Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Archive 5

message: The examples given at  the arbitrary inclusion definition are non-round numbers, and unexceptional thresh-holds: is it also the intention of this guideline to prohibit categories that collate those who share the distinction of having crossed a threshold figure (typically a power of ten or 5 times such a number), which marks a significant acheivement?  This would include :Category:300 hits club and :Category:Footballers with 100 or more caps, both of which are currently listed for deletion.  Personally, I am undecided: if all numbers are deemed to be arbitrary, then categorisation of million/billionaires, and even centuries and decades, would have to go; on the other hand, is the 100th/1000th/100000th iteration different in kind from the one that preceded it? Kevin McE 11:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * But we do have a category :Category:Billionaires and related sub cats. All potential cfd's? UnitedStatesian 17:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I don't know about just deletion, but definitely listify. The criteria seems to be spread across several different monetary denominations. Though if that were fixed, I might vote "Keep". - jc37 14:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbitrary inclusion criterion or Significant Thresholds? 

message: There seems to be a dichotomy between those who are looking to hone categories into encyclopedic taxonomies and those who are looking for a tagging system in which they can do keyword searches.  The more we push at removing overcategorization, the more there is a need for a simpler tagging system.  If we can answer that need, it might make everyone happier.  Towards that end, I've written up a proposal to do keyword searching based on wikilinks.  Please take a look.  I'm calling it Wikipedia:Link intersection.  Comments would be appreciated.  Thanks, -- Samuel Wantman 06:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links and categories 

message: I've been reading Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Eponymous_categories_for_people and noting with satisfaction that many inappropriate eponymous categories have been deleted. One thing I'm not sure about, with the exceptions bit, is the example of the biographical daughter articles in :Category:Jan Smuts. Surely the series of biographical articles are best grouped using an article series box, which already exists? Namely, Template:JanSmutsSegments. Smuts' also lost his categories, but that's a separate issue I'll deal with elsewhere. Carcharoth 18:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction. Smuts hadn't lost any categories. It was the daughter articles, which I've now added to :Category:History of South Africa and similar ones. Carcharoth 19:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eponymous categories (once more) 

message: FYI I reverted a change by Kingboyk today to the eponymous categories section. He tried to add the following subsection -
(A second exception to the rule against eponymous categories is) where Wikipedia's coverage of the person in question needs to be split into multiple subcategories in order to fit into the existing categorisation system. The main examples of this are musicians and writers, who generally have subcategories for their works. For example, John Lennon was notable both as an author and as a musician. :Category:John Lennon contains :Category:Books by John Lennon, which is a subcategory of :Category:Books by author; :Category:John Lennon albums, which is a subcat of :Category:Albums by artist; and :Category:John Lennon songs, which is a subcat of :Category:Songs by artist.
That, however, is not actually an exception to the rule.  The reason is because all the subcategories he mentioned can easily be accessed from John Lennon's main article, meaning that John Lennon's article serves as the main navigational hub to peruse both his books and his albums.  The fact that he authored both books and albums is therefore not in itself a reason to create an eponymous category for the man.  Dugwiki 19:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Incorrect. John Lennon is not an album. --kingboyk 19:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't say John Lennon is an album. I said that :Category:John Lennon albums and the list of John Lennon albums are easilly accessible from John Lennon's article. You don't need the :Category:John Lennon for that purpose. Dugwiki 19:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I would be interested in the way you think these eponymous categories are being used that is not being taken into account. -- Samuel Wantman 22:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: And to reply, I'm not "foisting" anything on the community.  All I do is explain how I logically think things normally work, and other editors are free to agree or disagree with my assessments.  In this particular case, I saw a change to the guideline that hadn't been previously discussed here. So I reverted the undiscussed change and also explained some reasons why it seemed like a questionable alteration to the article.  I'm not "foisting" my opinion on anyone, though - I'm just maintaining the status quo in the document pending discussion.  If it turns out that editorial consensus wants that change, then so be it. But it hadn't even been discussed one way or another at the time I reverted it, and so far from the above and below comments it sounds like the reversion may end up sticking. Dugwiki 19:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverted addition to the eponymous people exceptions 

message: There seems to be a move to delete categories covering interdisciplinary fields and areas at the moment as being a form of overcategorization. These fields cut across other more narrow scientific fields in a wide-ranging manner, relating topics that may at first sight appear unrelated. However, much can often be learned from relating different fields, taking the best from one field and applying it in another, for example. I certainly think that Wikipedia should not be biased against such fields and categories covering such areas just because they are wide-ranging and thus may be considered by some to be "overcategorization". See Call for Deletion for :Category:Complex systems and Call for Deletion for :Category:Systems, for example. What do other people think? — Jonathan Bowen 16:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interdisciplinary fields and categories 

message: I think such categorization isn't worth the trouble. Living melting pots (people with multiple ethnicities) are especialy hard to categorize. For instance "African-American wriers" do not "write" in a uniform way. The written text may be about "African-Americans" or a sci-fi book not involving any "African-Americans" or even humans. 
If someone is an African American writer. It can be categorized as being an "African American" and the Writer's preferred format, genre, language, country (nationality). 
As for religion of the writer, that would be irrelevant unless written works are about religion which would make religion the genre. 
-- Cat chi? 14:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnicity/Race/Religion in categorization 

message: I have added the following to this section. I believe it reasonably reflects consensus as expressed in the results of numerous CFDs addressing each of the category types:
:This guideline should also be considered for categories named after families, groups, television series, films and film series and books. Examples: Sports broadcasting families, ZZ Top, American Dad!, Honey I... films. Otto4711 00:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have a problem with the proposed addition.  The reasoning behind why eponymous categories should be avoided for individual people also presumably would apply equally well to groups (eg musical groups), television series and individual films.  Basically if a main article serves sufficiently well as a navigational hub to peruse article links about the topic then you don't also need in addition to that an eponymous category that serves the same purpose. Also I believe that this same reasoning has been applied successfully to articles that aren't just about individual people in cfds over the last couple of months as noted by Otto above.  So despite JC's somewhat vague comment above, there might actually be some consensus for this already in related cfd discussions. Of course, that's just my opinion. Please feel free to disagree (and I'd be curious if JC could expand more specifically on why he thinks the proposal is "too broad". What categories would be disallowed by the addition that should be allowed?) Dugwiki 15:30, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

text: That's a straw man. Otto is correctly noting that certain classes of categories have a pattern of getting deleted through community debate. If you disagree with that I suggest you list those categories at WP:DRV. >Radiant< 08:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well you closed this one as keep. There are plenty of other counter-examples to Otto's Tim! 17:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well Tim, that's why it's a guideline and not a policy. There is nothing that suggests that this is an iron-clad Rule That Must Be Obeyed. All that the addition is that the same guideline that should be thought about for categories named for people should also be thought about for categories named after things like TV shows. It's hard to understand how a reasonable person can disagree with advice to think about something. Otto4711 19:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. I think you're mischaracterising this page, and how a guideline should be interpreted. WP:IAR is policy, but one that should be used only when appropriate, and should not be cited as an "excuse" for a multitude of exceptions. We agreed above that this page is to be a reflection of WP:CFD, not as a place to "push an agenda". So if I take your response at face value, then your additions to the page aren't appropriate at this time. - jc37 18:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what "agenda" it is that you think I'm trying to "push" here nor do I understand what WP:IAR has to do with anything as no one else seems to have mentioned it. It seems pretty obvious to me that the categories of the type that I mentioned are being deleted with pretty solid frequency in one CFD after another, despite the one or two odd exceptions. Since this is a guideline and not a policy, my addition based on my observations seemed reasonable. Honestly, it doesn't really make any difference to me if it's included or not since the community is deleting the categories as they come up so if the addition is so controversial that it engenders rumblings of "agenda-pushing" then y'all can continue the discussion without me. Otto4711 19:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Whoops, time to backup a bit. I was responding to you and User:Tim! at the same time, and apparently my intent was confused due to that. My apologies. I was reiterating about the agreement above, not specifically suggesting that you were "agenda-pushing". I mentioned this specifically since that has been User:Tim!'s concern about this page in the past. The comment about WP:IAR was in response to how you were characterising how a guideline should be interpreted. But in re-reading your comment, perhaps I misunderstood. Would you like to clarify? - jc37 20:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

text: It is true that the larger a category the more likely it is that you can't reasonably use the main article for navigating subarticles on the topic.  However size in and of itself isn't actually the question.  For example, you still shouldn't create an additional eponymous category for an author who has written a large number of books if all those books are already going to be in his list of works and in his subcategory of "Books by author".  Similarly you don't need an eponymous category for a director who has a large number of films to his credits since his film list will almost certainly appear in the article anyway.  But generally speaking very small eponymous categories are likely to be deleted since it isn't hard to fit a small number of links within the main article. Dugwiki 17:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm ok with that change.  TV series, bands, films, people, video games are all pretty much handled the same way now when it comes to having an eponymous category. Most of them don't need one, and the few exceptions are for those that have a particularly large or varied number of associated articles that aren't easily navigated from the main article.  Dugwiki 17:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added to eponymous people categories 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Categories are different from articles. -- Kendrick7talk 20:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soliciting [[WP:ESSAY]] feedback 

message: This is a proposed guideline for categorising redirects, following on from the discussion above, and intended to document current practice and suggest best practice in other areas and indicate where categorisation of redirects can be misleading. The current state of the guideline is here (though there has been edit warring over in the past over what this says).
Please add comments below. Carcharoth 11:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Great start.  Yes, I think this should be worked on at its own page and quickly linked to many places. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 21:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd love to put this on its own page, but I'm stuck on where this falls between Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Categorisation. As this applies to all redirects, but not to all categories, would moving the discussion to Wikipedia talk:Redirect might be a good first step? Carcharoth 22:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is hard to work out text on a talk page.  There is no collective space to edit.  How about moving it to Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects and inviting people from Wikipedia talk:Redirect and Wikipedia talk:Categorization? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 22:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Done. Proposed text moved to that page. Discussion bits moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects. I'll send out the invites at those other pages, and stick something on the Village Pump and a few other places I can think of. Carcharoth 23:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed guideline for categorising redirects 

message: Is this a good start at explaining and laying out some of the issues involved? Would there be enough interest to move this to its own page and start editing and discussing it? Carcharoth 11:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Great start.  Yes, I think this should be worked on at its own page and quickly linked to many places. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 21:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd love to put this on its own page, but I'm stuck on where this falls between Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Categorisation. As this applies to all redirects, but not to all categories, would moving the discussion to Wikipedia talk:Redirect might be a good first step? Carcharoth 22:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is hard to work out text on a talk page.  There is no collective space to edit.  How about moving it to Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects and inviting people from Wikipedia talk:Redirect and Wikipedia talk:Categorization? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 22:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Done. Proposed text moved to that page. Discussion bits moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects. I'll send out the invites at those other pages, and stick something on the Village Pump and a few other places I can think of. Carcharoth 23:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I removed a bunch of articles from subcategories of :Category:Australian television series by network (such as :Category:Seven Network shows) because they were not in fact produced for, commissioned by, or first shown on, those networks. For instance, I removed the American shows Stargate SG-1 and Ghost Whisperer from :Category:Seven Network shows. I used edit summaries like "removing Category:Special Broadcasting Service shows -- SBS merely show(ed) this program, and have/had no role in its production", which I thought to be quite self-explanatory. I felt that this was a beneficial move for several reasons.
Firstly, and primarily, categorising all shows that have been broadcast in many countries by each and every broadcaster that has ever showed them results in overcategorization. This is very much in the same spirit of the following part of Wikipedia:Overcategorization:
:"Categories should not categorise performers by their performances ... because performers typically are in many different productions, so their articles can become cluttered with a huge number of categories. Since lists can provide this information with more detail, often in the article about the performer, the categories are not needed."
If it is considered okay to categorise by TV network in each country a TV show is shown then, for instance, The Bold and the Beautiful would have 22 TV network categories, just going off the countries listed in the article alone. This would be vaguely akin to categorising movies by which countries they have been theatrically released in, at least for many of the popular US shows.
Secondly, I've just noticed that the parent category in all this is called "Australian television series by network". Including non-Australian shows in subcategories of that parent category is wrong.
Unfortunately,  evidently saw it another way, and went through all these 70 or so category removals I made and undid them all, without any indication why he or she was undoing these edits, and without responding to my message to his or her talk page requesting an explanation.
I'd like some guidance here. Was I right to remove these categories from these articles? - Mark 04:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe you were right. It's overcategorizing. Many shows have been on numerous networks: it's not notable to list them all in the categories. List it in the article (if it's notable), and that's that. Categories should be for important things, not just anything and everything that can be crammed into the bottom of the page as a category. RobJ1981 04:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: TV shows should (in most cases) only be in the category of the network which made the show.  Syndication, etc, should not be represented by categorization. --After Midnight 0001 04:51, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The categorisation of, for example, Stargate SG-1 and Ghost Whisperer in :Category:Seven Network shows, is not appropriate, as they are not "Channel Seven shows". Channel Seven didn't fund them, or have any role in their making. Maybe, for example, Bert's Family Feud could be categorised into such a category, as it was Ch. 9 who were the original purchasers of such a program, and brought it to the masses (and maybe, eventually, another network overseas). But we're not going to categorise it as a "NBC show" if, for some (unknown) reason, they bought it. Applying the reciprocal for US-originating shows, such shows like CSI and Heroes should not be categorised into Category:[Australian TV network of your choice] Network shows. This is even more so, as US shows (which are the most famous, generally) are shown in so many countries that categorising them into each individual countries' network of shows is over-doing it. I agree with Mark on this one. Daniel 05:55, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I, too, agree with Mark and I've rolled them all back. Many of these shows are broadcast in dozens of countries around the world and sometimes even on multiple stations within a country (for example, Keeping Up Appearances has been broadcast in Australia on the ABC and Channel 7) and the decision to categorise them in this way needs a clear consensus because it has huge implications for category management. Sarah 07:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorising shows by TV network 

message: I recently came across :Category:Avril Lavigne, and it has several biography articles in it. Some for her bandmates, and one for a person she is dating. Is this necessary? The article states things such as relationships, so why categorize it? Imagine if Avril had many famous relatives: they would just be jammed into her category as well. This seems like a case of overcategorization, but I wasn't sure. If this is indeed overcategorization, many people categories probably need to be looked at and cleaned up (as I'm sure the Avril category isn't the only one like this). RobJ1981 07:17, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, and very many of the subcategories of :Category:Categories named after people (itself a bizarre category: why such self-reflexivity?) seem to violate Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Eponymous_categories_for_people.  I've just nominated one of these subcategories for deletion: see my Gabriel Garcia Marquez proposal.  Though if my previous experience is a guide, I suspect I'll be told I should have proposed deleting the entire super-category, or at least to have proposed multiple deletions at one time.  (See this example and this one of being told such things.)  So I thought I'd at least raise the issue here.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 12:38, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The parent category :Category:Categories named after people is fine because there are some exceptions to the general rule against eponymous categories.  So this parent is useful for housing the ones that are ok.  Therefore just keep nominating the specific ones that don't look ok for deletion and don't worry about the parent or doing an umbrella nomination. Dugwiki 14:48, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the encouragement, Dugwiki.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 16:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories for people comment/questions

message: Ooh. I feel ill: :Category:United States Navy state-related ships. Is it me, or is that categorisation scheme based solely on trivia about the names of the ships? It seems to me that the category names are convoluted and easily misunderstood. I think :Category:United States Navy ships with names associated with a state is a better naming convention, but when category names get that long you just know something is broken somewhere... :-) Incidentially, I also came across the various destroyer categories, which can be easily mis-read: :Category:Korean War destroyers of the United States and :Category:Destroyers of the United States just read like the worst forms of category name telegraphese to me. Is there a guideline somewhere to minimise this sort of "try and squeeze as much as you can into a category name, but still make it so short that it isn't quite clear what you are referring to" problem? Carcharoth 01:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See the Dec 27th discussion ... I agree, but there was no consensus. -- Prove It (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this overcategorisation? 

message: Can we remove or tone down some of the explicit examples in the "performer by performace" section?  Some of them gross me out.  Dr. Submillimeter 13:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I had forgotten having that discussion with you. Please remind me which ones you have/had concerns with, and why. (While Wikipedia is not censored, I don't see why we can't give some leeway for palatability reasons, if nothing else.) - jc37 14:01, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can we just remove the references to "spit take" and "anal sex"?  While sexual descriptions in general do not bother me, these two seem particularly vulgar.  I would prefer not to feel nauseous when I read a guideline page, and I am guessing that the average Wikipedia user reading this page does not necessarily want to see hardcore porn terminology, either.  Dr. Submillimeter 15:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You may want to actually read the Spit take page (it's a classic comedy bit). As for Anal sex, I thought that was the least offensive of the porn cats which were deleted last year or so. If you can find a better/less offensive one, I'd also appreciate it : ) - jc37 21:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (I was distracted by other discussions.)  Now that I know what a "spit take" is, it does not sound as vulgar as I first thought.  (Given the close placement of the term to the anal sex term, I thought "spit take" was a porn term as well.  Maybe the section can be rewritten to avoid this problem?)  Dr. Submillimeter 17:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (Parenthetical-I totally understand.) - How do you propose that we we re-write the examples? - jc37 08:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If spit take was removed from the list, then it would look OK.  The list already contains enough examples anyway.  I also suggest shuffling anal sex to the end of the list.  Dr. Submillimeter 08:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The idea was to try to show an example from as many different types of performance, to exemplify its all-inclusivity. However, the re-order makes sense for the casual reader who might not click on the links. Look better? - jc37 10:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Dr. Submillimeter 11:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphic references in "Performer by performance" section 

message: There is a proposal Wikipedia:Overlistification to create a guideline similar to this one but which deals with lists. My idea was to prevent creating multiple guidelines that deal with essentially the same subject, and expand this one to include lists. I imagine that lists would have more relaxed criteria. Your opinion is appreciated. CG 22:13, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expand this guideline to lists