Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 9

message: Wikipedia has asked to categorize the page on Cowbois ac injans, but can someone explain to me how to do this. (Cepb 13:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notice

message: Wow!  Did anyone know this was about to happen?  Is this documented anywhere? -- Samuel Wantman 22:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. Pretty interesting. I just noticed now and then recalled seeing your edit summary here. older ≠ wiser 01:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

text: And wow again! This should make life a lot easier JQ 02:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI, I asked about this at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Show as a tree / Show as a list in Catgegories. Tim Starling provided a link to a post on wikitech-l. older ≠ wiser 12:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

text: BTW, I seemed to see several features, some of which have disappered now. First there was the "+" bits that appeared next to the category names, which is still there, but there was also a "Show as tree" and "show as list" option which seems to have gone now. It would have been nice if things like this were discused centrally in a highly visible location. Carcharoth 16:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah. From Tim's post: "You can click "show as list" to show it in the old display format. This additionally sets a cookie so that further requests will show a list by default (except pages cached as a tree on the client)." So that explains that. Carcharoth 16:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The 'show as list' option seems to have disappeared - and I find the tree configuration very difficult to navigate. Is it possible for users to choose list instead of tree? DuncanHill 18:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks - it seems to make more sense now :) DuncanHill 09:48, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Show as a tree / Show as a list 

message: I'd like to create a category to the effect of :Category:Government office holders in the United States facing elections in 2006.  Beyond simple information, this could perform an administrative function as all of these articles will need to be updated with the election results (whether positive or negative) by the end of the year.  This system could be extended to future elections as well, so that it's always clear when someone's term of office will end.  Any suggestions as to name, or whether it's necessary to subdivide by country and/or office?  Postdlf 03:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No suggestions on name, but subcategorizing (probably by state) would be good; also subcategorizing by whether this incumbent is running. - Jmabel | Talk 19:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds similar in intent to the (relatively) newly created template:update after.  I'm not sure using categories for this is necessary. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Suggestion on the name: :Category:Government office holders in the United States eligible for election in 2006, as "facing" seems a bit vague and pov. Just a thought - ♥ Her Pegship♥ 19:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2006 elections 

message: If I were to create a category for articles that discuss two interrelated concepts that are opposites (such as A priori and a posteriori, Alpha and Omega, or possibly even Time stretching and pitch shifting) where in the hierarchy would that fit? Moreover, would it be considered useful? –Unint 04:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't see it being useful to a general reader; in a case like this it is sometimes useful to ask: what exactly is the real-world problem you are trying to solve? That is, what would drive someone to be looking for this? - Jmabel | Talk 23:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  An abstract concept 

message: Should a subcategory be put in every possible category that the category's main article could go into? For example, :Category:Elvis Presley is in a bunch of categories that the Elvis Presley could go into, including some that are a stretch. Complicating matters, the article is in some of the same categories and also in some different ones. -- Kjkolb 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely not. :Category:Categories named after musicians is the only appropriate category. Mirror Vax 06:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Placing a subcategory in every possible category that the category's main article could go into 

message: I went back over the progress of Template:CatDiffuse and the related use of Template:Verylarge. Based on the discussion results over the last month, I went ahead & merged "Overpopulated" with "Verylarge," and based on the following criterion, only :Category:Hurricane Katrina is classified as "Verylarge:" the other 11-12 categories were either candidates for catdiffuse, or "verylarge by design," and tagging those categories with anything has been generally rejected as redundant. I therefore promulgated the following...
*  should be used for one-time cleanup
*  should be used if people are likely to keep adding to the category
* Category tagging is pointless for template-driven categories that cannot be recategorized.
I invite people to participate in WP:ʃ to further optimize Wikipedia as a whole.
Cwolfsheep 02:38, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three-prong approach to category sorting 

message: Categories named after television series are being placed into all the same categories as the articles about the television series.  This is creating a mess in many parent categories as these eponymous show categories are being mixed with actually significant subcategories making browsing difficult and confusing (One example is :Category:Sitcoms).  It also leads to unnecessary duplication.  This was happening with eponymous people categories too, and consensus was for those cats to only be placed in :Category:Categories named after people or one of its subcategories.  I want to do the same for television series by creating :Category:Categories named after television programs and removing all the excess cats from these categories that are already included in the article, where they belong.  I just wanted to make sure that this is not a bad idea before creating and populating the category.  --musicpvm 03:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories named after television programs 

message: I recently nominated a category for speedy renaming (:Category:Towed Water Sports to :Category:Towed water sports), and I noticed that the category page information had been moved in this edit here. This appears to have been a cut and paste move. Is this really the right way to do this? I thought the right way to do this sort of thing was to use the 'move' function, which moves the page history and preserves the attributions of those who created the category in the first place. I may be wrong, as I see that there is no 'move' tab at the top of category pages. An earlier example is :Category:Disaster, where I contributed to the blurb and to putting it in the right parent categories, etc. This was later moved to :Category:Emergency management. As can be seen in this edit, Cyde's edit summary credits me by saying: "Robot: Moved from Category:Disaster. Authors: Erikssond, Carcharoth, 82.43.124.245, BD2412", but that is it. The page for :Category:Disasters was deleted, and so I can no longer review my contributions to this area as it has disappered from my contributions list. Similarly, for the current example, the page history for :Category:Towed Water Sports, seen here, will be lost if that page gets deleted. It will then be nearly impossible for an ordinary user to find out who originally created and categorised the category. Have a look at the current page history for :Category:Towed water sports, shown here. The edit summary is hopeless: "move info from old category page". This begs the question: which old category page?! (think of someone reading this in 5 years time). I would have asked the editor in question, User:Chidom, but there is an "away" notice on his page.
To sum up, I have recently noticed an increasing tendency for poorly thought out moves and uninformative edit summaries, often destroying the correct attributions for a series of edits on Wikipedia, or making it nearly impossible to correctly trace the history of a page. I suspect this is far more widespread than just the examples I have found. This goes against the letter and spirit of Wikipedia and GFDL. Can anyone suggest what can be done about this? Carcharoth 08:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Categories do not have a move function.  All you can do is cut and paste.  --Kbdank71 14:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like Kbdank says, it's pretty hopeless trying to deal with categories.  The best you can do is put the old name of the category in the edit summary as well as the authors, and if someone really needs more attribution info, they'll have to get an admin to recover the deleted revisions :-(  Cyde Weys 16:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

text: PS. What about the guidelines for edit summaries when moving category pages? Do such guidelines even exist? If those were made clearer, would it avoid the uninformative edit summaries like the one I quote above? Carcharoth 17:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For a non-speedy category rename, we link to the discussion page in the edit summary like this, but for speedies, there is no discussion to link to. --After Midnight 0001 17:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

text: As an addendum, one bright side is that if moving of (empty) categories is enabled, it should then be possible to "fix" c'n'p moves after the fact, by the usual history merger process.  Alai 23:30, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although if a category is empty, there would be no move, just a delete.  --Kbdank71 06:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I meant if the category had been emptied in order to facilitate the move.  I realize there's then a slight chicken and egg issue, if one wants to avoid redlinks during the move, but if the move tab were enabled, the histories could then be merged.  Alai 05:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean the articles removed from the category or the heading text removed?  Because if it's the former, then this is a moot point; articles added or removed from categories are in the article history, not the category.  And if it's the latter, most categories don't have more than a sentence or two explaining what the category is, and only a handful of edits in the history.  --Kbdank71 17:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming of categories - edit history lost! 

message: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/category:Coachella_Valley_films >.
I do not know the correct location f/ this question:
"Please, why was this page deleted?"
Many movies & television shows emanate from Coachella Valley & Riverside County.
Thank You.
hopiakuta 19:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[:category:Coachella_Valley_films]]

message: I've noticed some inconsistency in the use of  on stubs.  Is is desirable to apply this to stubs tagged into a stub category (logically enough), but lacking any "permanent" categorisation?  It seems at the very least to be a little misleading, and probably ultimately unnecessary (since it's unlikely the article would be "destubbed" before acquiring suitable categories).  If something along these lines is thought to be a good idea, might a more specialised cleanup tag and category be more appropriate, on the pattern of , etc?  Alai 02:41, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Though it's not absolutely necessary, I do recommend adding the  tag to stubs, yes.  It's a good reminder that a category is still needed, and yes, unfortunately, during my scans of Special:Uncategorizedpages, I routinely run across destubbed articles that nobody bothered adding a category to.  :/ --Elonka 21:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That latter is especially unfortunate.  The two cases do seem to me to be distinct, though, and both could be huge in size, if populated on an energetic or automated basis.  What about an  category for articles with stub tags, and no "permanent" categories at all, and an expansion of the use of the specific-type-of-category-missing?  For example, WP:ALBUM has , which I've a pending task-approval to populate at WP:BRFA.  Alai 18:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undercategorised vs. uncategorised 

message: While browsing, I happened to notice that The Dave Brubeck Quartet had been sorted under "D" in its categories.  I thought this was obviously wrong, so I changed it to sort under "B".  However, then I started to wonder: what about things generally named after people?  Should they all be sorted by the person's last name?  What about, for example, John Hancock Insurance (currently sorted under "J")?  Should it be moved to sort under "H"?  I could go either way on that one.   And should some comment about proper sorting be mentioned on this page, since people working on an article about a thing may not think to follow the link at "sorting names of people"?  -- Xtifr tälk 01:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My own opinion is that people be sorted by last name, but things by their name.  The name is John Hancock Insurance, so it should sort to J.  You'll never see it listed as "Hancock, John Insurance".  As it's not named "Brubeck, Dave Quartet", so it shouldn't be sorted under B.  --Kbdank71 06:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In the case of JHI, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I also tend to think that it's sort of a special case.  The Dave Brubeck Quartet is filed under "B" at my local record store.  In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen it listed under anything but "B", anywhere.  And if I were searching for it, "B" is certainly where I would look first.  If you can find someplace (reputable/notable) that files it under "D", I might concede that you have a basis for debate, but otherwise...  Xtifr tälk 10:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like I said, that's just my opinion, and how I sort things.  I really don't care that much about it to raise a stink, so you sort them the way you think is best, I'll do the same.  --Kbdank71 16:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I think it would be better to clarify the matter, to avoid confusion, inconsistency and revert wars, but perhaps we need a domain expert—someone trained in library science—to provide a canonical answer.  Surely this is not the first time the question has come up, and there must be some genuine standards somewhere.  I will point out that my name is "Chris Waters", not "Waters, Chris", that Pope Gregory IX is not named "Gregory 09" and that the Crab Nebula is not named "1952", but those are all sort keys that are (or in the first case, would be) used in Wikipedia.  The expression that appears after the pipe is a sort key, not a name, and should be judged on its merits as a sort key, not a name, IMO.  So the proper question, in my mind, is not, "is that how it would be listed", but rather, "is that how it should be sorted".  Xtifr tälk 21:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your name may not be Waters, Chris, but lastname, first name is generally accepted when sorting people.  I have no idea why the Crab Nebula is sorted as 1952.  But company names are generally sorted by the company name, regardless of how they got the name.  If I'm going to look up John Hancock Insurance, I'm looking under J.  Big example:  open up your yellow pages, and browse through it.  Every company is sorted alphabetically by name.  Even the ones named after people.  That said, you might want to open an RFC for this, seeing as it's just the two of us here, and we have differing opinions.  --Kbdank71 16:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

text: DBQ is a special case, especially in record stores: people will look under B for it bcz they are looking for Dave Brubeck recordings, of which many will be DBQ ones. But in the context of the Cat in question, the focus is not on the person but on the thing (group). (Of course, i'm clueless in this area; i'd have looked under Ono, Yoko for Electric Light Orchestra. Sheesh!)--Jerzy•t 15:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  sorting: things named after people 

message: Does anyone know of a good way to get accurate lists of every article in very large categories (5,000+ articles)? AWB often leaves 1-2% out, which causes minor problems for something I'm doing. --W.marsh 16:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm surprised to hear that AWB has this problem.  Has it been reported as a bug? -- Samuel Wantman 17:55, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Martin is aware of it, but I'm not sure what if anything is being done to fix it. --W.marsh 18:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I might be able to help, though only if a somewhat out of date listing (time of last db dump) would suffice, which possibly defeats the purpose of the exercise, since it might be even less accurate than the AWB listing.  Also, my copy of the db isn't online, so this would only be practical for occasional queries.  Otherwise, you might see if you can adapt something in the pywikipedia framework for this purpose, or some other scripting based solution, to automate traversing the category in much the same way a browser does, manually.  Alai 01:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, but I need the listing updated about twice a week... the database dumps aren't updated nearly that frequently from what I understand. --W.marsh 02:10, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Not nearly' is about right, at the present time.  In theory it's weekly, in practice it's more like every three.  The toolserver seems to be even worse.  That pretty much rules out any sort of dump-based solution, so I'm afraid you're stuck with some sort of scripting-based solution.  (There's probably others, if Python isn't your poison.)  Alai 02:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category listing 

message: Anyone know what's going on at ?  I can find no entry in the deletion log, nor any cat-page history, but there's a large number of cats that have this as a "phantom parent", and many others than link here.  Is this being caused by a rogue template, or something?  Alai 01:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see, as you all were:  caused by a rename in progress.  I've bluelinked it, to spare others similar headscratching.  Alai 02:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A minor mystery 

message: Hello.  I'm planning on making a category for the Warriors book series, but there is already a Category:Warriors.  Can someone suggest a title for the planned category?  DoomsDay349 01:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category for Warriors book series 

message: Ok, I am not up at all on the whole technical aspect of wikipedia, but what IF we set up the stub template to require a subst tag, and then included the parent category of the stub category in the subst'ed text?  Thus, when you type:
:
you get
:this article about a musician is a stub.  You can help expand the stub by yada yada yada
:Category:musicians
Or better yet, I am not sure if we can do this, but if we can use the subst tag to return ANOTHER template text AND the category text, so that typing:
:
you get
:
:Category:musicians
This entire proposal may be techincally possible, but practically unweildy as well.  Just an idea, as it would greatly speed the process of categorizing articles.  Any responses?  --Jayron32 04:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First impression:  not wise.  We'll just end up with lots of "categorized" articles that are 3-10 levels too high up in the hierarchy, such as someone in "cat:musicians" who should really be in "cat:Argentinian hip-hop artists."  This is fine where the hierarchy is well-maintained by local editors who will quickly step in to re-categorize the articles, but that's seldom the case.  We'd just be hiding the categorization problem, not solving it.  -- Visviva 04:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough.  I am involved heavily in the brute force categorization project myself, and I always try to put an article in the most specific category possible.  I was just mostly thinking outloud.  The people working on the categorization drive are all hard-working, well meaning editors, and I was just trying to come up with a solution to lighten the load a bit.  I see your point though, that this really just hides the problem, it doesn't solve it. --Jayron32 04:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The first scheme is a very bad idea:  stub code is not a pretty sight when subst'd into an article, and it would make re-stubbing and other maintenance tasks much more painful.  The "Russian doll" templates would work, wouldn't require any changes for stub-sorters or anyone else, and is something that wouldn't need a huge amount of consulation to do (unless there's a rebellion at TFD after you've done this for 3000+ templates...).  However, as Visviva indicates, there's no real "win" in doing this:  the categorisation will be at best incomplete, and will sometimes be adding to an already large "catdiffuse" problem.  Though those are obviously on-going issues anyway.  (Mind you, note that the likes of  is pretty high up the stub tree, never mind the categories as a whole, and isn't the best starting point for auto-adding cats.  Most stub types correspond to much lower, and more reasonably like, portions of the cat tree.)  Alai 06:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

text: This seems to already be under active discussion -- though I can't lay my hand on the page right at the moment. :/  Obviously it will still be hard for new editors to comprehensively categorise their articles, unless we add a positively huge amount of "mixed initiative" to the system.  (User, tentatively:  ?  WP:  So it's a person, eh?  OK, We'll be needing a nationality, occupation, year of birth category, and whether they're living, or else when they died.  User, rolling eyes, closes window.)  Alai 06:22, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

text: What's "and the like"?  If you're thinking of (other) maintenance categories, the key difference is that stubs are sorted by topic, in a manner that deliberately parallels the 'real' categories, whereas the average cleanup resource is not.  The question is not, "should sorted stubs be also be put in a permanent category", to which the answer is, I think everyone agrees, "yes".  (Come to that, ideally they should be completely categorised, which is another kettle of fish entirely from "put a category on it and call it done".)  Rather, it's whether non-permcatted sorted stubs should, as a pragmatic matter, be put in the same maintenance category as entirely uncategorised articles.  For myself, I think to equate the two would be a very strange choice of priorities, especially given the size of the task(s), as I've illustrated above.  Alai 02:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that as a matter of priorities, the articles that are not in any sort of category, not even a sorted stub category, should be done first. Grouse 23:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I try to help out on the categorisation project, but it's huge, and dispiriting. Although not the perfect solution, I think Jayron's second proposal would be a real help, and much better than the current situation. --Sepa 23:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal for new stub template, erm, thingy

message: Note: This was cross-posted at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies
Category:Terrorists was up for CfD, which passed as Delete. In a deletion review, I proposed an alternative categorization that would merge several top-level categories into one. My proposal is at User:Irixman/TerrorismProposal. Before I am bold and just do it, I really want some feedback -- should I? What do y'all think? :) Please direct any and all comments to User:Irixman/TerrorismProposal#Comments -- Irixman (t) (m) 16:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Terrorists proposal 

message: I notice that  has as a subcat , which seems a little dubious.  Furthermore, I notice a lot of articles have only the former, as if it implied the latter (or admittedly just through common-or-garden omission).  I suggest the latter cat be moved out of there, and into a top-level by-institution category, and if there's anyone working on caregorisation of these, suggest they add the missing "nationality" categories.  Alai 04:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd go along with that.  Alai 22:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Nationality" vs. "location" categories 

message: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung was recently marked as uncategorized. Much to my surprise, we don't have a :Category:Music criticism. Nor do we have :Category:Criticism in which to place it. (There is a :Category:Music critics, which doubtless belongs in :Category:Music criticism.) I've done some category work myself, but not a ton, so I'm probably not the one to work out where something this large belongs. I'd appreciate if someone else can work out where this appropriately would fit into the existing category tree or whether something equivalent is already there but I didn't think of the correct term. - Jmabel | Talk 07:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The best existing category is probably ...  i.e., the perm-parent of the stub-cat it was already in, anyway.  I see there's a , so if there's a deep reason we don't have other criticism cats (or as you say, what else they'd be called) it escapes me too.  I also notice that  is in , which seems wrong.  I think I'm going to go ahead and create it under  -- I did toy with , but that seems slightly over-specific, if somewhat characteristic.  Alai 08:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oddly missing categories 

message: Some legitimate concerns have been raised above about the use of  on articles that have been stub-sorted.  I think there is a real problem with thinking about categorization in a binary way; in practice, it's more of a process, or even a cycle.  The usual stages of categorization, I think, go something like this:
:0. The article is in no categories of any kind.
:1. The article is not in a descendant of :Category:Fundamental; it is in general maintenance categories only.
:2. The article is in at least one descendant of :Category:Fundamental, but these are topical maintenance categories (probably stub categories).  (not sure if "Living people" would count here).
:3. The article is in at least one true category, but this category is not as specific as it should be.  For example, an article is in :Category:Bridges when it should be in :Category:Bridges in North Korea.
:4. The article is well-sorted in one hierarchy, but is not sorted (or not fully sorted) in another. For example, a bio article may have birth and death and nationality categories, but no profession category.  
:5.  The article's categorization is absolutely perfect ... for the moment.  But as the category structure continues to evolve, it will inevitably slide back to stage 3 or 4.
Thinking about it this way, our one template seems a little crude.  I wonder if we should have a second template,  or something, which could be placed on articles in stages 2-3 -- that is, something instead of  to place on articles that are in stub or over-general categories only.  Or do we perhaps already have such a template somewhere? -- Visviva 03:47, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's largely in line with much of my thinking (some of which I've given people the dubious benefit of further up the page).  I'd suggest we have at least one additional template (and cat).  More specifically, I'd think at a minimum:  , as at present, to be applied to anything categorised only on a maintenance-operation(s)-required basis;  , to be applied to any sorted stub template lacking a "permanent" subject category;  and a number of more specific "category missing" maintenance categories by type of subject.  Films, books, singles, albums, etc lacking a publication/release year, genre;  people lacking a YoB/YoD/occupation/nationality cat;  anything that can be identified as a "required category" on a per-class basis.  Some of these exist already:  there's , and things like  (which probably more precisely means the information is missing from the article, so might argue for yet-another-distinction).  "Notfullycategorised" is a probably best mainly as a top-level umbrella, being not very informative or helpful by itself.  Alai 06:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If implemented, it should require a description of the information that caused the template to be added.  Without this, someone could look at the article and not see what was missing in the eyes of another editor. Vegaswikian 07:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. -- Visviva 07:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text: That makes sense -- more specific tags for more specific problems.  Not sure how far we should go in terms of "sorting unsortedness," since ultimately such efforts are better devoted to actually categorizing the articles.  That may be something that needs to be looked at separately for each topic area with a diffusion problem.  At any rate, it seems clear that  would be a good idea. -- Visviva 07:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely per topic, that's the only basis it makes sense on; and either a diffusion problem, or just an axis-of-category-completely-missing problem.  The advantage of a "sorting unsortedness" step is that it could be automated fairly readily:  see my bot task item on populating the uncategorised albums (for starters).  Likewise, it'd be relatively straightforward to go a database query to get everyone in  and/or with the WPBIO talk-page tag (though I think the former was largely used to populate the latter) missing a year of birth category (etc), and then have a bot tag them as such  populating , say, or all 60K stubs with no perm. cat.  I agree that it doesn't make sense to do this by hand.  Alai 07:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

text:  I think tier 4's somewhat broadly defined. To me, an article that just has birth and death categories isn't really categorized, because there's no chance that anybody will ever find it (or, for that matter, go looking for it.) 3 and 4 often go together, not always because of negligence, but because the article just doesn't give enough information to categorize specifically, or because a specific categorization would require technical or specialized knowledge. I'm also hesitant about calling any article "perfect" in categorization; there are usually plenty of very specific categories that you'd never think would exist, but do. It's a process, as you said before, and much like the rest of Wikipedia, one that can always get better. Crystallina 05:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fairly said.  3-5 is more or less of a gradient -- or rather, stages 3 and 4 both describe different independent gradients -- and no one can ever be sure that an article has reached stage 5 without having perfect knowledge of both the article topic and Wikipedia's entire category hierarchy.  -- Visviva 06:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Yay!  :-) -- Visviva 06:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, my bot task trial has gone more than a week without adverse comment, so I'm going ahead with this, starting with the Novembers, of which there's a goodly chunk.  If no-one objects, I'll do the Octobers later.  Alai 17:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization as process 

message: This would be helpful in breaking up long lists of categories at the bottom of pages. e.g. for Arnold Schoenberg you might divide the categories as follows:

Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold

Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold

Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold

Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Arnold
This could display as:
Categories: American music theorists | Austrian music theorists | American composers | Austrian composers | Jewish classical musicians | Jewish composers and songwriters | Jewish painters
20th century classical composers | Modernist composers | Expressionism | Wagnerites | People with absolute pitch
Musicians who left Nazi Germany | Austrian refugees | Naturalized citizens of the United States
1874 births | 1951 deaths | People buried at the Zentralfriedhof
But nav-template style would work well for this:
Categories
American music theorists | Austrian music theorists | American composers | Austrian composers | Jewish classical musicians | Jewish composers and songwriters | Jewish painters
20th century classical composers | Modernist composers | Expressionism | Wagnerites | People with absolute pitch
Musicians who left Nazi Germany | Austrian refugees | Naturalized citizens of the United States
1874 births | 1951 deaths | People buried at the Zentralfriedhof
Comments? – flamurai (t) 09:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting idea. I can imagine a few complications (how do we handle cleanup tags, and such, which add categories from all the way at the top of the page?). But barring that sort of thing, I've developed a template solution you might find very interesting -- currently, the template only links to categories, but it could be easily modified to include pages into the listed categories (with sortkey and all). See User:Luna Santin/sandbox for an example of its use (permalinks: transclusion and template). Doesn't seem quite perfect, just yet, but may be worth exploring. Luna Santin 09:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Am I understanding this correctly?  You are proposing a software change?  I think this has possibilities, but I worry that there will end up being edit wars about category categorization.  -- Samuel Wantman 21:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should categories be sensitive to line breaks? 

message: I've been finding a seemingly endless amount of articles categorized in both parent and child cats.  For example, look at Category:Pennsylvania counties.
You will find the article Adams County, Pennsylvania appearing in both Category:Adams County, Pennsylvania and it's parent Category:Pennsylvania counties.
Is this a mistake or is there an exception that allows this.  Thanks, Gjs238 07:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This has been a contentious issue.  Please see WP:SUBCAT.  -- Samuel Wantman 19:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  articles appearing in both parent and subcats 

message: Does everything need to be categorized under every possible association that can be conceived for it? Look at Namibia. At this moment, it's categorized under:
*Countries of Southern Africa
*Countries of Africa
*Member states of the Southern African Development Community
*Countries and territories on the South Atlantic Ocean
*Member states of the African Union
*Niger-Congo-speaking nations
Does there need to be a category for Southern Africa in addition to Africa? Isn't the meaning of "Southern Africa" rather vague for classification purposes? If the set of countries chosen for this category is self-defining, then it serves no purpose anyway.
Of what use is the classification "countries and territories on the South Atlantic Ocean". Every fact doesn't need to rise to the level of being a category. How about the fact that Niger-Congo languages are spoken in Namibia? That can already be ascertained from the article, by clicking the links for the languages that are enumerated. Going in the other direction, the category stripe only leads to an ordinary page on Niger-Congo anyway. There isn't any need for it to be category. If every fact is explicitly categorized, every article is going to wind up having a zillion category stripes at the bottom. To the extent that most of these associations are notable, they'll already be covered by links in the body of the article. If they aren't, and if they're significant, then they should be.
What really gets me is exemplified by the subcategories underneath the category "Member states of the African Union". Banks of the African Union? Chairman of the African Union? African Union-related lists?
Some pruning seems due, or else the whole categorization process will reach absurd proportions. --Largo Plazo 15:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The links to those categories may not help people reading the article, but they do help people browsing the categories. --Smack (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories getting out of hand 

message: I find it useful when all new articles created without a category tag, automatically have a  template appended to them. Would save a lot of work we put in adding this template later. Not sure if this is the right page for this discussion though?? STTW (talk) 13:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the info, hope that the proposal gets through quickly. STTW (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: {{tl|uncat}}

message: I'd like to get some advice from those who have been intimately involved with the use an exploitation of categories in Wikipedia.
I have a proposal on the table Wikipedia:WikiProject The Simpsons/Proposal for managing song lists on Simpsons episodes which I suspect may be using categories in the way they were not intended.
I'd be very keen to know if this is considered a Bad Thing, or if it's a good use of categories. One of the respondants (on the talk page) expressed concern that it would create a large number (about 200) of categories with a small number (1 to 5) entries in each - this is because it's trying to be systematic use of categories so some extremes (a category with one entry) are a necessary by-product of it.
Please take a look at the proposal and let me know what's the "engineer's eye" view of the proposal, or if I should escalate it elsewhere. Thanks --Mortice 15:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think this is a good thing, and I have responded in detail here.  Thanks for asking for feedback.  Hopefully it will save us all a great deal of time and effort.  Your effort creating them, and ours, trying to get it removed. -- Samuel Wantman 01:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thankyou very much, that was exactly the sort of insight I've been after for the last few weeks while considering this implementation. I have an alternative plan (using a bot and not categories) which I'll now propose instead --Mortice 20:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for managing song lists (Simpsons episodes) using categories 

message: I've created the above, on the pattern of the existing , , etc, and started populating it from the US-bio-stubs.  If some people are interested in working through these to categorise the articles, I can find plenty more where those came from.  Alai 00:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps too many:  at the time of the last db dump, there were 12,934 "bio-stub" (and sub-types) with no non-stub category at all -- and that's no even counting those tagged with , or in other maintenance cat.  I live in hope that this will work as well as  and similar seem to, but this might not be the right level of "granularity".  If anyone here is wanting to work on a particular area of category, please let me know and I'll do what I can to facilitate.  Alai 20:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{cl|uncategorised people}} 

message: Check out this new proposed guideline.  Mostly the work of long-time CfD regular User:Radiant!.  -- Samuel Wantman 06:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Overcategorization]] 

message: I see that we have recently acquired a section called Keep cats out of the sandbox. Would this, perhaps be an appropriate illustration? - Jmabel | Talk 04:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cats and sandboxes 

message: I've been cleaning out :Category:Tasmania (moving items to sub-cats, etc) and found many which would be suitable for "Events in Tasmania" or something similar.  I couldn't find an "Events in Australia" or similar category to put it in, and :Category:Events didn't have an "Events by country" or similar sub-cat.  For the moment I have split them up (ie. sporting events are in "Sport in Tasmania") and I have seen "Visitor attractions in..." and "Festivals in..." used for other places.  I'm happy to create and populate :Category:Events in Tasmania if that is the best name, but is there a preferred naming convention that I should use? -- Chuq 03:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Events" categories 

message: I posted the following under the same heading in the talk page of the Association of Categorist Wikipedians (on the Meta website), but I think it is relevant to this talk page as well so I basically cut pasted it below:
 
With all due respect Categorists I think that the categorization system is not working because it is too complicated and difficult to understand for both the reader and the editor. It was intended to be a system but ended up becoming a chaos. The pages which explain the purpose and guidelines of the system are just too long, (I looked at them but felt daunted). The editors assign the articles to the wrong categories because they do not fully understand the system. 
Although I am a specialist in taxonomy and systematic biology I was not able to understand this system. Unlike biological classification which is hierarchical (each species belong to one genus, each genus to one family...etc never multiple relationships such as one species in two genera). Articles relate to on another in a multiple fashion creating a net-system that is difficult to represent. I find it difficult in particular to guess all the possible categories that should be included and many times I make a guess that sounds logical but I find that the category I thought of has never been created. For example, Libya is a member of the Arab League and the OPEC, the former is an established category so I guessed the later would be too but so far a category:OPEC does not exist. Why not?! I don't know. 
This system requires spending a lot of time (I am pessimistic on this point) from those who understand it and believe in it if it is ever to succeed. And it should be protected from editing by others, otherwise it is like having many banks issuing all sorts of banknotes simultaneously and randomly. A list of related articles on the article's page would be more useful to read and easier to edit. If the list is too long, it can be divided up under several headings. I have seen so far four systems on different computerized encyclopedias and this list system was the most simple and effective in my opinion. 
Please take all this as constructive criticism, I do share with you the view that there is a need for an effective system to help us make sense of the shear amount of information. Ahmed Elnagar 13:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah Wikipedia's software is very unforgiving when you use the wrong name or forget the "the" before "Petroleum" (I did try "opec", "OPEC" and "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries" all didn't work) but that's my mistake. It is surprising however, that while the category existed, those who created it didn't bother to link all member countries. This may give the visitor of Libya's page the wrong idea that the only international organizations in which it is member is the Arab League (or that the only members of OPEC are those which can be found on the category page). Check for example :Category:OIC countries (Organization of the Islamic Conference), the organization includes 57 member countries and on the category page I can see only 6 + the organization itself (which doesn't appear on top of the category list as it should). If you link to articles by a simple list as I suggested, the chances are better that a non-exact link will be corrected (by redirect), once you link to the organization's page you are sure that the list of members is complete. Ahmed Elnagar 00:42, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, actually finding the little blighters can be a... challenge.  Best plan is often to look at the "main article" if there is one (there is in this case), or a "sibling" article that should be in the same articles.  If that doesn't help, try navigating the category hierarchy, and if the worst comes to the worst, do a WP search, restricted to the "category" namespace.  Alai 16:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest in a case like that of "OPEC" to change the name of either the article or the category so that they match each other (in addition to creating redirects for both). I was confused when I saw that the alternative names of the organization eventually will redirect to "OPEC", and thought that this would be the best recognized name and the one that should be used for searching on Wikipedia. The same applies to the OIC (category and article inconsistently named differently). Ahmed Elnagar 17:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that there seems no good reason why the two shouldn't match.  On the "common name" principle, I'd suggest a CFR nom with target .  OTOH, having found either one, the name of the other isn't hard to find, given the categorisation and "main article" link.  Alai 18:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorism comes under constructive criticism 

message: I think there should possibly be a category for pregnant women. That is, women, with entries on wikipedia, who are currently pregnant. I don't know if there's one already, but I've never seen it. We have categories for loads of other things, so I think this one would be nice. I thought I'd suggest this first, before I actually went ahead and did it. Morhange 05:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Little or no encyclopaedic merit, and inherently temporal, and those lots of undue "labour" (sorry) to maintain.  Please don't.  Alai 16:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pregnancy 

message: This category is displayed the message that's it does not exist, when there are 2 entries in there.
And ideas?
I've read the help page on the subject and can't see whats wrong? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pjb007 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's because categories are populated automatically, but they don't "exist" as a page until they have been created and saved, with information on that page; for instance, their own categories, and a description of what is and is not included within the category. (Check out the Wikipedia:Categorization FAQ for more info. I went looking for the right categories to add yours into, and found that a category already exists to do what you want, with the name :Category:Universities and colleges in England; so you don't need to create a new (redundant) cat.   --LQ 14:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category that does not exist but does exist? 

message: So there's a small revert war going over whether :Category:African American basketball players and :Category:American basketball players fall under the duplication exception in Wikipedia:Categorization_and_subcategories. (Actually, it's not a rules discussion, but one user who insists that removing the players from the parent category somehow implies that they're not American.) I noticed that this exact parent-sub pairing is mentioned in the subcategorization guideline, but can't find any discussion of it whatsoever, so I'm not clear if this is a consensus guideline or simply one editor's opinion. I don't care which way we go, but in the absence of consensus, my instinct is to go against duplication. Thoughts? | Mr. Darcy talk 02:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I wrote the first draft of Wikipedia:Categorization_and_subcategories, and the issue was and still is somewhat contentious.  There was a huge amount of discussion about this which you will see if you look in the archives of this page starting about the beginning of 2005 and continuing to the beginning of 2006 when this page underwent an overhaul.  As I see it we have been in transition from an old policy that did not allow any duplication due to the inability to navigate large categories to a future that will have huge categories and the possibility of having category intersections.  I am an eventualist, so I'm trying to get us moving toward that future scenario. I wish we could all get over the instinct to go against duplication, and the basketball player example is a very good example of where duplication makes sense.  There are many good reasons for having a duplication here, which are outlined at  Wikipedia:Categorization and subcategories and also in Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality.  In general, I think we need to think more about the utility of categories, and less about their size or specificity.  If I were to look in a book that had a complete index or list of American basketball players, I would be shocked to find that all the African American ones were segregated in a separate list or index.  I would expect them to be in both lists.  There is nothing terribly difficult about browsing through huge categories, but there is something very jarring about having to look in several categories to find complete listings of articles when categories are used as indexes. -- Samuel Wantman 09:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: More than anything, I'm discovering how little I actually knew about the categorization guidelines. From that subpage on gender/race subcategories: Dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as :Category:LGBT writers or :Category:African American musicians, should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. You must be able to write a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) for the category — if this cannot be done, then the category is not valid. According to that blurb, :Category:African American basketball players should not exist. Is that really correct? I've seen that type of subcategorization all over Wikipedia and have almost certainly placed articles in such subcats myself. If it's wrong, we've got a lot of work to do to remove those subcats and reeducate editors. | Mr. Darcy talk 19:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I agree with you that "according to that blurb, :Category:African American basketball players should not exist".  I think an article, or part of an article could be written about the topic.  It could discuss the importance of basketball in inner-city black neighborhoods, the large percentages of players that are black, etc...  Saying that we "must be able to write a substantial and encyclopedia head article" might be too strongly worded.  Perhaps it should say that it "must be possible to write a valid cited article or substantial section of an article about this topic."    There are also exceptions to this.  A glaring one is many of the subcategories about nationality.  I think it would be very difficult to write an article or section of an article about Canadian biologists yet we have a category of that name and thousands like it.  As far as I know, there is nothing special worth mentioning about being a biologist from Canada as opposed to any other country.  There is a strong community consensus to have these intersection categories and they do serve a purpose and should probably stick around until the software can create these intersections automatically.  However, I strongly believe that the topic article level "Index categories" are more important than intersection categories, and should not be depopulated into non-topic-article level subcategories.  Please see this discussion above. -- Samuel Wantman 21:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I can't say I agree with that sentiment. The guideline says "must be able to write a substantial and encyclopedia head article." You are saying that it should say something different ... but it doesn't. Ergo, according to the guideline, the category should be deleted (and there's a CfD on it now, noted below). If you don't like the guideline, revise it according to the consensus, but until then, we need to abide by the text as it is written. | Mr. Darcy talk 04:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Guidelines are written to describe current practice and they evolve as current practice evolves.  Once written, they are not meant to become hard and fast law.  My comment was to point out that I don't think that sentence in the guideline exactly describes current practice, nor should it. -- Samuel Wantman 19:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

text: As the person who wrote most of the final guideline on that particular discussion, the intended reasoning was to apply specifically to controversial topics such as racial, gender or sexual orientation classifications. It wasn't meant for straightforward and uncontroversial groupings like "Canadian (occupation)". And perhaps the wording is unclear, but the intention is that it be possible to write a real head article about the particular grouping; nobody ever seriously suggested that the article has to already exist before a category can be created. And for what it's worth, I do have to agree with Samuel Wantman that an article about the role of basketball in African American culture is possible. Bearcat 00:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Subcategorization question

message: From the article: "Many editors feel that the space character produces the best aesthetic appearance when the category is displayed. Using a space or asterisk after the pipe is the customary way to categorize an article in a category with the same name"
I wish it was standardized to space. Maybe they could do a find for "[[Category:xxx|*" and replace it with "[[Category:xxx| " Zephyr103 08:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like it standardized that the space is used for eponymous articles and lists, and the asterisk is used for other entries that should be at the top of the list.  I'll look around and find an example of a category done like this. -- Samuel Wantman 09:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd certainly like to see some sort of standarisation, one way or another.  This sees a lot of use in stub categories, since one generally wants to have both the stub template and any sub-categories top-sorted, but which to use, and indeed even whether, is pretty ad hoc.  (A special case, certainly, but inheriting much of the confusion of the general one, methinks.)  Any sort of 'firming up' at all would be a good step.  Alai 17:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  My 2¢ is to stick with the [space] as the only pre-alphabet index, as I imagine anything else (incl asterisk) might prompt puzzlement. I've also seen "µ" (micro) used to categorize templates and/or the like; although (or perhaps because) it appears after the alphabet, I'm not entirely sold... Regards, David Kernow (talk) 19:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mu is the "standard" sort-key character for stub categories as they appear in permanent categories.  As it's one thing that we have managed to be somewhat consistent about, I'd rather factor it out from the "misc. top-sorting discussion".  (Well actually, I'd rather leave well enough alone entirely...)  Alai 19:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I think the [space] on its own (i.e.  ) and [space] followed by something (e.g.  *) could be used to create at least two sections before the alphabet but without displaying anything other than the [space]...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 05:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would only be one section, not two.  No division between all of them starting with a space, all indexed under the space character. Gene Nygaard 03:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The indexing for the members of this category (even though it's a red link) is what I had in mind. Yours, David (talk) 06:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: David Kernow's mock-up looks good, but I suspect that it will confuse the vast majority of people who won't understand how it got that way.  I don't quite understand why it displays that way and wonder if it is a bug that will disappear in a future version.  Perhaps this way will catch on, but I'm doubtful.  Perhaps for now the quidelines should make it clear that the top position should be the eponymous or main article, you should use a space to put things on the top, and we can let the rest sort itself out over time.  When it does, we can add more guidelines.  --Samuel Wantman 23:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm with SW on the spaces vs. the other spaces:  nifty trick, though.  I suspect that * is sometimes used because of the association with "bullets", whereas for example "!" looks that little bit more mysterious when it appears in that context.  I'd suggest we do one of two things:  either we reserve " " for main-article top-sorting, and use "*" for all other top-sorting;  or we use strings-starting with " " for all top-sorting, but using ensuring that main articles are sorted as the first such.  (Using " " only, as against " " followed by an alphabetic key.)  If the latter is thought to look better, due to the above-mentioned bug/feature, I suggest we ask the devs if it is indeed a "stable" behaviour.  Alai 04:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: space vs. *

message: Hi -- currently the African-American basketball players category is being [considered for deletion].  I voted to delete, b/c the AABP category is largely redundant with its supercategory of American basketball players.  Underrepresented populations are I think always useful axes to track (although I think we should do a better job of explaining why in our guidelines up front because some folks still don't get it) but representation within fields, activities, accomplishments, locations, etc., change over time.  For instance, African-American basketball players in the 1940s and 1950s (maybe of the 60s, i'm a little hazy on the history) is of interest in all sorts of ways.  Has the question of time-delimiting these categories come up anywhere?  ... I'm also thinking, for instance, of fields like "female lawyers" -- a novelty in the 19th century and first part of 20th century, and a worthy category, but only if it were time-delimited.  (IMO).  similarly women biologists -- we're now almost at the point, I think, where modern female biologists are too many for it to be a useful or interesting category. thoughts? --LQ 23:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  time-sensitive under-represented population cats 

message: I'd like to make the following change to guideline #8. It currently reads, Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category. A list might be a better option. I'd like to add the following sentences, A simple test that might help determine whether a category is appropriate, would be to ask whether the categorization could stand alone as a simple statement within the body of the article. For example, "XTopic is a YCategory". If it would require some kind of qualification, as in "Some people think that XTopic is a YCategory", the category might not be sufficiently self-evident.. My reason for proposing this change is that this would reduce the ambiguity around the words "unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial". --Lee Hunter 19:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wish it were that simple, but I don't think it is.  Categories are not always an "is a" relationship.  They are often, an "X relates to Y" or "the X article discusses Y".  I'll give you an example,  Matthew Shephard is categorized under :Category: Hate crimes against LGBT people.  None of the  articles in the category are hate crimes, they are biographies about victims of hate crimes.  In addition, in Shepard's case, his murderers were never charged with a hate crime, but his murder touched off a nationwide debate about the topic.  I believe his article should be in :Category:Hate crime without the "s", because the article relates to and discusses the topic.  Since "hate crimes" could be controversial and debatable, it should be defined as crimes where people were charged and convicted of hate crimes.  I make a distinction between topic categories and index categories (see my proposal above about category tagging).  If an article is put into an index category, it should fit the "X is a Y" distinction you propose.  If it is placed in a topic category, the topic category should be defined so that it is clear that being in the category is not a positive or negative assesment on the subject of the article.  What I'm trying to make clear is why we have categories like :Category:Racism and not :Category:Racists. The "racism" category is a topic category.  Being in that category does not make the subject of a biography a racist.  It might be because the person works against racism.  "Racists" on the other hand, would be an index category that would fail your test. -- Samuel Wantman 20:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed addition to general guideline #8

message: Please get rid of "no subcategories", and [+] when it has no subcategories when you browse the categories. It might take a bit of coding and server usage, but it saves time and makes it easy to see which categories have subcategories. Zephyr103 02:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You might want to search out the developer who added the [+] to the category listings.  I agree with what you are asking for, and suspect that it would take quite a bit more processing to determine whether or not to display the [+].  Imagine a category with 200 subcategories.  The code would have to look at all 200 subcategories. -- Samuel Wantman 02:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "no subcategories" and [+] when it has no subcategories 

message: I have a recurring problem when editors on their own, after no discussion, take on the task of diffusing large categories into smaller subcategories.  I am fully aware of how this used to be the norm, and necessary for technical reasons, especially with subcategories by nationality.  However, that is no longer the case.  Many perfectly fine categories are getting chopped into little pieces for no good reason.  A pure wiki system of regulating this does not work.  Unchecked, categories will be diffused into meaningless tiny overcategorizations.  It has been my understanding that the diffusion of large categories should happen only after there has been discussion.  Id like to formalize this as policy and propose that CFD be the forum for these discussions.  The problem is that unless this is caught early, it is huge task to undo or redo.  The policy should be "Depopulating of existing categories should not be undertaken without discussion at CFD".  There could be an exception for quick depopulation shortly after the category was created, and if it was created by the same person.  I'd go so far as to say I think that if depopulation continues after a warning, it should be a blockable offense.  Any other opinions?  Please respond on the CFD talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 01:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion about diffusing categories 

message: Not sure where to put this so if it should go somewhere else please let me know and I'll move it (or let me know where you moved it and I'll follow it).  I've been wandering around wikipedia adding house to diseases and disorders that turn up in the series House M.D., and I had a thought.  What about a category that can be applied to medical disorders, diagnoses/possible diagnoses/diseases mentioned on House?   Can I get some input on whether this would be appropriate or not?  Thanks. WLU 15:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sort of category is a Bad Idea, and it would likely be deleted in short order if you did create it. Ones key thing to keep in mind when creating categories is that they should be for defining characteristics of the articles. The fact that the disorders were included in a tv show is not significant enough to justify a category. - EurekaLott 22:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moreover, that a particular disease was used in the plot of a currently popular TV series is (IMO) not a significant enough fact to include in the article about the disease.  I think such references could be construed as advertising for the TV series (violating WP:SOAP), and they are certainly in the realm of trivial facts. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On the other hand, this could be view as improving the awareness of people about an obscure disease.  That being said, simply dropping that fact into an article on the disease or into a trivia section would not seem to be proper. If the article had a section on efforts to make people more aware of the disease, then adding a TV show that highlighted the disease could be OK.  Vegaswikian 19:55, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  House (TV series) 

message: Not sure where to put this, so I'll put it here: Would it be a good idea to create :Category:Human power, with subcat :Category:Human powered vehicles, and articles such as Treadle pump and Malian peanut sheller? It could go in :Category:Appropriate technology and :Category:Sustainable technologies. The problem is that anything that which is operated by hand could be put in (such as an egg-beater). It would be more useful to have items which are human-powered alternatives to common motorized items. Any thoughts? --Chriswaterguy · talk 04:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thinking about it some more, I've just added :Category:Human powered vehicles to :Category:Sustainable technologies. However, at some stage, it would be nice to have a category as described above. --Chriswaterguy · talk 05:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Human power? 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Samuel Wantman 02:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of Template:{{ucfirst:CatDiffuse}}