system itself. Based on the definitions in Subcategorization, Bridges in France is obviously a distinguished subcategory of Bridges and not a systematic category. —Codrdan (talk) 17:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that discussion! That was exactly what i was wondering about :) -- Lexischemen (talk) 13:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I have a question about that: Can you somehow turn the category's articles with all their subcategories' articles to a list, so you see every article which belongs to the category? That would be useful if you don't want to look in subcategories because you are interested in the general thing... -- Lexischemen (talk) 13:16, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Lexischemen. There's a comment about that in the Redundancy and user friendliness section. Please feel free to add your own input. —Codrdan (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The draft again

For anyone left who cares about making this guideline readable, the draft at WP:Categorization/Draft still stands. I've modified it to meet the objections raised before (restored "it is recommended that" in the bit about categorizing articles using templates; changed "intermediate categories" to "metacategories", changed "notable-feature" subcats to "non-diffusing" subcats since that's precisely what's meant, and clarified that being in a non-diffusing subcat doesn't preclude being in a diffusing one (and thus being diffused) as well). Are there any more objections about the wording before this goes live? I mean faults that don't already exist with the present wording of the guideline (I'm not saying the draft is perfect, only that it's a clear improvement over the present mess).--Kotniski (talk) 09:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Whew! Can that be over now? I still think it looks good. I think I said this above ... somewhere—way, way, way up there somewhere, where it's no doubt been forgotten. So I say it again. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. This should be sent live, not because it is perfect, but because it is a big improvement, and sending it live is the best way to rub off the last of the rough edges. Hesperian 11:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

All right, I'm going to put the draft in place; then we can see what further improvements need to be made.--Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous comments

~~These are my current thoughts about the guideline.~~
These are some thoughts and suggestions for establishing better practices and describing them more clearly. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Redundancy and user friendliness

When a category has no subcategories, all of its articles are displayed together on the category's page, with no redundancy. This is convenient for users who want to read all of the articles in the category or have some other use for a complete listing of the category's member articles. When subcategories are introduced, listing only some of the parent's articles makes it much harder for users to find all of the parent's member articles: They may be distributed into many different subcategories, and individual articles may be listed redundantly by being added to multiple subcategories. Minimizing this inconvenience to readers should be the top priority of any duplicate-categorization rule. The parent should either list its member articles on an all-or-nothing basis, so readers know where and how to find a convenient listing, or clearly label the list of articles as incomplete. If the parent is small enough, all of its articles should be listed so the parent still has the convenience of a full article list. The guiding principal behind listing a parent category's member articles should be to make it as easy as possible for readers to find or construct a complete, redundancy-free list of all the articles. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a lot of editing, which was unnecessary if there was a wiki-software solution for that. Maybe bots could create these category-article-lists, but I think it would be the easiest solution to be able to click a link that says "show all articles of this category and its subcategories (together)". That would spare bytes, traffic, work, time, etc and be an easy general solution. Is that possible somehow? Also, duplicate-categorizations were unnecessary then and they would be automatically removed everytime a subcategory is added to an article. Doesn't that sound convenient? :) —Lexischemen (talk) 21:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

A software-based solution would be ideal, and no, it's not hard for a well-trained programmer. My main point is that the purpose of categories is to group related articles together, so article lists on category pages should reflect that as much as possible. —Codrdan (talk) 21:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Article lists and full sets of subcats

If the parent category is too big to list all of its member articles, it should have at least one complete set of subcats that subdivide the parent according to some criterion and collectively contain all of the parent's member articles. Each such set should be clearly identified by either displaying the set in its own labeled section of the parent page or moving it to a separate "by" page (e.g. Films by genre). The guideline documentation should make it clear that each member article is expected to be listed at least once in each of these sets. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This really only makes sense for set categories, not topic categories - and not always for set categories either (the voivodeships one is a counterexample, where it seems to make perfect sense to move the former ones into a subcategory but not create the needless "Present-day voivodeships" to complete the scheme).--Kotniski (talk) 18:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Access to a complete article listing is useful for all categories, and listing some articles in the parent effectively makes the parent's article list an implicit subcategory of the parent itself. I don't see anything wrong with explicitly giving the listed articles their own subcat. —Codrdan (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Terminology

The term "subset category" should be introduced to differentiate between subsets of the parent category, which currently have no name at all, and "by" pages, which contain groups of subsets that are defined by the same criterion, and which are currently called "intermediate categories".
The word "intermediate" in "intermediate categories" is vague. "Subdivision category" would more clearly indicate the page's purpose of subdividing the parent category. Technically, the word "category" is incorrect, since a subdivision is really just a list or set of subcategories, not a real subcategory of the parent. If people are worried that some untrained users might be confused by category boxes containing things that are not called "categories", one possible compromise term might be "metacategory", since a metacategory is a category of (sub)categories.
Sets of related subcats that are defined by the same criteria and contain all of the parent's member articles could be called something like "full", "complete", "exhaustive", "comprehensive", or "systematic". If "systematic" is currently intended to represent sets that are not necessarily complete but whose member subcats are mutually exclusive, then a more explicit term should be found and the definition should be written more clearly. If it simply indicates some kind of subdivision scheme without implying completeness or mutual exclusivity, then the definition should be written more clearly.
Subcats that are not in a complete set should be called something like "ad-hoc" or "standalone".

—Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Distinguished subcats are unencyclopedic

As I currently understand it, the term "distinguished subcategory" has almost no objective definition at all. Other than not being part of a systematic subdivision (either partial or complete) of the parent category, the defining characteristic of a distinguished subcategory seems to be that some unspecified group or individual considers its subject matter to be especially interesting, notable, important, or otherwise worthy of special treatment. The purpose of the current duplicate-categorization rule seems to be to grant some kind of special "VIP" status to selected subcategories by listing their articles in the parent category's page. Subjectively selecting categories for special treatment is inherently biased. For example, there are many fascinating bridges in France, so why does the current document call Bridges in France "non-distinguished"? Subjective classification of categories by perceived importance should be abandoned in favor of objective classification based on membership in a comprehensive set of subcats. This will make it easier for users to find all of the parent's member articles. The subjectively defined terms "distinguished subcategory" and "systematic subcategory" should be eliminated in favor of "ad-hoc category" and "complete set of subcategories", which are defined objectively. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

You still seem to be speaking as if you think that only complete systematic sets can cause pages not to be listed at the parent. This, as I've continuously been saying and demonstrating, is WRONG. If "ad-hoc" means "not part of a complete set" to you, then we still need a distinction between the two types of ad-hoc categories (those we now call distinguished, like the toll bridges - i.e. those that don't cause pages to be removed from the parent list - and the other kind, like the former voivodeships, that do cause removal from the parent list).--Kotniski (talk) 18:28, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

> we still need a distinction between the two types of ad-hoc categories

No we don't. That kind of subjective distinction (some things are important and others aren't) is exactly what I object to. It should be abandoned. —Codrdan (talk) 22:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Current practice?

What is the current practice in duplicate categorization? I don't see any documentation that clearly describes it. The two parts of the current duplicate-categorization rule conflict when an article is in two subcategories, one distinguished and the other non-distinguished. For example, Get Over It (film) is in both 2000s romantic comedy films (non-distinguished subcat of Romantic comedy films) and American romantic comedy films (distinguished subcat). Which part of the DCR applies to that case? The current draft that has been proposed says nothing definite at all about how to figure out whether or not articles in a distinguished category should be listed on the parent's page. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

If it's in any of the non-distinguished subcategories, then no, it shouldn't. This is made quite clear I think (though could be made clearer still if people are still confused.) Pages aren't taken out of the parent category just because they're in a distinguished subcat, but if they're in one or more non-distinguished subcats, then for that reason they're taken out.--Kotniski (talk) 18:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

> This is made quite clear

This sounds trollish to me. The two parts of the DCR are obviously in direct contradiction for the case I mentioned. —Codrdan (talk) 23:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

They're not, at least, not as I read it. I've just explained clearly what it says in clearer words to help you understand it and to enable us to find better wording that more clearly expresses it for people like you (and doubtless many others) who don't get it as it's currently written. And now you accuse me of being a troll?? This is really the limit; I've endured enough baseless insults talking to you, trying to make the same points over and over again in different words until you finally understand, but I'm not going to waste my time any longer. You need to understand that not every subcategory that isn't part of a complete systematic set has the property that pages listed in the subcategory are also listed in the parent. When you see that, we can have useful dialogue (provided you can also be polite and assume good faith). While you refuse to see that, the same error permeates nearly everything you say. That's all from me for now.--Kotniski (talk) 07:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

> > The two parts of the DCR are obviously in direct contradiction for the case I mentioned.

> They're not, at least, not as I read it.

Part 1 says articles in non-distinguished subcats are not listed in the parent, and Part 2 says articles in distinguished subcats are listed in the parent. Get Over It (film) is in both a non-distinguished subcat (2000s romantic comedy films) and a distinguished subcat (American romantic comedy films), where the parent is Romantic comedy films. So Part 1 says to not list it, and part 2 says to list it. How can that not be a contradiction? And even if American romantic comedy films isn't a distinguished subcat, as Wool Mintons seemed to suggest it was and which you didn't mention at all in your disagreement, how can Part 1 and Part 2 not be in contradiction for an article in both a distinguished subcat and a non-distinguished subcat when one says to list the article and the other says to not list it?

> And now you accuse me of being a troll??

No, I'm not accusing you of being a troll, Kotniski. What I'm saying is that your statements make no sense to me and it seems to me that trolling on your part is a plausible explanation. I'm still waiting for you to provide a better one, and I'll be polite with you as soon as I see it. —Codrdan (talk) 00:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I've kind of answered this before - the "if otherwise appropriate" bit in the old wording is what removed the contradiction. I think I've made this point entirely explicit in the new wording (see the new WP:DUPCAT) - again, if you can improve the wording (which is undoubtedly possible), then please have a go. But we mustn't change the wording to describe some new practice which you would like to see happen but which hasn't yet been discussed and accepted. (You can always propose new practices on this talk page, of course.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Kotniski, thank you for answering me.
> "if otherwise appropriate" ... removed the contradiction
I see. Interesting choice of words :)
> improve the wording
We need to agree on what the current accepted practice of duplicate categorization is before we can discuss documentation. Here's a starting point for the rest:

In addition to metacategories, a category may contain subcategories that are not part of a metacategory. Subcategories that are not in a metacategory and are considered to be particularly interesting are called distinguished subcategories. These include Best Actor Academy Award winners as a subcategory of Film actors, Toll bridges in New York City as a subcategory of Bridges in New York City, and Musical films as a subcategory of Musicals.

This should be followed by clear instructions on how to figure out whether or not a subcategory is distinguished. Any language about "sometimes" and "no need" is a waste of the reader's time. The instructions about duplicate categorization should be written in terms of individual articles instead of subcategories. The rule about metacategory membership taking precedence should be included, but it shouldn't say "Of course", because it's not obvious.
> we mustn't change the wording to describe some new practice
No, of course not.
> You can always propose new practices
Everything in this section (Miscellaneous comments) except this subsection ("Current practice?") is a proposal. I may mention the current system in my draft, but its main focus will be on describing what I believe the rules should be.
—Codrdan (talk) 12:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Documentation

There's a rough draft of a possible guideline at User:Codrdan/Categories. It's still a work in progress. Comments are welcome either here or on the article's talk page. In some sections, such as the names for subcat sets, multiple options are temporarily listed together. —Codrdan (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Subcat "properties"

> You need to understand that not every subcategory that isn't part of a complete systematic set has the property that pages listed in the subcategory are also listed in the parent.
Kotniski, what do you mean when you say that listing a subcategory's articles in the parent is a "property"? Are you trying to dictate your own guidelines to other wikipedians and force us to obey you? Are you trying to prevent an open discussion of where articles should be listed? How is listing articles a "property" that can't be changed by changing the guideline? —Codrdan (talk) 08:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

No. I'm not going to rise to the bait any more.--Kotniski (talk) 08:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not bait, Kotniski. Having articles mentioned in the parent category may be a privilege that editors grant to a subcategory, but it's not an intrinsic property of the subcategory itself. When you disagreed with my opinion in the previous section about listing articles in the parent, you used the word "can" instead of "should", and called my opinion "WRONG", as though we were discussing some kind of mathematical truth or fact of nature. There's no such thing as a suggestion for doing things differently being "wrong". It's only a statement of opinion. All I'm saying is that I believe my proposal would be more helpful to readers than having partial listings that are based on some kind of subjective "distinguished" status. —Codrdan (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

From my perspective, which is admittedly kind of not even understanding what all the fuss is about, I think the discussion between you two has gone as far as it can go. Kotniski has pretty clearly expressed a desire for it to not continue, so I think you should respect that, Codrdan, and stop directing comments towards him and referring to things he said before. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

> Kotniski has pretty clearly expressed a desire for it to not continue

It's easy for Kotniski to stop the discussion, because you and Hesperian are siding with him and ignoring me. He seems to be dominating the draft process, even though I've offered other suggestions and clearly indicated that I find his writing to be incomprehensible and his ideas to be misguided.

> From my perspective, which is admittedly kind of not even understanding what all the fuss is about, I think the discussion between you two has gone as far as it can go.

I've explained in nauseating detail what the fuss is. If you can't be bothered to address my concerns intelligently, then I'll leave you alone. Have a nice day. —Codrdan (talk) 07:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with the nauseating part. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

Maybe the category header templates can be improved and this guideline can state that all category descriptions should have a header template. (See the category header templates listed on {{CatDiffuse}}.)
Currently I interpret {{Allincluded}} and {{Distinguished subcategory}} as headers for categories that would follow the duplicate categorization rule. I see {{Container category}} as a header for an intermediate category (and {{CatDiffuse}} as a maintenance header for that).
If we come up with appropriate names and templates, then concensus is built as categories and editors begin to use the templates. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 15:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Purpose of this page: focused or all-inclusive?

Re this edit, which seems to be moving again towards making this page contain everything about categories, rather than keeping it focused on guidance as to correct practice (with the information about the mechanics taken to Help:Category). What do people think - do we want a one-stop-shop page, or do we want to keep the two separate pages with their different purposes? (If the latter, then I disagree with the above edit, as that information clearly belongs on the Help page.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

> do we want a one-stop-shop page

YES!!! The help page should be a tutorial for beginners. This page should be a comprehensive reference manual. The problem with the old version isn't that it described everything, it's that it described everything three or four times :) —Codrdan (talk) 12:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, we have the FAQ as a kind of beginners' page; the Help page gives more complete and advanced information. I'm concerned that if we combine this page with that one (as I wanted to do at one time), we'll end up with a page which is simply too long. Also this kind of division between guidelines on one hand and help space on the other is quite standard for Wikipedia.--Kotniski (talk) 12:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the help page should explain what categories are and how they can be used. This page should provide guidance on how they are used on Wikipedia. It may be necessary to provide some background information on how they work, but that diff is way overkill. Hesperian 13:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit undone. —Codrdan (talk) 14:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree, keeping somewhat separate seems to be best idea to keep the pages readable. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 00:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Recursive scans and mis-categorisation

With the recent kerfuffle about BLPs, I've been using the List Comparer in WP:AWB a lot to compile lists of pages to check for being unreferenced. The Category (recursive) scan is the most useful, but it also throws up a lot of false positived. I have no real interest in reading all of the discussions above, so I don't know if it's related, but should a "parent cat" be correct through all of it's subtrees? The one I'm on today is Category:Australian people. Because of eponymous cats like Category:J. M. Coetzee being in Category:Australian writers or Category:J. G. Thirlwell being in Category:Australian electronic musicians, all of the articles in their subcats, ie their books, albums etc show up in the recursive scan of Category:Australian people. Should I remove the "person" related cat from the eponymous cat, and if so what do they go into? Or is my recursive catscan not an intended use of the category structure and should I just live with the false positives? It's bad enough with the overseas people turning up from university alumni cats or sportsmen from overseas who represent a local team being caught into the Aust people cat, but books and albums are pushing the rules a bit I think!The-Pope (talk) 07:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

They should really be parented into Category:Categories named after people which avoids the problems you are talking about. Generally categories included in the Category:Categories named for structure only have Category:Categories named for parents. If you do this, make sure that any categories that are person related are also in the main article. If not, they need to be added there. Vegaswikian (talk) 08:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Meta-meta-categories

There's a meta-meta-category called Category:Works by type and year. Each subcategory is a metacategory that subdivides some category of creative medium by year. Is this a current accepted practice? I don't see any support for it in the guideline. —Codrdan (talk) 03:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Same question applies to Category:Films by subgenre. It's really just a meta-meta-category in disguise. —Codrdan (talk) 04:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. The guideline doesn't describe every possible configuration (though a note could be added about this if you think it's important).--Kotniski (talk) 07:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Sort keys, capitalization and diacritics

It is recommended (required?) that sort keys use no diacritics at all to allow for useful ordering. Isn't this rather an unintended (read: bug) behavior in the software that is now imposed on the editors? I mean, changing the collation algorithm for Latin text to ignore diacritics and capitalization sounds easier than requiring all sort keys to be diacritic-free and correctly capitalized. So in general: Shouldn't this be solved in the software itself instead of trying to impose conventions on editors? —Johannes Rössel (talk) 15:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. This is one of the major bugs in the software (together with the connected bug that we can't get a proper alphabetical listing of the encyclopedia's article titles, like every paper reference work has). But unfortunately it's not glamorous enough to get the developers' attention, so nothing gets done, and we have to keep using these workarounds. (It's even worse on foreign-language Wikipedias where the native alphabetical ordering doesn't follow the ASCII ordering - there there isn't even a workaround to get pages listed under the right initial letter.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Cycles

I found a cycle in the Category:Universe subcategories tree: Category:Universe --> Category:Cosmology --> Category:Physical cosmology --> Category:Universe. I read somewhere that cycles should usually be avoided, but cannot find this advice in the guideline. What is the best course of action? --M4gnum0n (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I call these nested categories, and it's a big problem in articles were people places multiple categories that are related (i.e., one being a sub of another). Articles should be placed in the lowest level category possible. I usually remove the higher level category. Multiple subcategories within a category are fine if the fork is appropriately related to the article. People sometimes search for articles or subject in different ways. I should have stated that this does not mean that Wikipedia:Overcategorization should not be considered. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^PRAISE 16:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Universe seems like more of a list category to me, so I would delete Cosmology as a subcategory of Universe, following Categorizing pages:

Although it is clear that a list category page might be subcategorized under that subject, it would incorrect to do it vice versa (to subcategorize a topic category under a list category).

—Codrdan (talk) 19:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Done, thanks.--M4gnum0n (talk) 16:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Concerns

I'm a little concerned about how categories such as Jewish Americans by occupation and Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States are used.

They came to my attention because of edits to an article about a former cabinet member whom I knew (his family and mine were friends for many years). He was of Jewish descent, his wife was of Scottish descent, and they and their sons were all Unitarians (as were we).

I don't know what's going on with the categories, but I have to ask: are they being populated on the basis that some names just "look Jewish" or what? – Athaenara ✉ 20:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this sort of thing has been a perennial problem. Users often justify the existence of potentially problematic categories like this by saying inclusion can and should be based on reliable and neutral sources, but when it comes right down to it there are a lot of categories that are applied fairly willy-nilly, since any user can add them. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't it help if Wikipedia required that only when significant and reliable sources substantiate that any biographical subjects are or were practicing Jews can they be included in such categories? – Athaenara ✉ 00:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It would. I know at WP:BLPCAT there is a policy regarding religion categories for living people—that religion categories should only be applied to a biography of a living person if: (1) The subject publicly self-identifies with the belief; and (2) The subject's beliefs are relevant to the subject's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources. I've found that problems arise, though, because some users claim to be applying "Jews" categories as an ethnic background as opposed to a religion, they claim that whether the person observes the religion or not is irrelevant. If the person isn't living, I'm not aware of any policies that limit the way these categories are applied. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

The {{category relevant?}} and {{category unsourced}} templates discussed at some length in User:Codrdan/Categories (linked above in the Miscellaneous comments / Documentation section) may help as well. – Athaenara ✉ 01:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

See upmerger nomination of Category:Jewish members of the Cabinet of the United States at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 8#Category:Jewish_members_of_the_Cabinet_of_the_United_States. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Categorising human settlements

A series of discussions at CFD over the last few days have revealed a number of problems in the naming conventions of the top-level categories for inhabited human settlements.

The issues are too wide-ranging to be resolved in the format of a CFD discussion, so I have opened a centralised discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Categorising human settlements to try to find a consensus on how to proceed.

Your contributions will be welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Eponymous categories for countries

(discussion moved from User talk:Alan Liefting)

Hi, what's with removing all the African countries from the category of African countries? According to WP:EPON, they ought to be there.--Kotniski (talk) 09:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Removing the articles for the pages of African countries from Category:African countries is not subject to the guideline at WP:EPON. When considering the category form a navigation point of view for readers it makes no sense to have a sub-category and article in Category:African countries. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:08, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, it makes no sense to take away the most relevant category from these pages. If you're a reader at, say, Togo, you're very likely to want to go to the category of all African countries (probably more than any other category), and we shouldn't make people guess that they have to go through the epoymous category to get there. This is exactly the situatino the guideline is talking about; we had an RFC on it last year and this was the consensus. Please don't do any more of these removals until it's clear that consensus has changed (e.g. through another RFC).--Kotniski (talk) 09:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The categories I removed, and the navigation function that you are referring to, is best handled by a template - in this case {{Countries of Africa}}. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:18, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That's probably true, but once people are used to looking for categories for this sort of thing, we shouldn't take that option away from them and, again, expect them to guess that they're supposed to look for a navbox.--Kotniski (talk) 09:21, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Readers can still get to Category:African countries if they click on the category name for the country and then the link to Category:African countries. Alternatively they can do a search for "African countries" which will take tham to List of African countries and territories via a redirect. It makes no sense to have an article and a sub-category of the same name in a category. The sub-cats are the first to be viewed followed by the pages in the category. Because of this order the subcats are more "powerful" and the pages are "subservient". Therefore, for navigation (especially to avoid cluttering up the cats and remembering there is only 200 links per cat) it is best to avoid the repetition of the subcat names as article in the category. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:31, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

{{Countries of Africa}} is part of the footer templates. A reader will use templates and categories for navigation. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

We have no idea where a reader wants to go after reading an article and to say a reader wants to go to the article about a different African country is pure conjecture. It may be the case on occasion that a reader wants to go from an article on one African country to another but that is but one of many directions a reader may choose to take. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:42, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, so why take that option away (or at least, make it more difficult) just because of the totally irrelevant circumstance that the eponymous category happens to have been made a subcategory of this category? (It's quite illogical for it to be a subcategory - if we wanted to avoid the double-level categorization, we should move the eponymous categories out of the African countries category, where they have no logical business being, into something like "Category:African country categories".)--Kotniski (talk) 09:58, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I must say that I side with Alan on this one. Kotniski, could you please detail why is "illogical for [Cat:Country X] to be a subcategory" of "Cat:Countries of Africa"? To me it seems perfectly logical, but I'm willing to reconsider my position :) --Waldir ^talk 08:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, "Cat:Countries of Africa" should contain articles whose subjects are countries of Africa, and "Cat:Country X" should contain articles whose subjects are connected with Country X. The second is not in any way a subset of the first. (Example: Cairo belongs under Category:Egypt, but not under Category:African countries, since Cairo is not a country.) I can tolerate this illogicality in itself, but the harm shouldn't then be compounded by using it as a reason to take articles out of categories to which they most definitely belong.--Kotniski (talk) 08:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand how this bothers you so much. It is assumed that only a category's direct children are explicitly members of the class it represents. The nesting property exists for purposes of navigation, not classification. In fact, not even the direct children of a category should be *instances* of the class the category represents, but merely topics related to it. For example: Most of the entries Category:Automobiles has as children (both articles and categories) are not automobiles; they're related topics.

That's because the automobiles category is treated as a topic category, rather than a set category (see WP:CAT for definitions). generally speaking though, categories with plural names are set categories. And the nesting property most certainly does exist for classification (see the way most set categories are broken down systematically into subcategories) - overloading it with a navigational function is generally frowned on (though I'm prepared to tolerate it as long as it doesn't result in navigation actually being made worse, as it is if you start taking articles out of their natural categories).--Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

As for harm in taking articles out of categories, I don't see why that's so harmful: from the article side, you still have the navboxes to access the other countries (in fact, that's even more convenient, 'cause you can see the remaining countries directly from the page you are, without having to navigate to the category page first; and from the category side, you still have Cat:Egypt under Cat:Countries of Africa, and there you'll find the article on Egypt. I would only see harm if no nav template is left to fit the navigational role the category was performing. --Waldir ^talk 10:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

You can't always see the navboxes, sometimes there aren't navboxes, people looking for categories shouldn't be expected to guess that on a particular occasion they have to look for a navbox instead. From the category page, why force people to make an extra click? I don't see the benefit of removing these articles from the category - except if, as Alan says - though not the case here - the combined list goes over 200 items, but then it's more logical and helpful to take the eponymous categories away (people can still find them with one extra click if they're desired, and people are less likely to be looking for them under a category of countries than for the country articles themselves), rather than take the articles away.--Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

You have good points there. I can't say I'm convinced, but I won't insist further on the issue, either. Besides, we can't reenact the RFC here. I guess the real issue here is that the category system has a fundamental flaw in this respect, but I can't point to the correct solution (to be honest, I haven't actually stopped to think of one). Anyway, I'll leave it to you and Alan. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my queries and present your views. --Waldir ^talk 13:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Theoretically speaking, the "correct" answer would be to do something like creating a Topic namespace. Category:African countries and categories for individual countries would be subcategories of Topic:African countries, and the individual country cats would be in the Topic namespace, e.g. Topic:Uganda. The Uganda article would be a member of both Topic:Uganda and Category:African countries, and likewise for other country articles. Even if that's not feasible with the current software, any solution has to separate subjects that are members of a category from other subjects that are related to those subjects.

PS: A quick-n-dirty hack would be to create categories with "(topic)" at the end of the name, e.g. Category:African countries (topic).

—Codrdan (talk) 12:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Codrdan, that sounds interesting, but I wonder if one wouldn't be able to find counterexamples... --Waldir ^talk 16:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, I don't know. A topic is basically just a category of things related to whatever the topic is named after, and everything is related to itself, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. The only dark thought I've had about the subject is that a lot of the category tree might wind up being duplicated by a new topic tree. :) —Codrdan (talk) 17:21, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello. What I noticed about the removal of this category from African countries is that it resulted in an inconsistency: France is still part of the category Countries of Europe and Suriname is still part of the category South American countries. However one continent is treated, the others should be treated the same. Munci (talk) 14:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC was the previous discussion of this matter (the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are set out there).--Kotniski (talk) 08:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

This disagreement seems--on both sides--to stem from some kind of ideological vision of what the category system should be rather than an pragmatic observation of what it most functionally is. It makes perfect sense to have an article and its eponymous subcategory in the same categories because they are the same topic, and thus should be categorized in the same way, so as to connect the same relationships and allow for the same navigation. It's not a relevant answer that a template can do the same job or do it better when no valid reason has been given as to why it shouldn't also be done by a category. A reader of an article should be able to immediately see what categories that topic is connected to, not just that it has its own group of subtopics in an eponymous category.

It also makes perfect sense for single-topic categories to be placed in categories of which they are members, such as Category:Egypt being in Category:African countries, because Egypt is an African country. No one would expect Category:Egypt then in turn to contain more African countries even if someone had never heard of Egypt, because nothing about its name suggests that. And even to the extent it is useful to think of different kinds of categories as either topic categories or group/series categories, this is not an absolute or concrete distinction, and nothing inherent to the category system requires us to treat this as such. There is no practical reason that they should not intersect where relevant and useful, and no reason to think that this would be confusing to anyone. All categories reflect topics; that some topics are primarily defined as a group of subtopics is no reason to segregate them from those that aren't and thus fragment the category structure (or place obtuse and unnecessary qualifiers on them, such as "topic"). That some editors somehow find this conceptually impure is really not a legitimate concern. postdlf (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

> ideological vision of what the category system should be

The category system is a system of categories. There's no need to philosophise about it.

> an article and its eponymous subcategory ... are the same topic

No they're not. An article is about a specific subject. Its eponymous category is about anything related to that subject, and those other subjects are not usually the same kind of thing as the subject itself. For instance, people from a given country are people, not countries.

> A reader of an article should be able to immediately see what categories that topic is connected to

That's a good argument for including horizontal links, which can be done with navboxes. It's a great idea.

> It also makes perfect sense for ... Category:Egypt being in Category:African countries, because Egypt is an African country.

No, No, No. Other than the Egypt article, none of the articles in Category:Egypt is about an African country. They're about other things that are related to Egypt, but none of those things are themselves countries. Regular categories with plural names are supposed to be sets of things of the same kind, not topics containing all subjects related to those things.

> topic categories or group/series categories, this is not an absolute or concrete distinction

Sure it is. A category is a set of things, and a topic includes anything related to those things. Categories and topics are obviously different things.

> All categories reflect topics

Sorry, but that's just not what a category is. A category is a set, not a topic. Topic categories are really a crude hack in the category system. Each topic category should have "Things pertaining to" prepended to its name to make it a real category.

> That some editors somehow find this conceptually impure is really not a legitimate concern.

Nice try :)

—Codrdan (talk) 19:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A "specific subject" like Egypt is about the history of Egypt, the culture of Egypt, the geography of Egypt.... If it couldn't be divided into substantive subtopics, then it wouldn't merit its own eponymous category.

"Each topic category should have 'Things pertaining to' prepended to its name to make it a real category." This is what I'm talking about. You act as if the kids are running the streets in confusion, thinking that category:Egyptian people contains countries of Africa (or upset that it does not!), because its parent Category:Egypt is in Category:African countries. And adding the words "things pertaining to" would get the kids down off the ledge? I've never seen a sign of any such confusion, only a completely abstract complaint raised by a few that it is conceptually unsound to nest subtopics of a member of a series within that series. Just words. Apart from being in no way dictated by the way categories work (or by the word "category"), it is completely at odds with the whole point of categories, to aid navigation and editing through the grouping of related articles. By your logic, Category:Egypt should not contain anything but Egypt; Category:Egyptian people are not Egypt, and so should not be included therein. These are all just words, completely divorced from any practical considerations so far as I have seen demonstrated. postdlf (talk) 20:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

> By your logic, Category:Egypt should not contain anything but Egypt

Good, at least you understand what I said. There seems to be a tacit understanding on Wikipedia, whether people know it or not, that categories with singular names are really topics, so the only thing I have to say about singular categories is that their names aren't quite correct. Obviously it would be stupid to have categories with only one article, so my acceptance of singular-name categories has nothing to do with theoretical logic. The problem we're having now is that you're trying to extend the informal topic-as-category model to plural-name categories, which really are categories.

Anyway, it's obvious that our disagreement is about the meaning of the word "category", so there's no point in trying to convince each other with logical arguments. The fact of the matter is that you're wrong as far as the definition is concerned, which you can discover by looking the word up in a dictionary, and we should also have some way of distinguishing between topics and real categories. BUT, I think you make a perfectly reasonable point that most people probably think in terms of topics rather than categories, so it might be good to somehow emphasize topics more. The only thing I don't like is your approach of trying to force topic pegs into category holes. It's a misuse of the terminology, so I would prefer an approach that explicitly uses the word "topic" to refer to topics.

—Codrdan (talk) 21:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Opinion. Keep the articles in the categories of the same name. That makes the most sense from a practical standpoint, i.e. if we are considering what users would expect to find in a category. We can theorize about why this is wrong until the cows come home, but I think it's kind of a pointless exercise. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Comment. I agree with Good Olfactory: there's too much theology here, which unnecessarily complicates a fairly simple issue. Categories are a navigational tool, which group articles and categories related to a particular topic. The principle set out in WP:EPON is perhaps not perfectly worded, but it is still quite simple: don't take an article out a category it would otherwise be in just because it has an eponymous category. Categorise the article as if the eponymous categ did not exist, and add it to the eponymous category too. That's all.
Doing things this way means that a reader looking at Category:African countries has direct access to an article on each of countries without having to open up a sub-category. A navbox template is great, but it's a useful alternative, not a replacement for the category. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Personally I think a category like Category:African countries should only contain the country articles and not their eponymous categories. The subcategories should only be those that group other characteristic like Category:Geography of Africa. That way there is a list of counties to navigate by and subcategories for any charismatic that have been determined by editors to be needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Coming in late. Can't be bothered reading all of the above, though I've read much of it. This problem has been around for years. I think people let it go because they think it is too hard to solve, but actually it is pretty easy to solve. Egypt is an African country. Not everything in Category:Egypt is an African country. But everything in Category:Egypt is an African topic, sorted by country. This analysis yields the following category structure:

      Egypt      —>     Category:African countries
        |                          |
        v                          v
 Category:Egypt —> Category:African topics by country

Simple, accurate, correct. Hesperian 23:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

If I'm reading that correctly, yes! What are the parents for Category:African topics by country? Vegaswikian (talk) 02:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

For now, Category:Africa. Once other countries and continents get treated the same way, then also Category:Topics by country. Hesperian 03:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

That's good. Maybe, for use in future discussions like this one, we could expand the text in the guideline about plural and singular names? So we don't have to rehash the subject every time? —Codrdan (talk) 07:15, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Applicability of restrictions imposed on categories for their grandchildren.

Hi, at the moment Ghost is a child of Ghosts which in turn is a child of Paranormal which is a child of Pseudoscience. This has been used as a rationale to add the Pseudoscience category directly to Ghost, even though the literature, via demarcation problem, seems to indicate that this is unsupported by serious sources. While it is clear that Ghost hunting is based in pseudoscience, it is not clear that Ghost is not better seen as Folklore or similar. Any thoughts on this? Unomi (talk) 04:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Two answers. One, if we view categories as absolute sets, then subcategories always inheriting the characteristics of their parent categories, no matter how many generations up, because a subcategory is nothing but a subset of the parent category. This would mean that ghost is already "in" Category:Pseudoscience, in which case Category:Pseudoscience should not be placed on ghost because it would then be redundant, like putting France in Category:Countries and Category:European countries. Two, if we instead view subcategories more loosely, as a matter of topical relationships and hierarchies rather than as absolute sets, then there isn't necessarily a strict inheritance. This latter view seems more relevant here, both because it isn't possible to definitively state the whole universe of paranormal or pseudoscience topics, and because the topics overlap, but the paranormal is not exclusively a pseudoscience topic. Which would just leave you with a discussion on Talk:Ghost as to whether Category:Pseudoscience is an appropriate category based purely on the appropriateness of the label for ghost rather than on any inevitability of the category structure. postdlf (talk) 04:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you really just asking about Ghost, or are you questioning whether or not Paranormal belongs under Pseudoscience? —Codrdan (talk) 07:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I really am asking about Ghost, there is no question in my mind that many articles in Paranormal are rightly called pseudoscience, but there are a number which strike me as falling outside the definition such as Ghost and indeed many of the articles in the Category:Ghosts consider : Shade_(mythology), Cuco, Mogwai_(Chinese_culture), Sprite_(creature), Stambovsky_v._Ackley, Ikiryō and many many more. You bring up a good point though, it does seem as though paranormal perhaps does not belong under pseudoscience, but that the pseudoscience label should be applied individually or to categories which are more definitively pseudoscience. Unomi (talk) 08:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record, what Postdlf said about topics not inheriting from their parents is incorrect. Topics are defined more broadly than categories, but they inherit just as strictly. Anyway, Paranormal is already a child of Folklore, and the boxes at the top of the Paranormal, Pseudoscience, and Folklore pages all say "Articles in this category should be moved to subcategories" and "This category ... should list very few, if any, article pages directly", so the Pseudoscience category declaration should be deleted and Folklore should not be added. The Ghosts declaration indicates that Ghost is already a member of all three parent categories: Paranormal, Pseudoscience, and Folklore. The only real question is about the relationship between pseudoscience and the paranormal. —Codrdan (talk) 09:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

So what would the solution be? Move the truly pseudoscientific subjects from paranormal to a new category and remove pseudoscience as a parent of paranormal? Unomi (talk) 12:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

You mean something like "paranormal pseudoscience"? Maybe so. I started a new section for those categories. —Codrdan (talk) 13:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

That's not unanimously the practice, based on how people categorize and on how people describe category relationships (even at CFD). Whether it should be is another question than whether it is. But how strictly people view it I think depends on the particular category tree we're talking about. postdlf (talk) 13:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

There's a lot of sloppiness in the category system, so I won't argue with you about current practices. I just don't want people to think it has to be that way. —Codrdan (talk) 13:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

We don't need a solution because there is no problem other than the general one that it's not clear what the category system is for. Even being in the pseudoscience category itself doesn't imply that something is pseudoscience, it could just be related. For something that is only in a subcategory, the presumption that it is a pseudoscience itself is even weaker. In the case of Ghost that's exactly what we need: Ghosts are somehow related to pseudoscience, but not strongly. Hans Adler 11:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

List of existing categories

Where can i find list of existing categories to put my article in ?--ThorX (talk) 18:20, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Look inside Category:Articles. There's an alphabetical list in Special:Categories. —Codrdan (talk) 19:33, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

And, if you excuse my blindness, at the bottom of the categorized page. I will put the link you gave on my home page, just in case, thank you.--ThorX (talk) 20:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

how to link to category in article text middle without adding to category?

How do I link to a category in the article's middle and without adding the article to the category?

I can put the category page title into the article's middle but if I link it then it doesn't show at all in the article's middle but instead becomes a category that includes the article, which is erroneous.

The article I tried this in is Charter_school_(New_York) and you can compare the first version, a failure, and the second, a kludge. Scroll to the Schools List section and compare the second paragraph of the section of each version.

If there's a good method, I'd like to add it to the Categorization page.

Thanks.

Nick Levinson (talk) 02:24, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Put a colon in front of it, as in [[:Category:Charter schools in New York|category page for New York charter schools]]. Hesperian 02:28, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Did the edit to the article and found your method was already in WP help. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Categorization of article content

Omakaitse - the dispute over categorization of article content. An opinion of an uninvolved editor requested. Opinion of Baltic editors is already known and disputed, hence is not requested.

The issue is that part of article content, directly and immediately related to the article subject, falls into categories "Holocaust" and "Nazi collaborators", which Estonian editors try to remove from everything related to WWII history of Estonia. Please comment. Timurite (talk) 02:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

How to generate list with all subcategories ?

How can I generate automatically a list with all the articles and subcategories of a certain category? For example I need a list with all articles in the subcategories of Category:Companies of Romania by industry, is there any tool for that? Thanks -- Ark25 (talk) 21:37, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry about "by industry", you just want to know all the members of either Category:Companies of Romania or each of the individual Romanian industries. Unfortunately, generating complete member lists doesn't seem to be a high priority around here. —Codrdan (talk) 23:41, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Darn. Shouldn't be that hard to implement such thing in AWB for example. -- Ark25 (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Trial_of_.22core.22_concept

This guideline has been identified as a possible candidate to contain a core . Can you please have a look here. Gnevin (talk) 14:51, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Is the paranormal pseudoscience?

User:Unomi raised a question in #Applicability of restrictions imposed on categories for their grandchildren. about whether the paranormal is defined in terms of fake claims of scientific basis (Category:Pseudoscience), or whether the ideas involved can be intrinsically supernatural. If there's not always a claim of some scientific basis, then category:Paranormal shouldn't be a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscience, and if there is, shouldn't the Category:Folklore declaration be deleted, since Folklore is an ancestor of Pseudoscience and Folklore is marked {{catdiffuse}}? I know the template only mentions articles, so maybe there should also be some disambiguation about whether or not it's also intended to apply to descendant categories. —Codrdan (talk) 13:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

This question was prompted by a discussion on Talk:Ghost#Is_this_a_pseudoscience_topic.3F. A number of arguments have been presented and at the moment the consensus seems to be that Ghost is either not pseudoscience or that only a part of the topic can be considered pseudoscience. Unomi (talk) 06:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The paranormal part of the subject is considered pseudoscience. The National Science Foundation (NSF), in their 2006 report, equated "paranormal" with "pseudoscience" in an interesting manner. They quoted from a Gallup Poll that only used the term "paranormal", and then labelled all the beliefs in that poll "pseudoscientific beliefs". Very interesting and obviously conscious use of words by the supreme scientific body in the USA. Source. This is an authoritative use of the words that should not be ignored, in spite of the fact that Ludwigs2 has stated "that the NSF screwed it up once." No, the NSF didn't screw anything up. They are an authoritative source on such a subject, and two RfCs have stated this to be true. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

With respect, If they somehow believe that destroying the nuance of language and thought is the way to improve appreciation of the sciences then something is very very wrong. Again, please read demarcation problem. I agree that the NSF is an RS on their statement but that does not necessarily mean that our categorization religiously follows it, especially in the light of an abundance of quality sources pointing to their use being simplistic or eccentric. Unomi (talk) 09:31, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

They screwed up on this one, either they were wrong or made misleading shortcuts; and there are plenty of reliable sources which contradict them. That source is simply not valid for this and shouldn't be used to push a pseudoscientific viewpoint of our folklore/tradition. In any case, they considered the subject in a pseudoscientific context, while we as an encyclopaedia should consider it in a historical and global context. Cenarium (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The paranormal is closely related to, and contains much that is, pseudoscience. The categorisation is not a definition and is clearly appropriate. Verbal chat 08:13, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Verbal, it is true that categorization is not a definition, indeed it is a navigational aid, this doesn't help support the value of the NSF paper in our decision making process.

In the section above and in the discussion on Ghost it has been ventured that a new category fx Category:Paranormal pseudoscience should be created for articles which are uncontroversially pseudoscience, this would avoid confusion going forwards. Unomi (talk) 09:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The question is, does "science" automatically entail an adherence to a monist materialist ontology, as the NSF statement seems to imply (that is, we believe that there is no physical explanation for something, therefore believing in that thing is in some way not scientific). Is science a method or a belief system? Mitsube (talk) 08:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

That's close to where they're wrong or misleading, believing in extra-scientific concepts doesn't imply believing in their pseudoscientific explanation, in any case it was irrelevant centuries ago and we should adopt a historical, as well as global, neutral point of view as an encyclopaedia, and it's evident NSF was only concerned with the pseudoscientific modern aspect of those subjects, so is not valid source in any case. Cenarium (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you're right to some degree. In the pre-scientific era, critical thinking hardly existed and wasn't expected in the general population, so belief was just belief. There were no recognized errors in judgment involved. It was purely simplistic thinking. The NSF statement is written in a modern context and is labelling modern beliefs in such things (listed in a modern Gallup Poll of paranormal beliefs) as "pseudoscientific beliefs". While this isn't directly applicable to this discussion of categorization, it does affect how this information and the NSF source can be used and dealt with in the Ghost article. As with all meta articles, it should cover the whole subject, and only if one portion is so large it overwhelms the article and causes undue weight problems, should that information be split off into a fork article. Until that happens (it's a small article at present), the article should cover the historical and social aspects, and note that in modern times the scientific community (which hardly existed previously) considers such beliefs (in modern times) as psi beliefs. That puts things in context, because people are living under a different paradigm in this age of enlightenment, and they are expected to benefit from and use critical thinking, and thinking that is informed by the advances in scientific knowledge and the widespread use of the scientific method by ordinary people, even if they don't realize it. Thus the article can deal with the subject as a non-pseudoscientific historical subject, and as a modern pseudoscientific subject. Times change, expectations change, and the article should discuss that fact. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:40, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of Category:Paranormal pseudoscience. It would be a trivial category intersection. Category:Paranormal must remain in Category:Pseudoscience anyway, because in general paranormal is dominated by pseudoscience. Hans Adler 11:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Hans. That was very well put. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

If it would be the case that "in general paranormal is dominated by pseudoscience", then that wouldn't be enough for Category:Paranormal to remain in Category:Pseudoscience because you've just got an overlap; you've not got one fitting entirely inside the other. Putting those categories one inside the other would be like putting Category:Birds inside a hypothetical category Category:Animals with flight:sure, there's significant overlap but that ignores the existence of flightless birds. And that's jsut assuming the truth of your statement. Munci (talk) 02:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

To solve that problem, we coud just make them parallel members of Category:Fringe theory. Category:Pseudoscience is already a member. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Paranormal is not pseudoscience. A paranormal concept like Ghost or UFO is not pseudo-science. It is a concept or a belief. An attempt to prove or disprove a paranormal effect through scientific methods is science. An attempt to prove existence of a paranormal effect through unscientific methods is pseudo-science, as is an attempt to prove anything through unscientific methods. Articles on the unscientific experiments belong in the pseudo-science category, but not the subject of the experiment. Suppose there was a group who claimed to have experimental proof that eating rhubarb prevents AIDS. An article on the experiments and the skeptical reaction to them might well belong in the "pseudoscience" category. Rhubarb does not. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Ghosts and UFOs are not pseudoscience because they are not normally treated as worthy of "scientific" study. But they are examples of paranormal, and sufficiently so that they fall into that category. Now it happens that if you look at ghosts and UFOs as paranormal topics, that then they are pseudoscience because when you think of them in that context you are thinking more of ghost hunters and alien abduction than of Hamlet and Star Trek. Hans Adler 15:11, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not quite sure what your concern is, the problem at the moment is that there is no way to explicitly exclude an article from a grandparent category, so we need neater demarcations. It simply doesn't make sense to have Mogwai_(Chinese_culture) considered pseudoscience. It wouldn't matter that much except that there are certain ramifications to editors and article content of being in the pseudoscience branch. We can move the truly pseudoscientific articles into a better category in an orderly fashion, use the article summary inclusion trick to retain control of where they intersect non-pseudoscience articles. I agree that many articles in the paranormal category are strongly related to pseudoscience, but I doubt it is most. Witness the majority of articles within Category:Ghosts, Category:Cryptids(dragons, pseudoscience, really?). According to our present situation Saṃsāra is under Arbcom pseudoscience restrictions, so are 350+ Ghost Films and 127 fictional ghosts. The navigational value of going from Casper the ghost to Time Cube is not particularly convincing. Unomi (talk) 16:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Grandparent categories are only a problem if you read anything more into them than that you can navigate to them in two steps. Normally not even the categories an article is in should be considered in this way. It would make perfect sense to put Karl Popper into Category:Pseudoscience. Not because he did any pseudoscience, but because he laid the foundations for dealing with whether something is a pseudoscience or not. (At the moment the article on him doesn't even discuss pseudoscience, though, so people would be a bit puzzled.) We had a similar discussion with the LGBT category, which can also mean "this guy hates the gay" (no big problem) or "this person is part of the LGBT debate because some people think they should properly out themselves" (huge BLP problem).

The reason categories immediately applied to an article are a problem is that one can see them on the article and people being to speculate about why they are there if it's not obvious. With grandparent categories it's clear why they are grandparents: "OK, Mogwai is in Ghosts, that makes sense. Ghosts is in Paranormal, that makes sense. Are Mogwais paranormal? No idea. Paranormal is in Pseudoscience, that makes sense. Are Mogwais pseudoscience? Obviously not, but of course that's not intended here." Hans Adler 19:06, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Unomi, if you really want to pursue this further, then please discuss this with categories about non-contentious things. Discuss it with fruits and vegetables and food. Or with cities and states and countries and villages and towns. Or anything. You will find odd corner cases and counter-examples everywhere, and as soon as you start talking about them there is disruption. Don't mix this with the pseudoscience disruption that we have already.Hans Adler 19:11, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Many of the articles in the "paranormal" category are also in the "pseudoscience" category, and many are not. The article on Ghostbusters, the movie, belongs in the "Ghost movie" category, and by inheritance in "Ghost" and "Paranormal", but does not belong in "pseudoscience". The movie is not an pseudo-scientific attempt to prove the existence of ghosts. It is a movie. The article on Ghostbusters links to Parapsychology, the main article for a category with the same name, which is correctly included in "Psychology", "Paranormal" and "Pseudoscience". Two categories may include a significant set of articles that belong in both. That does not mean either category belongs in the other. Many religions include beliefs that may be categorized as paranormal. Few claim that these beliefs can be tested scientifically. Why needlessly insult the believers? (Hit an edit conflict when I went to save this. Think I am strongly agreeing with Unomi.) Aymatth2 (talk) 16:14, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Paranormal is not pseudoscience While most of the attempted explanations of paranormal subjects are pseudoscientific in nature, it doesn't mean those subjects are themselves pseudoscience. Put otherwise, the targets of pseudoscience, be they real, folklore, fiction or otherwise, are not themselves pseudoscience (except if originating and considered only in pseudoscientific contexts). For example, the earth is not pseudoscience, even if some people think it's flat and use pseudoscience to 'prove' it. Ghosts are no more pseudoscience, they are beings of folklore. They are viewed as paranormal beings in our modern cultures, but this aspect is minor compared to the historical cultural/folklore aspect, and the pseudoscientific aspect of ghosts is extremely minor in comparison. We should definitely not present a pseudoscientific viewpoint of our folklore/tradition. Now as whether Category:Paranormal should be a subcategory of Category:Pseudoscience, most paranormal topics have been subject to pseudoscience, but they're not pseudoscientific in themselves and pseudoscience is not essential for most of them (with some exceptions), I don't think pseudoscience is essential enough to paranormal, and one can see in the article paranormal that pseudoscience is only trivially mentioned, thus it should not be a surcategory, and it would be against the guideline since most articles in Category:Paranormal are not expected to be in Category:Pseudoscience, though that guideline is hardly followed in practice. Agree with Unomi and Aymatth2. In any case, the POV pushing for presenting folklore and tradition objects, or the belief in them, such as ghosts, reincarnation, haunted houses or witchcraft, as pseudoscientific should stop. Pseudoscience is of extremely minor relevance to them. Cenarium (talk) 16:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe this discussion deserves its own page. You might be interested in Wikipedia:Pseudoscience and related fringe theories. Maurreen (talk) 09:46, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Arbcom has abolished NPOV in this area

Comment. Clearly, there are different views on whether the paranormal should be classified as pseudoscience, but the same applies to much of what is labelled pseudoscience. By categorising fields of study as study as "pseudoscience", wikipedia is making a thoroughly POV editorial judgement in favour of one side of a debate

We wouldn't do this in other fields: businesses and bankers are not categorised according to the language of Marxist analysis, nor are non-Christian people categorised as heathens. Why is this area allowed to retain such a POV categoristaion structure? Because arbcom says so.

The arbcom ruling summarised in the box at Category talk:Pseudoscience explicitly says "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience."

Looking at the principles section of the arbcom ruling, I see that the first principle is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of all significant points of view regarding the subject of an article" ... and the next one is "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience".

In other words, NPOV goes out the window when scientists call something pseudo science. By the same logic, non-Catholic christian ministers should be labelled as "pseudo-clergy", because the Roman Catholic church does not recognise the validity of their ordinations.

And before the denunciations start flying, no I don't have any interest in UFOs or astrology or any of the topics in Category:Pseudoscience. I just don't like seeing one belief system being or intellectual approach being categorised according to the derogatory labels of those who follow a different path. We might as well categorise the Catholic mass under Category:Blasphemy, since that's what some critics of Catholicism call it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:53, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Many ideologues and fundamentalists would claim that by presenting their claims to absolute truth as equal to others, we are adopting a POV no matter our claims of neutrality. The fact is that Wikipedia necessarily has a pro-science and pro-scholarly "bias", and that our neutral point of view is really an expression of that "bias". This is unavoidable, as it is inherent in and necessary to the mission of constructing a comprehensive secular and scholarly encyclopedia, and it is embodied in the verifiability policy. Accordingly, our definition of reliable sources values above all others "[m]aterial that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." This means that sources and their claims that are not tested, testable, or based upon sound methodology are disfavored compared to those that are, and mainstream scientists and scholars trump simple majorities. Pseudoscience is simply a field or claim that purports to be scientific, but that fails to adhere to proper scientific methodology. And we have the views of the scientific community to guide us in what qualifies as pseudoscience, such that claims that are rejected as pseudoscience by the bulk of the scientific community should be verifiably identified as such and not as scientific, no matter the claims of its followers. To do otherwise would give undue weight to unreliable sources (those that are not peer reviewed or based in sound methodology and scholarship) at the expense of reliable sources, and at the expense of verifiability. postdlf (talk) 18:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

The literature of the Roman Catholic Church includes many examples of levitations, apparitions, miracles, and so on that could reasonably be considered paranormal. They are not pseudoscience. Efforts to explain these effects using dubious "scientific approaches" may well be categorized pseudoscience. Religious beliefs should not be, either directly or indirectly. To label a belief as pseudoscience is ridiculous. I believe it is turtles all the way down. But until I try to prove that belief using lasers and geiger counters, nobody should label my belief as pseudoscience. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Right, to qualify as pseudoscience its proponents need to attempt to practice or present it as science when it in fact fails to qualify. And scientists are the most reliable source for determining what purported "science" actually falls short of proper standards and so is instead pseudoscience. postdlf (talk) 01:08, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

And the people with the beliefs themselves are the most reliable source on whether they were even trying to make those beliefs scientific in the first place. Beliefs can of course be neither science nor pseudoscience, because they neither are scientific nor purport to be. These do not need to be talked about it terms of being scientific or not at all. Non-Christian religions might not be classed as heathens, but some are inadvertedly classed as 'paranormal' and, from there, 'pseudoscientific'. But religion is one of those things which are generally neither scientific nor pseudoscientific. Munci (talk) 02:07, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

The above comments set me off on a different train off thought, and maybe it partly explains the controversy. To me "science" is a collection of careful observations and measurements, theories to explain those observations, and formal processes to test the theories. "Pseudoscience" is slipshod on observation and weak on process. But perhaps there is another view that science is the known truth about the way things are, "proven facts", and pseudoscience is everything else. I see "ghost" as a concept, something that does not fit into the current framework of observation and theory, and that seems implausible. But I would not label it as pseudoscience. Maybe there are ghosts, but we have not found ways to detect them, or perhaps there is no way to detect them. Can something undetectable exist? That is too deep for me. When a claim is made that ghosts have been detected, and the claim cannot be substantiated through scientific tests I would label the claim as "pseudoscience", but only the claim, not the concept of a ghost. For other people, I suppose, anything that has not yet been detected and firmly placed in the theoretical framework is considered "not science", so pseudoscience. I suppose the Higgs boson, exotic hadrons and superstring theory would count as pseudoscience in this sense. I don't like it, but understand the viewpoint. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Adding to that, if a superstring theory was proven incorrect, or if ghosts were proven not to exist, I would still not consider either concept to be pseudoscience - but I suppose some people would. Think I am talking to myself. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:29, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I can see how people would come up with the idea too but the problem is that so much of what people do in society has nothing to do with science. Also, the very fact that there is such level of disagreement shows the categorisation should not be that way: articles and categories should only be part of categories when it's certain that they fit there. Munci (talk) 16:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This is not the case at all. We no more categorise fairies as pseudo-science, than we categorise Islam as a heresy. We do not count the various anti-popes in existence as equivalent to the pope in the Vatican. In the same way we do not count New-age theories of "crystal vibrations" as equivalent to the piezoelectric effect. The analogy can be extended in various ways, most anti-popes followings (if they have any) die out soon after they do, pseudo-scientific theories tend to follow the same ephemeral path, leaving their imprint only in the language, and then rarely ( "animal magnetism" "some kind of chemistry" "good vibes" ). Rich Farmbrough, 18:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC).

Dependencies, overseas territories, etc.

How should such territories like Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Falklands, Guam or Puerto Rico be dealt with for categories sort by country? Should these categories be categorised under Foo of Denmark, Foo of the UK or Foo of the US, or should they be categorised right under Foo by country? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

From a quick glance at Puerto Rico categories, it looks each of them follow both patterns. Maurreen (talk) 02:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I would also guess that usually they are properly placed in both. Greenland, for instance, is properly referred to as a "country", but it is one country within the "Kingdom of Denmark", which we often just call "Denmark". It's not as correct to call some of these territories "countries" (like Puerto Rico, perhaps), but in the interests of consistency and predictability, it makes sense to put them in both. I know specifically that there are certain British editors that do get upset when categories for Scotland are omitted from the "by country" tree and only included as a subcategory of the United Kingdom category. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:26, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be different from country to country. For instance what you mentioned isn't the case for Bermuda and Aruba.

Scotland usually isn't regarded as a dependency or overseas territory on lists of countries around the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 (talk) 09:41, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Nor is it usually regarded as an independent state. I'm just providing various examples for the varying types of countries. It is true for Aruba. Aruba is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. My point is that it's just easiest to treat every country, dependency, and territory as a country within the "by country" categorization scheme. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:45, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably not an unreasonable position. However I think that we may need to add something to the guidelines. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The current situation is rather messy.. and there are editors who are so keen to hunt around for dependency/overseas territory categories and remove them from 'by country' categories, on the ground that they aren't independent sovereign states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 (talk) 07:38, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

From what I observed the approach to Bermuda, Aruba, and Guam, Puerto Rico are rather different. Categories of the former two are not subcategories of the UK and Netherlands counterparts. For the latter two, such categories are subcats of those for the US. It may perhaps be a cultural or custom matter... British overseas territories are traditionally not considered to be part of the UK... whereas for places like Åland it's readily considered to be part of Finland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.150.205 (talk) 07:43, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Just to note here

The discussion here was initiated and continued by 119.237.150.205, the IP incarnation of a banned user who uses categories and templates for nationalist NPOV purposes. The real answer here is that constituent parts of sovereign states have various levels of independence and some may properly be countries and some are not. There is not, and cannot, be one simple guideline. The troll here wishes to seek out a statement that all constituent countries are equally "countries" by Wikipedia standards in order to pursue his own nationalist agenda. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Even if that is true, I don't see why (with categories) there "cannot" be a simple guideline. Categorization is far from the be all and end all of determining what a territory's status is. Categories are more for ease of navigation, not necessarily for precisely defining the exact nature of a territory's international status. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

How can a simple guideline be drawn? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.118.162.88 (talk • contribs)

Link to preceding and succeeding category

Where categories follow a clear numerical or chronological sequence, e.g. Category:English football clubs 1887–88 season clearly follows after Category:English football clubs 1886–87 season), is there a standard way of linking them, maybe via a template that links to the preceding and succeeding category? (such as you get with the prevseason and nextseason parameters in Template:Infobox football club season). This would be useful as you wouldn't have to navigate back up to the parent category to get to the next category along. --Jameboy (talk) 23:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no standard. But a sports project that might know better than I do. Maurreen (talk) 06:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

{{WorksYearHeader}} does that for chronological lists of creative works. —Codrdan (talk) 08:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that should work well for single years. For the examples I quoted above though, I don't think it would work as each article (season) spans two calendar years, i.e. second half of one calendar year and first half of next calendar year. I'll have another think about this one - might need a new template or adapted template. --Jameboy (talk) 13:05, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

About categorizing redirects

In the fictional example of a man called John Smith who was also a musician called Johnny Rocket, where we want to categorize the "Johnny Rocket" redirect in a musicians category (so it shows up on the category listing), should we also place the John Smith article in the musicians category? Past discussion concluded that it should (because otherwise the category won't show up on the article page at all - too bad that it results in double listing at the category). Given that the guideline has jsut been edited to say something different, has consensus changed on this point? --Kotniski (talk) 06:10, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

About subcategories

When categorising a redirect as R from Spanish-language terms, should I live the R from alternative language cat? --Againme (talk) 16:51, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

R? Your question is unclear. Maurreen (talk) 23:33, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

R means redirection. I'm asking if once you have a redirection categorised with a subcategory, you still have to let the parent category included (R from Spanish is a subset of R from alternative language). Againme (talk) 06:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I would say no. Maurreen (talk) 06:46, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but is there something about this in the MoS? I want to be sure before removing thousands of cats. Other opinions? Againme (talk) 07:18, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ethnicity and BLP concerns

The proliferation of ethnicity-related categories and their inclusion in articles with no references to sustain them is a troubling problem in regards to BLP concerns. Take for example Category:European American basketball players. I went through just the A's in the category and found that NONE of those categorized articles had a single reference or even mention of European ancestry. User:Mayumashu, who added the category to many of the articles, argued when discussing another race-related category that we should interpret a person's ethnicity/race using pictures of that person. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous. Is there any way we can prevent such "interpretations" and speculation?--TM 13:40, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard that claim before, probably for good reason. If the facts represented by a category are not even mentioned in the article (let alone sourced), then that category should be summarily removed. I don't believe at all that ethnicity is appropriate to guestimate from a photograph (particularly since self-identification is given some weight, especially for multi-ethnic/racial individuals), and if the article does not even mention the subject's ethnicity, then it's obviously unimportant to that subject and therefore an inappropriate basis for categorization. If we're going to categorize ethnicity (which I have always been opposed to, but what can you do), then we should do it only when it is meaningful. postdlf (talk) 14:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Tangential, but I think many ethnicity categories should either be deleted or have narrower scope. Maurreen (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

There always seems to be a relatively broad agreement that these ethnicity categories are problematic. And yet the proliferate and are one of the most well-developed schemes in WP because of the edits of a limited number of editors. I really wish we could figure out a way to deal with this seeming contradiction in general belief vs. what actually exists. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:38, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe that any serious Wikipedia editor would consider a picture suficient basis to determine someone's ethnic background. Let alone document it in a Wikipedia category. If there would turn out to be any thruth to that, sanctions should be considered.

I would like to add that there are tags that might be used before summarily removing a category (especially if the likeliness of the category being relevant isn't farfetched). See Category:Articles with unsourced categories for their usage. Debresser (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Debresser that if this is true, I find it extremely troubling that an established editor would be assigning ethnicity categories based on a photograph. Yikes. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:08, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

See here [3] for the conversation.--TM 21:35, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Another editor challenging my removal of uncited ethnicity and race categories. User:Ringerfan23 is rounding up editors[4] to try to re-establish these categories. Any help with this situation would be appreciated. He even tried the Mayumashu defense of showing a picture to justify his assertion of ethnicity.--TM 21:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not "rounding up editors" (it was simply asking for help from another user) nor am i plotting to do anything dastardly. I'm simply trying to figure out a consensus of some sort and question the rampant removal of information. This category thing has been brought to my attention as something that has been a problem in the past, and I in no way wish to make anything worse. RF23 (talk) 21:53, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I d say scrap the whole schema. If non-controversial assertions, that, say Michael Jordan is black or Larry Bird is white, need to be substantied with a reputable source, and a photo and other basic cirsumtantial evidence won t suffice, then this schema is utterly unretainable. There are next to no sources that assert ancestry etc and base their assertions on research accepted as being valid, that is done in a manner social scientists would accept, including having them critically peer-reviewed, which is the level what WP strives for and should. That or rename everything Category:American people likely to be of Thai descent etc. The idea that all non-controversal assertions need to be substantied takes thing rather far, farther than I think many regular users of WP would have it, but it is certainly will result in a super-solid product in terms of its scientific worth, and likely in the end this is the real merit WP should strive for. A question I d have on this too is how Encyclopedia Britannica and others include content in their bios on say one's ancestry. Mayumashu (talk) 17:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it is easy enough to reference these sorts of things if you are serious about it, you just have to find where they were born and trace their line. If you don't know for sure what they are then you simply don't add the category. We don't guess at what ancestry a person is. -DJSasso (talk) 17:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

?? There are next to no reputable sources on this, so how it is easy to reference ancestry. And if I find out where they were born and I traced their ancestry, how is that not WP:OR? Mayumashu (talk) 17:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Documents from archives, birth and death records etc. All of which would be reliable sources to proove where they came from apart from articles where the particular person self-identifies as being say Polish-Canadian. It's only OR if you draw conclusions from the sources that are not explicitly stated in the sources. -DJSasso (talk) 18:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, maybe it would not be. Primary (or pseudo primary - actually secondary in most cases, but raw) documents looked at by a WP contributor, eh. WP contributors generally report secondary source assertations, not make assertations based on what primary sources state, as plainly factual as that may be. But it wouldn t be as simple as all that - archives may list arrivees by surname but it is still presumption, for instance if a German by the name Fuhr arrives in Spruce Grove, a small town and Grant Fuhr is from there with a German name. (There s adoption for one.) Archives are not completed family trees and completing a family tree involves a degree of educated guess despite documentation. Mayumashu (talk) 18:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I have mentioned this to Mayumashu in the past and he told me he often categorizes such articles just based purely on their last name, which of course is a completely inaccurate way to do it. -DJSasso (talk) 17:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

On your talk page or mine - I ll need to see this one. I have linked based on surname plus other aspects of the person's circumstances, where they live etc. I ve linked hockey players from Fort Williams, the Sault with Italian surnames as Canadian of Italian descent, that level of presumptiveness. Mayumashu (talk) 17:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Right so you guessed someone with an Italian last name was of Italian descent. As for where the discussion occured I will look for it. It might have been on a player page where you assumed someone was of English descent if I remember correctly simply because they had an English last name which of course is a rediculous assumption in Canada where many immigrants changed their last names to english last names when coming here. -DJSasso (talk) 18:04, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

A few have, and a few others have anglicized their names. (More so in the states, but nevertheless.) But if it was about someone with an English surname, then you were right to have reverted my edit - not even the so-called Mayumashu defence could have saved me there! And the adoption case makes even the Italian surname in the Fort Williams a likelihood but a non-guarantee as well - true enough. Mayumashu (talk) 18:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I stated this above nearly a month ago but I'm going to repeat this because it got lost in the shuffle: any category that asserts facts that are not even mentioned in the article can be summarily removed from that article. Whether those facts need direct sourcing to be mentioned in the article is another issue (I would say always yes for assertions of ethnicity), but there is no basis for adding a category to an article that does not even deign to mention that category's subject. postdlf (talk) 02:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Content of category pages/portal links?

The article Wikipedia:Categorization#Content of category pages has no guidance on the placement of portal links? I've updated Category:LGBT-related music in Canada. It has four links to other portals. At first, I thought it was overkill. Now I think it is proper for them to remain. Any help on my questions is greatly appreciated. Argolin (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that they should be placed as early as possible in the wikicode, because floated objects should be beside something and there usually isn't much content on category pages. Also, if there is more than one {{portal}}, I think {{portal box}} should be used instead (and this applies to articles too), but you don't have to change it on pages where it's already this way, because this will be probably handled by a bot. Svick (talk) 22:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Svick, I love the syntax for the grouping of portals. That makes complete sense.

Done pls see above: Argolin (talk) 06:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)