Category talk:Cricket

message: I put this on User talk:Securiger and thought it may be relevant here!
                                            Cricket history
                                                          \
                                   ----------------------Cricket                
                                  /                      /   /
                    Australian cricket--\    Cricket rules  / 
                      /                  \                 /
                     /                 Australia          /
                    /                   /                /              
                   /       Australian people            /
                  /         /               \          /
                 /         /               People     /
                /         /                   /      /    
       Australian cricketers                Cricketers
           /             \                  /    /
          /             Cricketers by nation    /
         /                                     /     
      Australian batsmen ----- Batsmen --- Cricketers by skill
        /                         /
 Ricky Ponting --- Tasmanian batsmen ...
:Mmm - I guess we should think about sub-categories (perhaps starting with the classifications used in list of cricket topics?), rather than dumping all cricket articles in [Category:Cricket].  -- ALoan (Talk) 17:21, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. I was thinking we should start doing this, at least for a Cricketers subcategory. But the amount of work involved was too daunting for me to start! But by all means, I'm in support of it if you want to get it off the ground. :-)  -- dmmaus 22:57, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well it will only be a day or two until most of the subcategories are created.  The good thing about specific groups, I guess, is that once someone is in "Australian batsmen" and you want to change some groups above that, you only need to change "Australian batsmen"'s category, not all the individuals.  I've already made some changes from the diagram above (eg. sportspeople between "Cricketers" and "People", "Australian cricketers" and "Australian people") --Chuq 23:11, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoa! I see you've started. Before you go too far, I think splitting players by skill is going too far. Who says who qualifies as a batsman or a bowler or an all-rounder? The boundaries are a bit too subjective for my liking. And besides, I'd rather look at a list of cricketers than a list of batsmen and a list of bowlers and so on. -- dmmaus 01:01, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Most cricketers who have existing WP entries have batsman, bowler, keeper or all-rounder in their intro paragraphs.  If it's border-line, they're an all-rounder :)  If still unsure, just list directly under cricketers! Chuq 04:02, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, okay. I guess I'll live with it. :-) --dmmaus 08:17, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: I've added categories to all the players in List of cricketers (except Tim Curtis, who looks like a vanity article to me). I'm now waiting for Wikipedia to update the categories so I can see how they look. I'm removing "by skill" from "Australian batsmen by skill" and "English batsmen by skill" because it's a redundant intermediate category that isn't needed (see diagram above). --dmmaus 01:13, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake... Tim Curtis did play Test cricket! pretty poor record though! --dmmaus 01:15, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: I'm not going to argue if you have time to sort it all out (!) but surely we also think we need some sub-categories to deal with things other than cricketers.  I think we could sensibly organise articles in sub-categories for, for example, bowling, types of cricket, cricket teams, and so on - as I said above, the classifications used in list of cricket topics would be a reasonable place to start, but amending the existing categorisations is non-trivial. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:12, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not convinced there's enough material to warrant further subcategorisation like that. Personally, I'd rather see 100 links in one category about cricket than links to 15 subcategories, each containing 6 or 7 items. If the number gets much bigger, sure, splitting them up could be useful to make it manageable, but I don't think it's too big just yet, although I'll concede much beyond 100 will start to get unwieldy. That's my opinion of course. Maybe we can tackle it in a few weeks/months when there's more articles (and we have more time)? --dmmaus 01:30, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Category tree

message: The essential purpose of this category is to act as the root for the entire cricket hierarchical structure within WP.  Using a methodical, structured, top-down approach, it should be relatively easy for any reader or contributor to locate a relevant sub-category at the appropriate level of the structure.
Ideally, there should never be more than about a dozen sub-categories under one category at any level (in cricket terms, the limit is the XI with perhaps a 12th man added on!).  That being so, the ideal position in this folder is to have a reduced number of categories by means of merger or relegation.
It is very important to appreciate the difference between the generic and the specific.  This folder is very much generic and so it should not contain pages that are appropriate to specific categories.  This principle applies throughout the structure.  So, whereas it is entirely appropriate to find the generic article Cricket in this root folder, it is not appropriate to find Ian Botham here: try :category:Cricket people for starters.
The proposed structure, as described in the various discussion pages is as follows and this will be implemented from Sat 1 July 2006 subject to feedback received.
3 proposed pages:
* Cricket
* Portal:Cricket
* Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket
10 proposed main categories (level 2):
* Cricket by country (1) – each country has own cat at level 3 (status quo except that level 3 is for holding cats only)
* Cricket culture (2) – standalone repository to capture the miscellany, the peripherals, the trivials, the wider picture, etc.
* Forms of cricket (3) – first-class, Test, local clubs, under-19, etc. – histories of each to be in sub-cats
* Cricket images (4) – standalone repository to be stored directly under root for reference purposes
* Cricket (in the) media (5) – anything re books, broadcasting, journalism, film, computers, etc.  Currently proposed for renaming.
* Cricket organisation and governance (6) – admin, scoring, venues, comps, equipment, awards, Laws, records, stats, etc.
* Cricket people (7) – players, umpires, writers, administrators, etc – every article to be re an individual 
* Cricket skills (8) – batting, bowling, fielding, keeping, captaincy, umpiring – onfield activities only
* Cricket stubs (9) – standalone repository to be stored directly under root for reference purposes
* Cricket terminology (10) – standalone repository to be stored directly under root for reference purposes
The page List of cricket topics is to be considered for proposed deletion, as is List of cricketers in the people category.
The history category is currently under comprehensive review and most if not all articles and sub-cats will be redeployed at more appropriate or relevant locations in the structure, especially under country, people and competition categories.  This is subject to handling of the generic history items.
----
This has become something like Topsy that has "just growed".
It has been evident to me for some time that there is no structure to the categories;  that there are stray articles all over the place; that categories that were designed for generic items and as "holding categories" for relevant sub-categories are simply being used as additional bases for specific articles; and that what we have here is another fine mess.
What makes it worse is that I have been trying to get other cricket people interested in using WP for cricket reference and their feedback has been critical to say the least.
We MUST have a top-down structure to categories and we must stop piling things ad hoc into useless lists.  If we have a structured categorisation, the lists will be redundant (they are anyway) and readers will easily be able to navigate.
I have identified 28 categories under Cricket and there should only be 10!  As a rule of thumb, I would say that the number of sub-cats in one category should be a cricket team (plus perhaps an umpire) and that an XI (or a dozen) is the limit.
Here are my proposed level 2 categories under the level 1 Cricket "root":
* Cricket by country (1) – each country has own cat at level 3 (status quo except that level 3 is for holding cats only)
* Cricket culture (2) – one-off to capture the miscellany, the peripherals, the trivials, the wider picture, etc.
* Forms of cricket (3) – first-class, Test, local clubs, under-19, etc. – histories of each to be in sub-cats
* Cricket images (4) – repository to be stored directly under root for reference purpose
* Cricket (in the) media (5) – anything re books, broadcasting, journalism, film, computers, etc.  Currently renaming this category.
* Cricket organisation and governance (6) – admin, scoring, venues, comps, equipment, awards, Laws, records, stats, etc.
* Cricket people (7) – players, umpires, writers, administrators, etc – every article to be re an individual 
* Cricket skills (8) – batting, bowling, fielding, keeping, captaincy, umpiring – onfield activities only
* Cricket stubs (9) – repository to be stored directly under root for reference purpose
* Cricket terminology (10) – repository to be stored directly under root for reference purpose
Apart from the two in bold, all the above are existing categories.  Apart from the generic article Cricket, the portal and the WikiProject, there should be no articles or pages held under the root category.  
Level 3 should be the main sub-categories.  For example, under skills at level 2 the level 3 cats would be batting, bowling, umpiring, etc. as above.  Generally, there should be no pages at level 2 except for the standalone categories like culture, images and stubs.  A couple of the level 2 cats like country and people should not have pages on level 3 either as level 3 is where they split up into countries and occupations respectively.
The worst categories of all are history, teams and Tests which frankly need completely restructuring or demolishing.  They are a disgrace and I am especially embarrassed by history as I started it and put most of the original effort into it.  History is carrying surplus articles that should be reassigned or else have sufficient specific categories already and should not be in a generic category like history.  History had eight sub-cats and six of them were cross-cats that were already adequately located elsewhere, especially under the country or competition headings.  The other two history cats were small specific items that should both be elsewhere: Olympics under competitions and Years under first-class cricket.
I have already started sorting out much of this mess but I will not change the root category's sub-cats until members have had chance to read this and respond to it.  Pending any feedback, I will change the root cat on Sat 1 July.  --Jack 05:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket to which contributions on this page have been moved.--Jack 04:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purpose