Category talk:Living people/Archive 1

message: * I'm sure i'm not the only one & am sure this is an extremely debatable category but it seems to be the most pointless of the 100,000+ categories. If someone is "living" it should be denoted via birth date & death date in the opening dialogue, right? The category is too inspecific & seems to be applied to some & not ALL, where to vote against it? ZlatkoT 16:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See this is the problem with votes.. I explained why very carefully, but no one read it.  None of the other proposed ideas allow for automated use of the tagging. For example we can't anywhere near as easily make RecentChanges flag things based on birth and death categories.  I've already produced a report based on the birth and death categories (available here)... it takes over 4 minutes of computation on the Wikipedia databases, which is completely unacceptable for a special page. --Gmaxwell 22:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pointless?

message: Ok.  Jimbo has said it will exist.  It has been stated, so it shall be.  If people want to create another subtopic for continuing to argue why that's a bad idea, so be it.  But I would like to start looking at what needs to be done to actually make this thing work.  First off, I think we need a much better idea of exactly what the specific goals are for this thing.  What is hoped to be accomplished with it?  I know it's intended to be a part of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, but exactly how is it envisioned that a category like this, however named, will help?  If we can get a better idea of what is desired, then we can work together to make a best effort towards actually making this work. - TexasAndroid 21:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are at least 57,000 articles about living people.  As the policy proposal you link to indicates, these are particularly sensitive articles which cause a great deal of administrative hassle.  There are a million ways for us to use categorization to have specialized procedures for watching/cleaning these articles.  Should it be subcategorized?  Absolutely.  Should we have a discussion of how to use it?  Absolutely.  Let's do that now. --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Relax just a notch or two, ok?  Comparing me to Hitler and talking about Hell isn't 'particularly' helpful, although of course your sentiments are most warmly welcomed and I will try to make as much positive use of them as I can. :-)  --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Quality of Wikipedia bios will decrease and this single decision will serve as precedent for similar unfortunate actions. It is no suprise that people who spent time on improving articles express their emotions seeing their work devalued. Pavel Vozenilek 02:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Subcategorization?  I'm all for it.  That's why I was so adamant that CfD was a huge mistake here.  "This category needs subcategories" is not the same thing as "This category is stupid and should be deleted." --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But this Category is stupid and should be deleted. I haven't had to deal with any decision you made before, but I think forbidding the idea this can be deleted is a very bad call. This category is a pretty transparent reaction to the one controversy and it's one of almost shocking inanity. Many of the bios that get vandalized are already categorized. And no matter how many sub-cats you add to this it's still going to be untenable. Because a 100 subcats for 50,000+ people is just going to be a hundred over-large cats. Unless you divide into so many subcats even they became unmanageable to follow. As well as looking stupid on all articles. Hopefully I've just stumbled on one of your more foolish moments and in the future I'll have less reason to criticize.--T. Anthony 01:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's completely unfair and inaccurate to characterize this as a reaction to the press. The fact is that the press brought some attention to a neglected aspect of Wikipedia, the potential for libel in articles about people... and it turns out that when we really dug in and looked at it we found the problem to be FAR worse than we had expected.  This is a problem which must be solved for both legal and ethical reasons, and it is not a problem where we can simply wait for the eventual perfection of Wikipedia to solve it on its own. This category is only a tool and we do not expect it to solve the problem, but it is clear that it is helpful. It is almost certainly not the best possible tool, but so far we haven't found anything else which is clearly better. If you have any ideas to help achieve a speedy solution to our difficulty with unsourced criticisms we are all ears. --Gmaxwell 02:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We have :Category:Suspected hoaxes so just have a tag you can put to make something "Suspected libel." That may not be the best idea, but I wasn't even aware of this until a couple days ago.--T. Anthony 04:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: As I've said below, subcategorisation makes this more intrusive. it will also make it harder to follow and therefore even less effective. But if there are to be subcategories it should be done by subdividing the existing categories, or we will get a huge messy duplicate of the existing structure. And it probably won't match. Just to adapt one of the examples above, :Category:Britons does not exist. If you start subcategorisising :category:living people (as opposed to the alternative of dividing the existing categories between the living and the dead), it won't stop and some people will end up in a dozen "living x" categories on top of a dozen standard categories. The category clutter will be hideous. Osomec 00:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Try this...Make a template to add two categories to each article, this one, and smaller subcategories. It would have a parameter to specify the subcategory, like . This way you can browse and maintain the living people with subcategories, but keep them in this one for recentchanges use! --Phroziac . o º O (♥♥♥♥ chocolate!) 23:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: 200,000? .. Based on birth and death data it doesn't look like there is more than 70,000 articles right now.  We already have categories with far more than that in them. --Gmaxwell 22:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I just scanned the database, its actually only 57,000. Martin 22:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I', willing to bet that most biogs don't actually include the xxx births category... wangi 00:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm almost willing to take that bet. About a year ago I created an article on an obscure 19th cenury guy (Daniel Freeman) and did not include the birt date and death date categories. They were added within four hours. Dsmdgold 00:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving forward 

message: I suggest moving the discussion and debate to here. I can guarantee that Jimmy will be following it. Danny 22:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was first to post on there, and only one other person has done so (and that not in reply to my comments), while far more have posted here, so I suggest people who want a reply carry on posting on this page. Osomec 00:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I have started over a hundred biographies of living golfers. Let's say that someone adds a line to one of them saying that he was arrested for possession of child porn at college, but released without charge. Let's also say that all 200,000 or whatever articles have been placed in this category (and it will soon be 2 million). How is this category going to help? Are we expected to believe that there will be enough people monitoring it, and clicking on all the articles regularly, including the most obscure ones, to significantly improve the chances of libels being removed promptly compared to what they are now? These monitor hits will only be a tiny fraction of total hits, and unless the monitors only click on people they have heard of they will know nothing whatsoever about most of the people they have clicked on, so they will have to research every seriously negative comment. It just isn't going to happen. 
Another point to take into account is that there are plenty of places to libel someone apart from their biographical article. For example next time I update a golf tournament article with this year's winner's name, I could state that he won despite having spent the Tuesday of tournament helping police with their investigations into a child pornography ring, but was let off without charge.
Two alternative suggestions, they aren't very good, but then Jimbo isn't putting forward alternatives to this dud, so someone else will have to try:
:1) create :Category:Controversial biographies. It will miss some people, but then so will the existing category. Put all American lawyers, journalists and politicians in it as a start. 
:2) acknowledge the reality that there is no way that all bad edits out of a current rate of around a million edits a week (soon to be ten million no doubt) will be caught. Not only a slim chance; zero chance. If legal issues make this intolerable, instead of making a pointless and annoying gesture, do something concrete and move the servers to an offshore jurisdiction, as PartyGaming operates from Gibraltar due to the dubious legal status of online poker in the U.S.
Osomec 22:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are far less than 200,000 articles we are talking about. And we will have automated tools helping us, the administrative category Living persons is required and instrumental for those improvements. --Gmaxwell 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Additionally, "this isn't perfect" is not an argument for "this is useless".  Yes, of course, not everything can possibly be caught, but we don't throw up our hands and give up on the entire project.  We accept ambiguity and imperfection and we move forward to try for improvements.  There are at first count 57,000 articles which fit in this category, but of course this automated first pass misses a lot of them.  And then we are also supposed to talking here about how to meaningfully subcategorize so that we have a hope of systmatically working our way through these.--Jimbo Wales 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But it is more than imperfect. It will do so little as to be useless. Only the minutest fraction is likely to be caught and it will take up a great deal of time and be highly intrusive. "It might do a minute amount of good" is no reason to go ahead with a major project. Especially when you are yet to disclose the reasons for it. You really should have guessed the response this would get on categories for deletion as it is just the obverse of the classic example of a useless category :Category:dead people and there was no explanation as to why it wasn't merely that. When the predicatable objections came there was still no explanation, just an order. Then more objections and again no explanation, just an order. Then the same a third time. Anyway, I have not thrown up my hands, I have made two well meaning suggestions, both of which have been ignored. Osomec 00:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It won't be far less than 200,000 for long. There are a lot of articles without birth dates, and they are less likely to be found in the articles about obscure people that are more likely to cause a problem. But even if the category contains every article, that doesn't mean it will achieve anything. I just don't believe people are going to look at masses of articles about people they have no interest in on the offchance they might uncover a libel. Osomec 23:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Who says people will browse the category?  We can use the category to identify the articles so they are flagged with bright colors by the RecentChanges screen and the IRC bots. We can also activate more aggressive bad content detection for these articles. Etc. There are a lot of technical reasons why this is a fairly good solution for now. Categories are what we use with the automated tools to tag and ultimately delete unlicensed images... and thats worked to move tens of thousands of images through a complex multistage process. In any case, I don't understand why people who say it can't be done are insisting on standing in the way of the people who are doing it. Would you like a userscript which will make the category invisible to you? That could be easily created. --Gmaxwell 23:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem you are experiencing is that the vast majority of people think its a bad idea. Bold text won't change their minds. Martin 23:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, but it might get them to see my words! :) At least I finally got someone to actually discuss my comments after I used it! --Gmaxwell 23:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: We don't want to see people wasting their time on a project that just won't achieve its presumed goals (they still haven't actually been disclosed), when there are so many other things that need to be done. Most people would never find out about such a script, and the category will look silly to millions I should think. Osomec 23:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it is absolutely not true that a vast majority of people think its a bad idea.  An extreme minority of people who have not heard the arguments or taken time to discuss or think about it have been noisily agitating for instant transport to the cesspool of AfD, but that's hardly evidence for what a mass majority of people think.  Since the arguments in favor of it are strong, and since the arguments against it are being thought about and favorable suggestions being offered, I think it's safer to say that the vast majority of people are likely to welcome this category as we work forward on making it appropriately useful.  A handful of AfD regulars does not a consensus make.--Jimbo Wales 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I take no part in afd or tfd or whatever for the reasons you give. But I really don't see how this is beneficial at all, I also can't find it explained rationaly why this is good; what are we expecting people to do with such a vast category? Why couldnt we just flag articles that have birth categories? Why cant we use the NPOV tag? Why can't it be added to the Wikipedia:Persondata tag?. In summary; good great idea, terrible execution, terrible implementation, terrible PR. Martin 23:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Explain why you can't just flag articles that have the birth category, it would also have the major advantage that a lot of articles already have it, and that people don't hate it. Martin 23:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no 'the birth category' ... there are over a thousand birth categories and over a thousand death categories. Plus there are people who are not in any of them (because we don't know when they were born or died). The test "is this article in X" is O(n log n)ish while the test "does it exist in these N and is it equal to any of these X" is a higher order problem which requires reading a lot of the categorylinks table in the case where the person is alive.  Basically we can't do the use the birth and death solutions for anything on the wiki in real time. The category plan is *exactly* what categories are made for. We have thousands of nearly-nonsense categories and this one isn't it.. Why all the furvor about this one? --Gmaxwell 23:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The furvor is because most people are of the opinion that the categorization system is primarily, if not totally, a navigation system.  That it is a system for the use of the general user and, if a category serves no useful purpose to the general user, then it's not a useful category and is a waste of time and resources.  This was my opinion as well until I started seeing your comments here about the automated tools.  I'm not sure we've ever had a category quite like this.  This is something new, something that hasn't been done before, and something that was not well explained before it popped into existance.  So in the end, while you say this is "exactly what the categories are for", it really does fly in the face of what many of us who work to maintain categories here consider the normal uses of categories.  So new, non-standard use + lack of explanations == opposition.  IMHO that's why things have fallen out like they have. - TexasAndroid 00:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We have lots of categories which are not primarily aimed at readers.  This one is not special in that regard.--Jimbo Wales 01:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think there is anything wrong with a category for living people. The problem arises when this category (which is not "aimed at readers") is added to the bottom of the articles. That is where the conflict between the two uses (navigation and administrative) comes to the fore. A reader is not well served by the presence of this category at the bottom of an article - it adds to the noise and thus makes navigation via the other (useful) categories harder to use. I suggest that the style-guide should say that this category should not be added to the bottom of articles. Note that I arrived at this page while wearing my "reader" hat (wondering about the sudden appearance of this useless-to-the-reader category on some pages I was reading) - I don't know the mechanism of categories but I'm assuming that there is a means for categorizing articles without necessarily making it visible to readers. - Hayne 14:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, no attempt at proper presentation or persuasion was made at all. Osomec 00:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're more right than you realize, Osomec.  However the "no attempt at proper presentation or persuasion" applies to the CfD in the first place.  That's why I put a stop to it.  You don't have a discussion about something with a vote to delete.  That's preposterous anti-community behavior.--Jimbo Wales 01:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I can understand the confusion that results from thinking categories are only for navigation... But the use of non-navigational categories is nothing new. A category is only navigational if it can be reached via the root categories on the main page (mathematics, science, history, etc). All of our navigational cats should be reachable from there and none of the administrative ones should (and aren't, except when someone does something foolish, but I usually fix that pretty quickly).  Our largest categories are all currently administrative and not navigational, for example: :Category:GFDL_images with almost 80,000 members, :Category:Disambiguation with over 40,000 members, :Category:Public_domain_images with over 30,000 members, :Category:Redirects from US postal abbreviation with about 40,000 entries.  These categories, and the many other administrative categories, are critical to the operation of many behind-the-scenes processes on Wikipedia.  :Category:Living people will be no different, even if it does end up somewhat larger. --Gmaxwell 01:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments and 2 suggestions

message: Subcategorization is mentioned above as one possible way to help with this thing, and Jimbo liked the possibility.  IMHO this is important, so I'm giving it it's own topic area.
Okay.  If we are going to subcategorize, IMHO we should do so Soon.  Very Soon.  Before too long someone with a bot is going to start dumping articles in here by the thousands.  If we decide to sub-categorize them, IMHO we should do so before the mass categorization begins.
:I just wanted to make a quick comment about assumptions about how this project works.  A bot will not start dumping articles in here by the thousands, because this is not a mobocracy, this is not a democracy, this is Wikipedia.  If someone starts doing that without first going through a real process of dialogue about why it would be a bad idea, the bot will be blocked, the edits rolled back, end of story. --Jimbo Wales 23:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please don't bother. The subcategory names will take up more space in the category links so they will be even more annoying. Osomec 23:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure what subcats will help.. it will make building tools to work with the category somewhat more complex.. --Gmaxwell 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we can agree that for readers this category is completely useless, so there is little point in cutting it down to make it easier for a pointless category to be browsed by users. Keep it as one stonking big category so it's the most useful, and easiest to use, with automated tools. Could we even add a frig in the code / default style sheet to hide the category for readers? Thanks/wangi 23:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Should we also hide the stub cats, the cleanup cats, the copyright related cats, and all the other cats which are pretty much useless to average Joe reader? I don't really have a view there... it would require a low impact change in the database schema to create a reader hidden flag and it might be of some use, I think it's worth discussion but we shouldn't do it just for this one category. --Gmaxwell 23:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, hide this thing & any others like it that aren't navigation aids.  No, don't use sub-categories.  Part of my opposition is that it looks stupid.  The other part is that it's useless as a browsing tool because it's enormous.  Subcats won't help that.  Anyone who wants to have a go at something this big will be using automated tools or database dumps anyway. Derex 01:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like this idea, and making it extensible to other 'maintenance' categories would allow editors to turn something on in their .css/options to view things line cleanup, NPOV, Category:living persons, without bothering the readership. It might make data dumps/mirrors somewhat of a pain, but they already deal with the existing 'editor' tags that get placed on the main article space, yes? -- nae'blis (talk) 03:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think hiding maintenance categories from readers is a good idea. Readers are potential editors. We may want to make them show separately, though. Zocky | picture popups 04:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: This is exactly why I gave it it's own section, to get it attention, pro or con, quickly.  I had no intention of actually creating these myself unless I got several "Good Idea" type responses.  Instead, I quickly get several good reasons why it's not the best of ideas.  So don't worry about me going out and creating a buch of subcats for now.  I'll let the idea percolate a bit longer.  And if the idea flops, so be it. - TexasAndroid 23:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do think it is a good idea to hide it from readers. If the purpose of this category is only technical or administrative, it shouldn't be seen. The best is clearly a database flag. It seems to be too resource demanding and it is replaced by this category. This category should therefor not be more visible than if it was a flag. Only semantical categories should appear on the main article page.Lvr 20:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

text: That would cut across or duplicate all the other categories. If you're going to do that, better to subdivide the existing categories into living and dead people, rather than recreate the whole people categorisation system. But I don't want subcategories at all as one subcategory will be less annoying. And looking at it from the point of view of those who think this might work, it can't be a good idea to move people into categories by nationality the amount of attention the nationalities would be given would likely be very uneven. Osomec 00:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure that's a valid argument. It's true that certain nationalities won't have nearly as many entries as we like, but that's not the fault of the categorisation system, the system will simply bring it into sharp relief. If such a thing happens, perhaps it will be easier to identify the areas where others can improve wikipedia's coverage, and give people the impetus to do so. -- Kirby1024 00:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcategorization 

message: Why is a category the only solution here? Why not a list for example, maybe in conjuction with an  template so it can be automatically generated and updated? Kappa 00:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Better still, wouldn't adding it to the Wikipedia:Persondata tag have all the benefits and non of the negatives? Martin 00:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: How about adding one field to Persondata: LIVING?, with a simple "yes", "no", or "unknown" the only viable options? Downside would be that Persondata would become a mandatory addition to bio articles, whereas :Category:Living people doesn't affect articles on dead folks. — BrianSmithson 15:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: already discussed below.  not technically efficient at present. Derex 15:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia:Persondata is the obvious solution.  That way it is not a true category but fulfils the administrative requirement.  Keeping this category is just another nail in Wikipedia's coffin.  User:Noisy | Talk 17:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Persondata seems like a much less intrusive solution; adding a living persons category lessens the value of other biographical categories by swamping them out, and it isn't a category that is particularly useful to non-editors.  ("Ooh! George W. Bush in :Category:Living persons Bo - By.  I wonder who else is.")--ragesoss 05:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not a list and/or template? 

message: If I understand correctly this is to prevent complaints from living people about the articles about themselves in Wikipedia? I fail to see how having a (very large) category of living people would make those articles "NPOV and properly sourced" (as it says on the cat page). Sure, you can use a bot to check for source sections, and throw the articles that don't have any in :Category:Unsourced biographies. That category will have ~10000 articles (at a guesstimate), and a dedicated squad of editors can probably clear that in a couple of months, like :Category:Stubs was cleared. But making it NPOV is considerably more trouble than that. Radiant_>|< 01:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For example, we can highlight changes to articles about living people on recent changes (because they are a more likely magnet for harmful subtle vandalism), we can have the content filtering scripts act more aggressively on such articles (i.e. sound alarms about the word 'pedophile' where we wouldn't alarm on its insertion elsewhere), and we can also use metal based robots to audit for 'negative language' in combination with 'lack of citations' and highlight articles for our massive horde of meat-based robots to actually go fix.  Really the hard issue isn't with the first hit of running around fixing them as you point out thats just a matter of a few months work, it's more an issue of the ongoing maintenance. --Gmaxwell 01:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It could be, and possibly should be... But it would not be useful for the proposed applications because there currently is no low computational complexity ways to find articles with yes/no/null in that field. .. Unless you consider reading and parsing the entire current text of Wikipedia to be computationally cheap. :) --Gmaxwell 02:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How would this work exactly? 

message: I don't like the idea of subcategorizing by initial.  It is a practice that is frowned upon in our categorization guidelines (the first example of a bad category name is we mention is Category:Musicians whose first name starts with M).  If we are to have these categories, I would suggest making these subcategories of :Category:People by nationality under each country there would be something like :Category:French people by mortality or hopefully some better word which I can't think of off-hand.  This sub-category would have at least two categories: Living French people and Dead French people.  Articles so categorized would be in addition to whatever other French people categories the articles belong in.  Living French people would be a subdirectory of Living People by Nationality and Dead French people would be a subdirectory of Dead People by Nationality.  Both of those (and Missing people?) would be subdirectories of People by mortality, which would be a subdirectory of People.    Having this done by nationality might also be useful because the laws of some countries probably require more vigilance than others.
Another possibility if this is a purely administrative category is to have it linked ONLY to the talk page of articles.  This is in keeping with other administrative categories.  This might be a middle path that would satisfy those of us that don't find this to be a useful encyclopedia category.
One suggestion.  Could there be an explanation or link at the top of the page explaining why this is needed.  Why are we expecting people to search for this information?  It should be at the top of this page. I came to this discussion late, and I still don't understand the issues. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 01:57, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcategorization suggestion 

message: How about a template on the talk page that states the standards for biographies of living people spelled out.  It would also automatically categorize the TALK page into an administrative category called "Biographies of living people".  I don't see much point in having this linked up to any categories for users to browse through.  -- Samuel Wantman 04:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this makes more sense than a normal category. -Will Beback 05:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: genius! Arniep 13:23, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A template on the talk page 

message: I'm not pleased with the way this was slammed down upon us—a little tact and a little explanation goes a long way—but I do think it is a good idea, and one that we should explore in more depth.  
:What I think we should be displeased with is the dysfunction of AfD, in which instead of a serious discussion about the right way to do something, a new idea is met with a deletion debate with a rapid fire set of votes with no discussion.--Jimbo Wales 15:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about some kind of Jury-service type thing to stop the same people hanging round the afd and cfd discussions, i.e. if you don't vote in cfds or afds a certain amount of times a month, you don't get to edit, or some kind of rota system? Maybe there could also be a rule that you need to make a comment of say at least 50 words to discourage no explanation and copy-cat "voting". Arniep 17:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More questions and ideas 

message: Shouldn't this category be inserted alphabetically in the category links, not just placed at the end?  It appears to be just dropped at the end of the categories in almost all cases.
:: I dropped all the ones I put at the end, just because it didn't feel right to have it in the middle. I'm usually an ABC fanatic, but having "Living People" in the middle of accomplishments just didn't make sense. -- Jjjsixsix (talk)/(contribs) @ 06:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Many people have :Category:Persons born in xyear. Perhaps :Category:Living people should go after this. --malber 15:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Placement of this category

message: where does an article like Bill Frist medical school experiments controversy or John Kerry military service controversy fit in?  these are not _biographies_ of living people, but they are _about_ living people.  if the point of this category is to prevent libel, then articles about scandals involving living figures are just as likely, or more so, to have defamation than the main biographies.  do these get tagged?  how about the ten or so Clinton scandal articles?  Accusations of rape against U.S. presidents?  All of these articles were created to stop the main biographies from being swamped with scandal-mongering.  Derex 15:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  IMHO, split off sub-articles from a biography article have just as much need for being here as full biography articles.  In a way, they are still part of the original article, but just cut out for space/organizational reasons.  And you are right, they are subject to nasty vandalism. - TexasAndroid 16:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point.  I agree that these subarticles need to be included in the category.  --Aude (talk | contribs) 16:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  scope 

message: I think Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Living_people is very useful for monitoring and paying particular attention to recent changes to these articles. --Aude (talk | contribs) 17:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although, if you were clever, you could remove the category in your libel-inserting edit . . . yeah, I know, WP:BEANS. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think someone else mentiond that removal of the category is exactly something that can be easily flagged for by the behind the scenes bots.  So if such a flag/alert is set up, then removing the category actually becomes one of the best things a would-be vandal could do, as that would bring instant attention to the article. - TexasAndroid 14:40, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This makes no sense to me. If we can flag things 'behind the scenes' for vandalism, why are we even trying to implement this 'administrative category'? Use the Wikipedia:Persondata to tell which articles need to be 'vetted' after changes, and be done with it...yes? No? -- nae'blis (talk) 15:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Living_people 

message: Looking at the link above reveals that at least two people are sorting this cat into different positions. Since this cat will be widely spread, it seems, even to me, that there is a case for uniformity here, to make future edits easier. 
The two choices are
*Alphabetical, under L.
*Second, where the death cat will eventually go.
The latter choice seems ingenious, and easy for future maintenance; but we ought to have a discussion of suggested placement, at least. Septentrionalis 17:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The birth and death cats (e.g. 1612 births | 1672 deaths) are in alphabetical order, though coincidentally usually are the first listed.  I'm inserting them alphabetically, though a random spot check shows most are just inserting the cat last in the list, while I found some that put it first (regardless of any alphabetical or other order).  --Aude (talk | contribs) 17:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Position of cat

message: I think there should be a notice or banner at the top of this Talk page which labels this as an Administrative Category and explains (or links to) what that means.  It has been mentioned that's what this category is, but no explanation of that.  (SEWilco 19:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've thrown an HTML comment in for now to stop the kneejerk CfDs, but a template of this sort might be useful (see also :Category:GFDL images, etc). -- nae'blis (talk) 20:38, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The comment only repeats there is an administrative purpose.  What is this purpose, and how are editors supposed to help accomplish the purpose?  Without knowing the purpose I also don't know here whether to suggest division into people who have already been confirmed to be alive this year or those who live on certain continents.  (SEWilco 07:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Search through Gmaxwell's comments on this talk page.  He appears to understand the intents the best.  Basically he talked about things like using the contents as a source list for a number of background processes.  He said that the Recent changes page could flag changes to entries in this category to appear differently.  That allerts could be sent to certain people when certain terms were used on one of these pages.  (Pedophile, fraud, etc.)  I think he mentioned one or two other possible uses, but first they need a single central listing of all the people to flag/watch/etc, and the category system apparently will give them that. - TexasAndroid 16:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Define Administrative Category 

message: Jimbo has stated that he's not locked into the name of the cat, just the cat itself.  The idea of a different name has been kinda dropped in the last 24 hours, but I wanted to at least discuss the possibility, even if only to get the idea shot down once and for all.  Or maybe a perfect alternate name will be proposed.  Who knows? :)
So does anyone have any thoughts on the name of this thing?  Should we leave it named as is, or is there a good alternative that is less confusing to the casual obsever and/or more clear that this is not something that can be used for navigation?
I don't have any brilliant ideas myself, and in absence of a good alternative, I think we will need to live with the current name.  But I wanted to at least make a community effort to see if there was a better name to be had.  - TexasAndroid 21:32, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would be open to the idea of another name for the category, but can't think of anything better either.  But, if I were notable enough to have an article written about me, not sure I'd like to see it tagged with "Living people". (as opposed to "Dead people"?)  Alternatively, would it be somehow possible to hide the category (possibly also other administrative categories) on the article page, with some variation of class="hiddenStructure" in monobook.css?  Though maybe it's too complicated and preferable anyway to have the category visible, for us to maintain them and know which articles need the cat added, without having to look at the wiki code.  --Aude (talk | contribs) 21:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What is so insulting about "Living people?" Seems like a statement of fact ("I'm not dead yet!") --malber 22:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the category is administratively very useful and it's indeed fact.  Though, the category name makes me think (maybe it's just me) of "Dying for Dollars" (now "You Bet Their Life") - a celebrity dead pool, and sounds slightly awkward with the way it's worded. --Aude (talk | contribs) 22:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming the category 

message: I have not seen support for this as a normal category.  Its purpose, as stated by Jimbo is for monitoring biographies of people who are alive.  As such, I was bold, and moved it to be a subcategory of :Category:Wikipedia administration.  I don't think this is a controversial move, or am I missing something? -- Samuel Wantman 02:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parent Category 

message: We have to add cat:living people to EVERY SINGLE person? Imagine the task for current sportsmen/women, who are all alive. Rogerthat 08:23, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thereby performing wikipedia's major secondary function: Giving people useless tasks to fill their day that don't cause any harm. (Sort of like what I'm doing right now, come to think of it.)- DavidWBrooks 17:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely they could do something else tedious like starting up stubs for WP:AFL - if you want to do that, feel free. But this is just a waste of time, and boosts people's edit counts.  Rogerthat Talk 09:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Man, oh man, after categorizing the entire Oakland Athletics roster under living people, I flat out gave up. I'll wait for a bot to do it, thank you much. -- Jjjsixsix (talk)/(contribs) @ 04:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: So does this mean...

message: I haven't read all of the above discussion, so maybe someone has proposed this already. Since the main purpose of this category is so that people can systematically examine "high risk" biographies (people who are alive or those who are otherwise likely to be vandalized) set up a template on the talk page saying "This biography was last checked on Month Year". By putting (or updating) this template on the talk page you are asserting that you've read the biography and there are 1) no pontentially hurtfull claims on the page or 2) any potentially hurtfull claims on the page are properly cited and have a NPOV wording. This allows people to check articles that haven't been checked in a long time, and subdivides (by last checked date) the large number of pages into smaller, more manageable chunks. You would also, of course, need a "NeverChecked" version of the template. That's just my opinion of the most logical, usefull, and unobtrusive manner of dealing with this issue. Matt 16:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LastChecked template 

message: As I have seen no rationale for making this anything other than an administrative category, I have removed this category (once again) from being a subcategory of :Category:People.  I have done this because I don't want any user who comes across this category to have the idea that this category is for browsing, and thereby encourage the creation of any other huge categories.  If subcategories are to be added to this category, they should also be purely administrative categories.  Otherwise, it may confuse the user as to what this category is about.  I'm hoping one or two things can happen to this category:
#It gets renamed to some thing like :Category:* so that it does not look like a browsing category on article pages.  If this is unacceptable, perhaps it could be something like :Category:Wikibio or :Category:Watched bio.
#It can be moved to the talk page.  Perhaps a bot could be created to assemble a list of watched bios from the categories on the talk page.
Would there be any objections if this were brought up for RENAMING at CfD?  If not, what do peopel think the best name would be, and should it be the article or the talk page? :-- Samuel Wantman 20:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The style of the name :Category:Articles lacking sources - which suggests it is for editors rather than readers - tempts me with :Category:Articles about living people, but that does still make it look like a category for editors to browse. --Whouk (talk) 22:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Category:* is by far the best suggestion. The more this dreadful innovation can be obscured the better. Choalbaton 22:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, by that logic surely you'd want :Category:​.  If you added it before or after any other categories, it would just add an extra pipe and nothing else.  That is, unless you use IE, in which case it may be a box or question mark, but still not particularly obtrusive.(For techy sorts, the category name is a zero-width space, U+200B.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ugh. Adding a stray clickable character to the list would not at all be acceptable from a user interface perspective. And what of the dozens of other administrative categories? Should every article have a bottom that looks like *!@#$%^&(, etc?  If you really think it needs to be hidden, feel free to file a feature request to hide membership on article pages... although I wouldn't support such a feature at this time. --Gmaxwell 21:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: There are several bands in which all of its members are alive. Include them? --User:Carie 15:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say no. This is strictly an administrative category.  It should only contain articles about individuals.  If the members of the band that are still alive are notable enough to merit their own articles, then those articles (about the individuals) should be included, but not the article about the band.  --rogerd 17:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So we don't need to worry about band members' reputations if they are not notable enough for their own articles? Kappa 17:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd say that the category should be used. It might be misleading to readers if some of the band have died, but certainly if all members are alive, and especially if there aren't separate articles for the individual members on their own. --Whouk (talk) 19:26, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Per the discussion above about 'controversy' or 'event' articles about living people, I'd say it should probably be added. But we haven't really nailed down the scope of this category yet... I'm beginning to prefer :Category:Crap that could get us sued. -- nae'blis (talk) 15:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

text: That kinda defeats the point of having one big watchlist. Kappa 17:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bands (multiple people, musical groups)

message: Instead of allowing them to vandalize randomly, users consisting only of an IP address should be restricted to the task of adding this category to those 70,000 articles or whatever it is. That should keep those imps busy for a decade or so. >:) Wahkeenah 00:11, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. You need to pick a harder task for them.. this will be mostly done in a couple of months. :) --Gmaxwell 21:05, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A task for the a-nones 

message: My understanding of the law says that Corporations and Companies are legal entities and can also sue for libel or defamation. Is this true and should'nt we have a similar category like Existing legal entity? Lumos3 13:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corporations and Companies can also sue 

message: :Category:Very large categories
possible solutions, no don't go there! :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page) 14:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was being facetious - certainly has that potential though - will go the way of overpopulation very soon!. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page) 17:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not overpopulated if it's performing the function that is intended. See discussion above about why it would be unhelpful to split this into subcategories. -- nae'blis (talk) 16:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  nominate for inclusion in 

message: This category is no good -- too big, and thus useless.  Badagnani 18:57, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad category 

message: I think this cat. is useless... Go to quick deletation...
fizzerbear 20:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. This is possibly the most worthless category EVER! --CFIF 20:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useless 

message: Today I updated the list of people who have been born but (based on categories) do not appear to be dead. I'm now including things like 'year of death missing' as dead, so the list is somewhat shorter. On the next update I will also exclude people who are already tagged as living.. but right now there are not enough tagged for it to matter much. --Gmaxwell 20:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Updated list

message: I think it's outrageous to propose renaming the category to * in the interest of user friendlyness, and I have a very hard time believing that someone seriously thinks that would work. If you are concerned about a category with is less than completely useful for reader navigation (as opposed to editor work), then you can create a bugzilla ticket for a mediawiki feature which will hide such categorylinks from the articles. However, I would strongly opposed activating such a feature on Wikipedia because we expect a good number of user readers are also editors, and things like cleanup or stub categories are a way we can help rope people in. I doubt anyone is going to be shocked if they click 'living people' and get a huge list. --Gmaxwell 20:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what you did was inappropriate. Although the suggested rename was stupid it likely would've failed on its own merits.--T. Anthony 01:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The point of any of our polls areas is to have a discussion... But we've already been having a discussion here. The 'vote' style of the pages doesn't encourage much discussion, but in most cases it's fine.  In this case, it's insufficent because the decisions on this matter are strongly influenced by an often mistaken first impression (like a misunderstanding of the complete scope of the category namespace). By opening that 'vote' the conversation was shifted from the ongoing location (here) to a location which is less productive (because people giving 'votes' rather than talking), where more uninformed people participate, and less informed people participate. In short, the creation of that nomination completely subverted the ongoing discussion. I welcome a discussion on the category name here, but until consensus is formed here we will not be making any such changes.--Gmaxwell 01:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: *The aim is not so much to avoid shocking people as to avoid cluttering the list of categories on each page. Note that a category named "*" would still have the effect of roping in editors, it just wouldn't be in regular users' faces so much. Kappa 01:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *As far as I can guess hyperlinked * would only cause "what the hecks" from users as they click on it expecting access to the secret cabal page, yet they get this seemingly random list of articles. ... And how are we to get editors to remember that the Category:* isn't some oddball form of vandalism?  .. Also did you read my arguments against this above?  We have many internal use categories... Will the bottoms of our articles eventually look like *!@#$%^&(, etc? --Gmaxwell 01:24, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I kind of doubt this category would prevent libel. A huge number of names is unlikely to be monitored that thoroughly Especially as lesser known people, the ones where libellous statements won't get reviewed much, might not even be added. Plus I've heard of suits on behalf of dead people about defaming them. If an article says Leland Hayward was involved in the Kennedy assassination that could also be problemattic. I thought maybe this could have a purpose as "surviving people", old celebrities many think are dead but who are alive, but to deal with libel I think it'd be pointless. Most of the discussion here and there is "this is pointless, but the bosses want it."--T. Anthony 01:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been working some so far... As pointed out in previous discussions, it's quite useful for focusing our automated as well as human resources.  As far as the recently dead, we can (and do) use the '200x deaths' categories for those, since there are only a few we need to worry about. Recently dead is something of a concern but they tend to gather a little less libel from what we can tell.. In anycase, 'I don't think it will work' isn't much of an argument when you've got almost every person who works on Wikipedia full-time saying that it will be useful. :) --Gmaxwell 01:54, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The mass of people can be wrong. And if you check I'm among the most active "new" users. Still even the mass argument doesn't work because I don't see most everyone who works here saying it will be useful. I see Jimbo, you, and a few others. A great deal of the discussion here is people thinking it's dumb. A few of the supporters even just seem to say "Jimbo thinks it is good and Jimbo knows best" which isn't a valid endorsement but an argument from a fallible authority.--T. Anthony 02:04, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look carefully, I'm not talking about the 'masses' I'm talking about the group of a couple of people for whom this project is their full time job. These are the people who believe we need the category, and are some of the people who are already using it. As far as the 'argument from authority' goes, the fact of the matter is that Wikipedia is one of the most important things in Jimbo life, probably coming in just shy of his family and such... and we can count on him to be around a decade from now, still struggling with the challenges here, long after most of the newish users who oppose this have grown bored with this project or burned out. Alone that would be enough to give his perspective extra credibility. Once we combine that with his long tenure and his history of good judgement, there can be no excuse for simply dismissing his position offhand.  In any case, there are quite a few people other than Jimbo who support this category and whom are already making use of it. --Gmaxwell 02:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And do you honestly think that the people who work here is as a full time job will inspect 57,000 names on any kind of regular or semi-regular basis? That "it's worked so far", gee a whole ten days, proves nothing. That a few people concur with Jimbo is even less meaningful. Jimbo is the guy who has a whole :Category:Wikipedians who trust Jimbo devoted to him. He is the creator and deserving of respect for that, but for him to get consenting voices is unlikely to be too hard.--T. Anthony 03:32, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: The renaming discussion is merely an indication of the wide dissatisfaction of many about the prospect of a purely administrative category being visible on article pages. I strongly believe that the article pages should be optimized for readers - not for editors or administrators, since the vast majority of people will be reading, not editing. Thus things like this "living people" category should not appear on article pages for most readers. As I said above, I don't know the mechanism of categories, but if it is necessary for a category to be visible on the article page in order for it to exist, then I submit that some other mechanism must be found for the administrative purposes that this category was created for. I.e. it is untenable to have categories serving both an administrative and a navigation aid if categories that are useless for navigation are going to be introduced. - Hayne 02:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: The category is less useless for navigation than many other categories we have, even some which are intended for navigation. We have a great many administrative cats such as disambig, the various stubs, several forms of cleanup, controversial topics, and many others. At least no english speaker would ever be surprised by what they get when the click 'living people'.  Your post makes it sound like your believe that this category causes serious navigation problems compared to the rest of the category issues... If thats the case you would be mistaken, because we have much more serious problems. For example, almost every article is reachable from most of out top level category subject, it's meaningless to ask users to select history vs technology if they get to the same articles either way. --Gmaxwell 23:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My position applies equally to all those other categories as well - they are not something that aids the reader. Hence they should not appear at the bottom of articles, otherwise they add noise to that section of the page which should be reserved for links that aid the reader in getting to related articles. You keep referring to the top-level categories, but I don't care all that much about them. I am (at least at the moment) concerned only with the reader who has come to the bottom of an article and now is looking at the categories there as signposts to guide them to where they might want to go next. I think this whole thing is bringing to a head the problems with trying to make categories serve two masters (administrative purposes & navigation). It seems that two separate mechanisms are needed for these two quite different needs. - Hayne 03:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I think administrative cats (disambig, copyedit, wikify, etc) do cause confusion for readers, it's just that none of those others are on 14,000 highly-trafficked articles. This matter has brought the matter to a head in a very visible way, and if the developers can find it in their hearts to provide a user Preference for enabling/disabling "administrative categories", which should be in a separate section of the article (and disabled for non-logged-in users), that would alleviate a lot of the tension over this. I know zilch about Bugzilla or I'd file the request myself; also, maybe somebody already has. -- nae'blis (talk) 15:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I too want to know why it was short circuted. Someone on this page suggested * someone else said okay and then it was taken off this page to a vote. Thats what I call short circuted. As far as a rename, Sure lets discuss... No one has yet countered my point about * being more confusing to both readers, reviewers, and editors and that *!@#$%^&( at the bottom of pages would simply be unacceptable. --Gmaxwell 23:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Docu, there is almost no discussion there.. most people there are not even bothering to read the points made there, much less the discussion over here. Its utter nonsense.  Mass hysteria != consensus --Gmaxwell 03:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can't make your opinion law. Added to that most are opposing the rename and few are supporting any kind of delete. (I am and reading the stuff here only made me stronger in doing so, but few others are)--T. Anthony 03:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean? --Gmaxwell 03:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That the rename vote was going to fail anyway so your crossing out votes was unnecessary pettiness. This is in fact correct. The rename vote has failed, strongly so, and your crossing out votes was unnecessary. On another issue I'm wondering what categories are here that have 14436+ articles with 57,000 planned. Still as it will stay, and stay with this name, there's nothing to do but wait until it gets replaced with a more plausible/sensible idea. Personally I think that'll happen pretty soon, maybe in less than a month, but I'm not for certain when. (There is no "if" on this matter)--T. Anthony 14:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: May a libel suit legally be brought only by a living person?  What about by a relative or other  party acting on behalf of a deceased person?  If a libel liability is not limited to situations involving the living, the category might have to be re-thought.logologist|Talk 02:52, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the Wikipedia article on "libel," it may be "a malicious defamation... tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead."  (My emphasis.)  logologist|Talk 03:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The fact that a libel suit may be brought by the estate of a deceased person (and someone else here has said perhaps even by a corporation) is one of the reasons that watching a category that consists of articles about living people may not be our most productive course of action.  We may want to include a few deceased people whose pages may still be vandalized, like Martin Luther King, Jr..  We may want to include controversial companies, such as Enron, or even controversial institutions that contain a lot of information about prominent people, such as Supreme Court of the United States.  Conversely, we may NOT want to include all living people.  That is why a single character name for the chategory gives us more flexibility. Johntex\talk 03:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category rename

message: *As per January 30, 2006, 10:56 AM UTC, this category includes 14436 articles. JIP | Talk 10:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of articles 

message: Hey lets make a Category:Wikipedia Article page. That way we can make sure there is no vandalism by checking all the pages all the time! Zzz345zzz
:We already can do that, see the recent changes button on the left. The problem is that vandalism isn't equally damaging in all articles.  --Gmaxwell 03:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only reason this would be useless is if it weren't going to be put to use. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing Jimbo is the kind of guy who can get an improvement effort off the ground. Demi T/C 06:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Great Idea

message: I gather Mr Wales's justification for his ukase that this category must exist is to prevent a repetition of the defamation debacle involving the guy whose name I forget, the one who did not kill President Kennedy. I am reminded of the Satirewire piece about the US solving the Middle East crisis by parachuting cats into Belgium - there is no visible connection between the problem and the solution. If Wikipedia wants to prevent irresponsible, crank and defamatory edits to articles about living people, it ought set some standards about who can be a Wikipedia editor and enforce them. Wikipedia is infested with cranks and cultists of all kinds, and does nothing to protect the work of serious editors against them. The only surprise is that it's taken this long for someone to seriously sue us. Mr Wales ought to be directing his mind to Wikipedia's findamental structural weakness, rather than devising absurdities like a list of 50,000 people. Adam 04:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The aggrieved party was John Seigenthaler Sr..  logologist|Talk 03:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thankyou. Of all the hundreds of people (possibly thousands by now) who did kill President Kennedy, we had to name someone who didn't. Adam 05:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The wrong solution to the problem

message: User:Jhs at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 January 23#Category:Living people to Category:* suggested that we use a(n empty) template instead of a category, and monitor the template's Recentchangeslinked.
# Is there any problem with doing this instead?
# If not, why didn't I think of it?  Good grief.
This seems to be a better solution than categorization, since it just doesn't look as weird.  It would only show up to editors. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could a potential template be at Wikipedia:Persondata as suggested above in the section Not a list and/or template?, or would we want to create an entirely new template? EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:06, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use a template instead? 

message: The category pages now roughly go as follows:
 1: A'Hern - Alanaseva
 2: Afanassiev - Alexandre
 3: Aleandro - Anderson
 4: Anderson - Arbuthnott
 5: Arbuthnott - Attenborough
 6: Attwood - Baker
 7: Baker - Barrie
 8: Barrie - Bećković
 9: Beckwith - Berger
10: Berger - Biolay
11: Birch - Böhmer
12: Boehrs - Bourdon
13: Bourdon - Bridge
14: Bridges - Bryant
15: Brychczy - Buttafuoco
16: Butterfield - Cantwell
17: Cânu - Castiglione
18: Castillejo - Chesnais
19: Chesney - Cleese
20: Clegg - Conran
21: Conran - Crawford
22: Crawford - Dainelli
23: Daire - de la Garza
24: de la Hoya - Devon
25: Devon - Domínguez
26: Domínguez - Dunlop
27: Dunlop - Elder
28: Eldritch - Ewald
29: Ewell - Fernández de Kirchner
30: Fernández - Folta
31: Fonda - Frieda
32: Friedeberg - Garcia
33: Garcia - Giertych
34: Gies - Goodale
35: Goodall - Green
36: Green - Gutović
37: Gutteridge - Handzuš
38: Hanegem - Haugen
39: Haughey - Herndon
40: Hernández Enriquez - Holden
41: Holden - Hudson
42: Hudson - Inglethorpe
43: Inglewood - James
44: James - Johansson
45: Johjima - Joubert
46: Jourdan - Kastor
47: Kasugi - Key
48: Key - Klaschka
49: Klasnić - Krahmer
50: Krajicek - LaGrossa
51: LaHara - Larsen
52: Larsen - Lee
53: Lee - Lichtsteiner
54: Licko - Lomberger
55: Lombi - Lynch
56: Lynch - Maharaj
57: Maharishi - Marion
58: Marioni - Matisoff
59: Mato Adrover - McGrath
60: McGrath - Merchant
61: Mechant - Milutinović
62: Miluţ - Moore
63: Moore - Müller
64: Muller - Naughtie
65: Naumann - Nilson
66: Nilssen-Love - O'Mara
67: O'Marra - Opala
68: Opdal - Pálffy
69: Pálfi - Paulón
70: Păunescu - Peterson
71: Peterson - Plant
72: Plante - Preysler
73: Price - Rafferty
74: Rafko - Reiher
75: Reid - Rinnan
76: Rinpoche - Rolland
77: Rollins - Ruiz
78: Ruiz - Samonte
79: Samp - Scheer
80: Scheffler - Sell
81: Sellers - Shimizu
82: Shimizu - Sivek
83: Sives - Soames
84: Soares Cameiro - Stadnik
85: Staff - Stoll
86: Stoll - Sutton
87: Sutton - Tankary
88: Tanneberger - Thiessen
89: Thijs - Tommasi
90: Tomosaka - Turner
91: Turner - Vandereycken
92: Vanderlyde - Violetta
93: Virdee - Wamsley
94: Wan-ju - Weld
95: Weldon - Wiles
96: Wilford - Wogan
97: Wohlin - Yazel
98: Yazov - Zigomanis
99: Žiljak - Zyuganov
If we make, for example, five subcategories, then they would go roughly like this:
# Aaa - Con
# Coo - Hol
# Hom - Mer
# Mes - Sel
# Sem - Zzz
Or, even more roughly, like this:
# A - C
# D - H
# I - M
# N - S
# T - Z
JIP | Talk 15:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subdivisions