Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 8

message: I'm trying to show documents that fall within two categories, does anyone know if there is an easy way to provide this?
I have a lot of design documents and want to be able to create a set of pages that contain only matches that are assigned to a set of categories.
For example, I have document types in categories of "Design Docs", "Test Docs", "V1", "V2" etc.  Users want to be able to quickly bring up a list of V2 Design documents.
Is there a better way I should be categorising my documents for this type of groupings?
Apologies if this is a simple request!
(Just checked archive and will look into some more of the search options...someone mentioned using that for multi-cat searching)
*I'm not really sure what you're asking, and from your description I'm not sure that it's something that belongs in Wikipedia, but I'll take a stab at your question.  An article is put into a category by putting a category tag on it, i.e. :Category:Example category, and there is no reason that you can't put more than one category tag on an article.  Does that help?  --JeffW 18:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Category intersection is not currently supported by the MediaWiki software.  There is a tool called catscan that runs on the toolserver copy of Wikipedia content, see m:User:Duesentrieb/CatScan. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Show documents that fall within several categories 

message: As discussed above, I've been working on :Category:Economics using the JEL classification codes. I've gone furthest with :Category:Mathematical and quantitative methods (economics) including a lot of links to relevant articles at JEL_classification_codes#Mathematical_and_quantitative_methods_JEL:_C_Subcategories. The process showed up a lot of gaps in article coverage. Kevin kzollman made a nice template, which improved the look.  I'd appreciate comments, suggestions and criticism. JQ 07:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Economics categories

message: A good number of the above discussions involve whether articles should be placed in a certain category and its parent category or categories. This is becoming more and more of a problem for me. I recently got yelled at for removing redundant categories from some articles (i.e. I removed [category:foos] (real name not used) from articles that were in [category:Barian foos]).
I think that this would no longer be a problem if it were possible to "flatten" categories: to have the option to list all articles in a given category, including the ones in its subcategories. Cat Scan on the toolserver does that used to do that before it stopped being updated, but it's not a part of Wikipedia itself. The feature request  on Bugzilla is the closest thing that I could find there. Ardric47 02:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category Flattening 

message: I think I brought this up before but I can't find it.  When a list becomes too long, a natural thing to do is to make individual pages for sub-ranges and link to them from the main page.  When this is done, often it is undesirable to have the subpages be categorized in the same category as the master page.  Logically, they're just extensions of the master page and operationally, all access to them should be through the master page.  
So, is it ok to leave the sub-pages uncategorized?  If I do, they'll get picked up on someones list of uncategorized pages and someone will attempt to add categories to them.  Should I create :Category:Pages that purposely don't have categories?  If I did, what category would I put it in?  --JeffW 02:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I have no problem with leaving subpages uncatgegorized.  They should have a link to the main article prominently displayed.  Another possibility is to make it truly a subpage like List of foo/A-F.  I don't know if there is any policy about this, but there are already many Wikipedia pages that already do this like WP:RFA.  So be bold and suggest a new guideline about subpages and see what type of reaction you get. -- Samuel Wantman 07:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure that I saw a policy stating that true subpages aren't allowed in the main space.  Do you mean to edit an existing guideline page and see what happens, or create a new page and put it on WP:RFC?  I'm not sure what the best way is to propose a new guideline.  --JeffW 13:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, subpages are deprecated. I have no idea where that policy is, maybe Wikipedia:naming conventions. -Will Beback 20:49, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:Subpages, True subpages are not functional in the main namespace. However, you can have article with slashes in the title, which can look exactly like a sub-page, but without the associated functionality. older ≠ wiser 21:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorizing sub-lists 

message: I would like to know where it is possible to discuss the policies about ethnicity? Categorizing the French people as an ethnic group, although it clearly is not (see the entry and the talk page: France is a nation-state historically founded on various ethnic groups and which considers this indifferent; it only cares about the individuals', not about their alleged memberships to this or that ethnic group). This is plain confusion between nationality and ethnicity. Such confusion may lead, in certain type of situations, to ethnic cleansings. Therefore, I think we should discuss this, and limit the ethnic categorization stuff to articles in which it is really necessary. Concerning biographies about living people, I'm sure many living people dislike being categorized like this. To categorize people is to divide them, this is not a goal for an open society like Wikipedia. We must be careful, lest an encyclopedia, instrument of enlightenment, becomes a hate-monger propagandist. Lapaz 02:28, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnic categorization and [[ethnic cleansing]] 

message: I've proposed we split some of the text for the header of :Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention into a Wikipedia: page. Please discuss or leave your oppinions at the talk page. SeventyThree(Talk) 01:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page split of Category:Wikipedia categories in need of attention 

message: If an article has its own category, should that cat always be put in a higher level cat, in place of the article itself? For example, if Mick Jagger were to have his own category, should the category or the article go in the Rolling Stones's cat? Would this rule always apply, or only in certain circumstances? Like, would we also put Mick's cat in the English singers cat, or might it be more appropriate to use his article in this (or any) instance? Is there consensus (or even majority) opinion on this? -Freekee 01:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This causes many disagreements. Unfortunately, I avoid messing with things like that, because people who have been working with certain subjects have their own special way of doing things. Often, I get reverted or yelled at when I try to change something. See Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Category Flattening above, too. Ardric47 02:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  cat vs. article in cat

message: Has categorising redirects been discussed here? I've started a debate on this at the Village Pump. Please add your comments there, or ask for the discussion to move here. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorising redirects 

message: I would like to subcategorize the entries in :Category:Newspaper publishers (people) by nationality. What is the proper name for the resultant categories? Would it be :Category:Newspaper publishers (people) by nationality with subcategories such as :American newspaper publishers (people)? The idea of the "(people)" part is, presumably, to separate these categories from publishing companies, which are categorized under :Category:Publishers and its subcategories with no disambiguator. This leads to the question of whether the "(people)" disambiguator is necessary on further subcategories of :Category:Newspaper publishers (people) at all, as these will, if I'm not mistaken, follow the Fooian foos convention, whereas categories for the companies will follow the Xes in Foo convention. Is this correct? — BrianSmithson 19:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Re :Category:Newspaper publishers (people), I'm not sure that disambiguation parantheses are encouraged... in which case, perhaps names such as :Category:People who publish newspapers and :Category:Newspaper publishing companies needed...?  Regards, David Kernow 01:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming categories help 

message: On the 'categories to delete' page, I see what I view as abuse of the page.  An editor list one category name, says he does not like it, proposes to delete an entire class (perhaps hundreds) of categories that are named in the same fashion.
A half dozen or so editors come on the page to agree; a few disagree and then presumably all the hundreds of categories will soon be deleted.  Some of the dislike of these categories are stated in POV terms--no matter, right?  Is this how things are supposed to be? Thanks Hmains 02:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Harold!  I think deleting a whole raft of categories must be very rare; I don't recall such an event since I began following WP:CfD a few months ago. But I guess that, yes, if such a vote was successful, that's what would happen. There could always be a subsequent vote to reinstate deleted categories if/when people realised what had happened, which yes, if successful, would nullify the original action. I guess that's Wikipedia's "modified consensus system". If such an event perturbed enough people, I'd hope it would then become less likely to be repeated; also, there are people like yourself trying to flag potentially undesirable outcomes before time and effort is spent on them. Thanks!  Regards, David Kernow 14:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories to delete

message: Input is requested in a discussion taking place on :Category talk:Deaths by throat cancer, which was created as a subcategory of :Category:Cancer deaths. —Viriditas | Talk 12:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Most deaths are not important enough to warrant categorisation. Please see my responses on that talkpage. JFW | T@lk 12:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Deaths by cause

message: In case anyone else is interested, there is a debate on categorising massacres (or not) going on at Category talk:School massacres. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massacres categories debate 

message: Recently, at Talk:Haditha massacre#Categories, I had this guideline quoted at me: "the general rule is that there should be 60 articles in a certain set before you subdivide into a new category". Does anyone know where this comes from? It seems overly prescriptive to me, and missing the point about how there is sometimes a need for large and small categories. Carcharoth 13:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Making these decisions by counting articles seems like the wrong criteria.  The most important criteria for categorization is "usefulness".  Some categories are useful if they have 10 articles and some are useful with 3,000. -- Samuel Wantman 09:59, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: My guess this is someone (half-)remembering the size guidelines for stub categories (contained in WP:STUB), and mis-applying them to the (permanent article) category space.  Alai 01:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "60-article guideline"? 

message: Where are the guidelines on categorising eponymous categories? This goes far beyond just the eponymous people categories (see :Category:Categories named after people - this was once a mere 50 or so categories - now it is 120 categories!). There are also numerous eponymous categories in other areas, which I will in general define as categories named after articles. I want to make a plea here on whether it is possible to take a list of article names (including redirects), and to twiddle the list so that it gives a category list (ie. turn  ARTICLE into :CATEGORY:ARTICLE)? Then there can be an attempt to solve the problems being caused by these categories (this method won't find all of them, but it should find most of them).
*The bigest problem is that people are nearly always categorising the eponymous categories as if they were the articles. This is, as I've said before, wrong on so many levels. It leads to articles within these eponymous categories ending up connected to the wrong parts of the category structure.
*These eponymous categories often end up being broad portal-like categories or overview categories, lacking a tight focus. They are also very similar to "see also" or "what links here" for the eponymous article (often also the lead article). Often, if no eponymous article exists for the category, an overview article could be written based on the articles in the overview category. This is true of most categories, but is even more true of these categories. Also, unlike a list category, these portal categories often duplicate the efforts of "article series" boxes/templates (I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing).
So, do we want to stop people inappropriately categorising eponymous categories, and how? And how can a list of eponymous categories be generated? Carcharoth 10:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've nominated a few eponymous categories for deletion  on the June 25th CFD.  EVERYONE! PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE DISCUSSION AT CFD and then we can put together guidelines for what stays and what goes. --Samuel Wantman 06:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be a general consensus that eponymous categories are ok as long as there are enough articles or subcategories to go in it.  I'm more concerned with how the category is linked up with other categories.  I think it is confusing if the parent category contains both the category and article with the same name.  I think it makes sense if the parent category contains only links to articles, because only some of the articles may have eponymous categories.  That leaves the problem of what the parent of the eponymous category should be.  Since, I think its generally agreed that only really fundamental categories should be without parents, maybe we need :Category:Eponymous categories just to hold these things.  --JeffW 22:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be a general consensus on this page that "eponymous categories are ok as long as there are enough articles or subcategories to go in it", but at CFD categories with just a handful of articles or subcats routinely get "kept".  This is currently the case for :Category:Todd Rundgren.  The consensus at CFD seems to be, if there are a handful of things in the category, and I find this person notable, it is a good category.  The problem with this is that be setting a low bar for acceptance of categories, they proliferate and confuse the logic of the larger categorization scheme.  Eventually, every person, every TV show, every film, etc... will have their own eponymous category.  I don't think this is a good idea. -- Samuel Wantman 20:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eponymous categories (again) 

message: Is it possible to use pipe sorting to force subcategories to appear on the front few pages of very large categories? Take a look at :Category:Year of birth missing. There are two subcategories that were hidden several pages deep, and which I've brought to the front using the pipe sorting trick (" |"). These are actually duplicate categories, but I only spotted this by chance as I flicked through all the pages in :Category:Year of birth missing - there may be many other "hidden" categories that should be placed side-by-side to allow comparisons like this. Carcharoth 11:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I found not duplicate, but nonsense or empty categories buried deep within large categories. As you've found, you can use the pipe to sort them to the first page. But discovering such "hidden" subcategories is either hard work or serendipity. Although there are problems with the Toolserver (that I don't really know anything about) which limits the current usefulness, the Category Tree and Cat Scan are useful tools that make it easier to browse category structures. older ≠ wiser 12:14, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Follow this trail (which will bring you back above and solve the issue <g>):  Step 1 --> Step 2 (and three from there ends above! Closure! (lol) Best regards // <B>Fra</B>nkB 16:15, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pipe sorting in very large categories 

message: Customary disclaimer: Sorry if this has been discussed already, but... I recently reverted some pipe trick cat sort edits by another user on :Category:Informal settlements. The other editor had re-sorted Shanty town, Favela and Villa miseria (kinds of informal settlements) by adding a space before the sort key (i. e.  Villa miseria, etc.). This was done to follow this guideline, since those kinds of informal settlements are "main articles" in the category, while the rest of it is devoted to specific settlements (e. g. Cidade de Deus and Tent City). Now I see there are other "main articles" also sorted this way. I've never seen this before (only with single articles that are named the same as their category) but I'm not sure whether it's wrong. What should we do? —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 02:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You could create categories to match each of the articles and then each article could be the same-name main article for the category.  But I don't think there's any rule that says that the main article has to have exactly the same name as the category or that there can only be one main article.  --JeffW 03:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have seen (and also edited) categories so that there was more than one article piped to the top of the list.  If the article(s) is eponymous it should be at the very top by using a space.  Others can be sorted with an asterisk, which is probably the case for informal settlements.  This is just my view and what I have seen done elsewhere.  I don't think it has reached the level of codified policy. -- Samuel Wantman 06:57, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

text: --William Allen Simpson 21:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Individuals and kinds 

message: Would there be some way to upgrade the Wiki code to allow for simple searches of articles that belong to multiple categories, like singers AND songwriters, or African-American AND Asian? --M@rēino 19:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a frequently discussed and frequently requested possible upgrade.  We are all waiting. -- Samuel Wantman 21:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is actually long overdue. --Siva1979Talk to me 20:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boolean Category Search 

message: There's a recurring strand of discussion about handling a minority of categories where editors want to have articles in one or more sub-categories AND the main category. That is, of course, not the standard guideline but it does occur (and sometimes for a properly-discussed reason).  My own interest started with a discussion about an ethnic group Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#By_race_or_ethnicity but that's not my focus here. As I see it, there's clarity for editors about the standard guideline and then vagueness about handling exceptions in practice. My thought was that having a standard template, available on Wikipedia:Template messages/Category namespace, would be useful to make clear that something exceptional is the practice on a particular category page. What I didn't realise is that one already exists, as I found on :Category:American film actors: 
Wouldn't it be useful to tell people about this in guidance somewhere, so that exceptions can be tagged in a consistent way?--Mereda 11:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The template was created (by me) in response to discussions about duplications in the actors category.  The discussion at that time, was that the actors categories would be a test case for repopulating some rather large categories that had been broken up into smaller subcategories.  (The subcategories were not affected.)  Since policy at Wikipedia is (for the most part) descriptive more than it is proscriptive, it seemed pre-mature to put this in the guidelines.  Perhaps it is now time to create guidelinse for repopulating categories and the use of the template. -- Samuel Wantman 09:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The {{:allincluded}} template for duplication cases 

message: Hi, a few of us have been working on articles about clothing/fashion and their history and we'd like to make a sensible set of top-level categories under :Category:Clothing.  We've come up with the following proposal and we'd appreciate your input very much
 
# :Category:History of clothing
# :Category:Clothing by nationality
# :Category:Clothing by ethnicity
# :Category:Clothing by culture
# :Category:Clothing by geography
# :Category:Clothing by use
# :Category:Clothing by person
# :Category:Design and construction of clothing
One point that may catch your eye is the distinction between nationality, ethnicity and culture.  Presently, we're thinking of using these terms as they're defined in Wikipedia, roughly speaking, peoples defined by political boundaries, genetic heritage and common viewpoint, respectively.  For example, "Polish clothing" (which would include clothing worn by Poles at all points in their history) would seem to belong under :Category:Clothing by ethnicity, since Poland was politically Swedish, Russian and German at various points in its history.  Similarly, "Clothing in ancient Rome" would seem to belong under :Category:Clothing by nationality and, I dunno, "Goth subculture clothing" would belong under :Category:Clothing by culture, since it covers people linked by a common culture, not genetically or politically.
The other categories are relatively straightforward.  :Category:Clothing by geography covers subjects such as "clothing worn in cold climates" or "clothing worn at high altitudes".  :Category:Clothing by use covers clothing by occupation and occasion, such as "fireman clothing", or "maternity wear", or "wedding clothing".  :Category:Clothing by person groups articles by the person wearing it, e.g., "women's clothing", "men's clothing", "children's clothing", etc.  Finally, :Category:Design and construction of clothing covers the technical details of how clothing is made and designed.
We've tried to make these top-level categories as independent of each other as possible, e.g., so that the time can be specified independently of the ethnicity, independently of the occupation, independently of the person, etc.  We've also tried to be as consistent with Wikipedia definitions as possible.  Please let us know if you like these categories and if you have any suggestions -- thanks muchly! :)  WillowW 14:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category naming conventions for clothing  -- Please help!

message: There are articles and categories that have the same name.   What I cannot readily determine is where category links should go.  Example: Abraham Lincoln article and category.  What guidelines exist or could exist as to what category links should go where: all links in the article; all links in the category; some mixture?  If some mixture, what to where?  This question applies to people articles/categories and non-people.  Thanks Hmains 02:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not quite sure if I understand the question, but I'd recommend keeping the majority of wikilinks in articles pointed at other articles; categories themselves are usually listed at the very bottom of the page (say, at the bottom of "External links"). Hopefully that's an answer you were looking for. Luna Santin 09:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The guideline is that the articles go with their siblings and the categories go with their siblings. This has been in flux for the last year or so. It used to be done quite differently. Articles should be put in their eponymous categories and there are categories for holding eponymous categories such as :Category:Categories named after people. Many eponymous categories do not need to exist, but they are hard to get deleted at WP:CFD. I would suggest not making them unless there is a large number of articles that would be hard to find otherwise. A small number of articles can be linked to an article in a "See also" section. Often, Eponymous articles contain similar articles and there may be other categories that make sense for them. For instance, the categories for US presidents are in :Category:Presidents of the United States as well as the articles for each president, and :Category:Suspension bridges is in :Category:Bridges as is Suspension bridge. This is constantly getting screwed up with presidents, and I often try fixing it.  One reason there is not more specific guidelines is because it depends a great deal on the subject matter. I suggest discussing this in a WikiProject for the subject matter. -- Samuel Wantman 09:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  category links 

message: While browsing CfD, I just thought out these four criteria, and I was wondering what anybody else thought: "A good category name is objective, specific, consistent, and useful."
*Objective, the category adheres to NPOV policy. Listing articles in the category would be intuitive; it should be clear without major debate whether an article does or does not belong in the category. For example, "Prime Ministers of France" is objective, "Cool people" is not.
*Specific, it is clear what sorts of articles the category refers to and should include. An outside reader, anywhere in the world, could get a general idea of the articles listed in the category just by looking at its name. This implies that acronyms should generally (if not always) be expanded in category names.
*Consistent, the category's name is consistent with similar categories, whether that means being consistent within particular topics, or within particular parent categories. Inconsistent category names make it more difficult to browse and edit Wikipedia.
*Useful, the category makes Wikipedia easier to browse, and is a useful tool in finding similar articles. "Pop singers" is a useful category, but "Musicians whose first name starts with M" is not. Sometimes a category will grow too large, and should be subcategorized to remain useful; other times, subcategories will only make it more difficult to browse between similar articles.
*Succinct, the category's name is brief, but not to the extent of compromising English (e.g. using more than two consecutive words as adjectives) or any of the other features listed here.
Thoughts? Comments? Rotten tomatoes? Luna Santin 09:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds good.  How would you incorporate it into the existing guidelines? -- Samuel Wantman 09:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be great if I had a thought-out answer to that. x_x If anything, it seems like a bit of an introduction, I guess? I'm very much open to suggestions in that regard. Luna Santin 10:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Ohh, that is a good point. Added it under "specific," per Mereda, if that works for you. Luna Santin 15:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  See below – David 15:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Mmm, that does look like a good spot. The next example that comes to mind is "Prime Ministers of France." Are we happy with this? Luna Santin 15:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Re specific/succinct, I'm wondering if a distinction between the two ought to be made, as some efforts to be specific have yielded names that are anything but succinct. Regards, David Kernow 15:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah. I'm only hesitating because for some reason give guidelines seems more intimidating than four. It's silly, and you're right. Adding. Also, I just realized that if we change it to "terse," this could be abbreviated as SCOUT; good idea? Luna Santin 03:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I like the acronym idea, but not for the sake of including "Terse"; "terse" has negative connotations for me, viz. "too brief", but maybe that's just me. I'll try to think of an alternative; ultimately, though, I'd rather have no acronym than one including a word that might be too prone to misinterpretation... Yours, David 04:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. I'll see if I can come up with anything different. Luna Santin 08:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The sequence of points looks logical to me as it is, starting with O as a matter of policy. On the proposed fifth criteria, I think "brief" isn't ideal; and I doubt whether the double adjective issue is worth picking out here. How about: "Succinct, a good category name is readable and concise, without compromising the other criteria or the rules of English. The category page can be used to give more detailed information." --Mereda 10:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objective, specific, consistent, and useful 

message: Images seem to be popping up in many non-image categories.  I think they should only be in categories of images.  How can we control this? -- Samuel Wantman 09:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but don't know how this would be done or even if the software permits it. Sorry not to be more useful, David Kernow 15:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images in categories 

message: A item was recently added to Talk:IBM by a bot that has something to do with flagging items for Peer Review and one of the things that the bot suggested was to sort the categories alphabetically.  I wanted to add a note to User:AndyZ's talk page (AndyZ seems to be responsible for the bot) that there is no consensus for this action but I can't find the discussion now.  --JeffW 19:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It has already been agreed that alphabeticising by bot is not acceptable as there is widespread and strongly felt opposition to alphabetical sorting. Bots should only be used for non-controversial tasks. See :Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people. Chicheley 09:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is discussion on sorting cats at the bottom of articles? 

message: We have Cat:Lists, Cat:Discographies, Cat:Timelines... Is it worthwhile to make a category for plot summaries of fiction?
I hardly want to encourage the creation of more of those (which the creation of a category will only encourage, in my experience), but it seems pertinent to keep them where they can be seen.
In relation to that: should there be a category solely dedicated to pages that are not standard encyclopedia articles, as with the examples above? I suppose Cat:Reference is somewhat like that, but that's not exactly all-encompassing right now. Or is there an existing category I'm missing? –Unint 22:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another category by article type 

message: Whilst looking at :Category:2004 establishments, I noticed a graphic on the page.  On further investigation I discovered the the graphic in question (:Image:WwII memorial kilroy was here.JPG had been included in a number of categories, including 2004 establishments.  This creates an undesirable effect, but before removing the categorization from the image, I wondered if there was a policy against this.  If not, unless someone can point out a good reason for categorising an image in any category, other than one specifically for images, I would like to propose such a policy. Greenshed 22:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy on Categorizing Images 

message: :(This discussion was moved here from User talk:Chicheley)
Hi Chicheley,  I've been dealing with this issue for about a year and a half, so I want to give you some background on the issue and explain what I'm doing:
When Categories began, about 2 years ago, the situation was very different than it is now.  Category "clutter" was not an issue because nothing was in categories.  The big problem that shaped the initial discussions was the problem of categories getting "too big".  "Too big" at that time was larger than a few hundred categories because there no easy way to navigate a large category.  Back then, there were no table of contents for categories.  To deal with large categories the standard practice was to create subcategories and depopulate the larger ones.  The first categories that were "too big" were people categories, and subcategories "by nationality" were created to break them up.  As this was happening, I and others became frustrated as some perfectly fine categories with 500 or so articles got broken up into 'by nationality' categories that were much less useful for browsing.
Another oft stated principal of categorization is that categories could be broken into different systems of subcategorization, so that several systems of subcategorization could co-exist.  As more and more subcategorization methods proliferated, more and more categories got broken up into small pieces.  Early guidelines for categorization reflected this way of doing things.
This was about the time I started getting involved in categorization policy.  Two categories particularly bothered me.  One was :Category:Film directors which in its first incarnation contained film directors from all over the world.  One day I discovered that it had been depopulated and replaced by :Category:Film directors by nationality.  The original category made it very easy to browse through all the articles on film directors.  When it was broken up it became difficult.  I found this especially irksome because I don't find nationality to be at all relevant to film directors.  
Another category that bothered me was :Category:Bridges in New York City.  I spend alot of time working on articles about bridges.  At the time, all the toll bridges in New York City had been removed from the category because they were in the sub-category:Toll bridges in New York City.  It didn't make sense to me that a reasonably sized category would have half of its contents removed because there was a sub-category that was a subset of the larger category.  Someone looking for the bridges in NYC shouldn't have to look in both places.  The distinction of a bridge being a toll bridge may be of use to some people, but it is not an important attribute of bridges. 
When I inquired about the reasons for the categorization policy, the rationale given was that categories had to be broken up when they got to big to make them useful.  This inspired me to create the first version of a category table of contents which has evolved into the TOC found in virtually every large category in wikipedia.  With the acceptance of CategoryTOC, I started examining what parts of the categorization policy was out of date.  This led to some long discussions at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, a rewrite of the page about 7 months ago, and the addition of Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories.
This leads us to our current situation.  Here is the issue in a nutshell:
* Wikipedia's categorization scheme allows for multiple taxonomies.  This is a good thing and a powerful feature.  
* People want to create subcategories which are essentially intersections of larger categories. 
* Wikipedia categories act as indexes that help users browse through subjects.
The problem is that these 3 qualities of categorization conflict unless there is categorization duplication.  If there is no duplication, the larger categories are less useful for browsing and indexing.  If everything is broken into small subcategories it is very difficult to browse through all of them.  If they exist combined and broken up, you can browse at whatever level you desire.  After the discussion about this at Category talk:Film actors, or the relevant discussions at Wikipedia talk:Categorization (linked from that talk page).  We decided to fully populating the actors categories as an experiment to see if this way of categorizing can gain wider acceptance.
If populating higher level categories gains wide acceptance, we will need a way to make it clear which categories get populated and which do not.  We have noted on the :Category:Film actors page that the listings are duplicated, and there can be some sort of standard format for this.  I don't really think it is all that bad, and our new way of doing it fits into the natural order of how people put people into categories.  First they get entered into the more general category, and then added to the more specific subcategory  The populating of categories should be an all or nothing decision.  Either they contain all the articles that fit or none of them.  I find the current common situation, where categories only contain the un-differentiated articles to be very unsatisfactory. 
The downside, as you mention is category "clutter".  Categorization is imperfect.  The solution, most talked about is to have an automated way to do category intersections, so you could take :Category:Film actors and :Category:American people and find the intersection.  If this is implemented, there would be no need for a great number of the subcategories we now have.  Categories would be populated at the "level of notability", by which I mean that people are notable for being actors or film actors.  In these days of globalization, people are rarely known for being American film actors.  So what we are doing is fully populating the actors categories at the "level of notability" and below.  This essentially is the system that people hope will happen by having a software upgrade.  The upgrade (if it happens) will add intersections that do not yet exist, create them on the fly, and remove a good deal of category clutter in articles.
Until there is a software upgrade the question is which is worse, having a little "clutter" in the category listings of articles, or depopulating categories at the topic level.  I'd much rather live with the clutter.  As more and more category intersections are created, I'd like to hope that people will think of the intersection categories as the clutter, and not the topic level categories.  -- Samuel Wantman 07:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not against putting things in parent categories and main categories in a few special cases, but I don't think that the actors categories are special cases. It started off with film actors, then it seems all American actors were also to be put in :Category:American actors, even if they had been fully subcategorised. But what about television, stage, musicial theatre, silent film, voice and radio actors. What about people with dual nationality? We could end up with people in not one or two, but 14 or 16 or more extra categories. That would be a disaster. I remain convinced that your approach is misguided, and that the "consensus" you trumpet for it does not exist. Chicheley 21:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

text: You also utterly misunderstand the usage of categories. The upgrade would not reduce the desirability of thorough subcategorisation at all, because they facilitate browsing. The intersections would only be used by people who were actively looking for something, whereas sharp subcategories encourage serendipity. Your proposal would either rob parent categories of huge amounts of relevant material or encumber them with even more irrelevant material. For example instead of placing :Category:British stage actors in :Category:Theatre in the United Kingdom, a choice would have to be made between using :Category:British actors, withs its hundreds articles about actors who do not work in theatre, and having no actors in the theatre category at all. By suggesting that the subcategories should be abolished you are proposing to chronically undermine one of Wikipedia's finest attributes, that is its serendipity. Chicheley 21:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Another issue is that many of the actors are not actually in both categories. If we work on getting everyone out of :Category:American actors and into the appropriate subcategories, then we will know that people who visits those places will be see all the names the should see. Otherwise, that happy situation might never be reached. I try to recategorise at least a hundred people a day across a wide range of fields as the general standard of precision and completeness of categorisation of biographical articles is low, and I am quite happy to do much of the donkey work in this area. Chicheley 22:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Having clicked on some random names, it seems that only a minority of the names are dual categorised. Not a minority of the big stars, but a minority overall. Thus your basic premise that we currently have a dual system is false. We just have a messy, inaccurate, incomplete system that needs an upgrade. Chicheley 22:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I am not going to write an essay, but I completely disagree with your arguments and objectives. I am against dual categorisation except in special circumstances because it creates category clutter. The category clutter on the articles about well known actors is some of the worst in the whole of Wikipedia. I do not accept that the general consensus is not against dual categorisation, and you accepted that by inference when you tried to create special rules for actors. This policy is not followed outside the actors field; not for musicians of politicians, or scientists etc. etc. Chicheley 18:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with Chicheley: dual categorization is non-standard. If it is applied to Film actors, then it must be applied to all other professions, otherwise it becomes too confusing. For example, Michel Gondry is in French film directors, not in French directors or in Film directors. I'd like Film actors to become empty, just like Film directors. This will make it easier for us, because if something is added to it we will be able to quickly re-categorize it, whereas now Film actors contains so many articles that it's difficult to browse all of them to find the ones that have to be subcategorized. This will also make it easier for the readers, because they don't need to have a list of thousands of "anonymous" names when they have proper subcategories. If you think it's not easy enough to find the articles, we can create more subcategories. And to answer your question, I would put Fishburne in :Category:American film actors because this is in :Category:Film actors by nationality, and maybe in :Category:African-American actors (though ethnicity categorization is quite problematic and I don't like it very much). Obviously, if/when category intersection is implemented this won't be a problem anymore, but in the meantime I'd prefer to avoid dual categorisation. Mushroom (Talk) 23:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I will work on clearing the categories. It is just a variation on the kind of work I have been doing anyway, so I don't mind doing it. Chicheley 13:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So now you think that YOU have consensus?  You have the agreement of one person! -- Samuel Wantman 22:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Actors are not a great example to use to talk about a general policy, for lots of reasons including there are so many, some film actors did one theatre production in 1992, nationality is not key to acting, neither is style of acting, etc etc.  I found this discussion via the mess existing in :Category:Board games (see below) where duplicate entries are being added for individual articles in the parent category where there is an entire category devoted to the article/game a half inch away. With something like games, you can have a dozen or even fifty variations on a game that have articles that fit neatly and sensibly in one subcategory.  Instead of one entry for one type of game you could have hundreds of articles tossed into the parent category. Simply listing everything in every parent category logically leads to listing every board game in the Games category... which means everything simply gets categorized by alphabet, which is about as user anti-friendly as you can get.  Duplication further makes category entries at the end of articles a useless blob of text that is again user-unfriendly.  Badly named subcategories are no good either of course, but we should be moving toward better subcategorization and better cross categorization, not towards alphabet piles.  If people already know the name of something, they can find the article.  Categories should be there to help users and editors find closely related articles.  As the encyclopedia grows, we need to think of users using it.  Piles should be avoided when they can.  Depopulation and organized subcategorization leads to giving users a helping hand to find out more about their area of interest, and very importantly helps editors prevent duplication of articles under the names of different variants... that isn't a problem with people categories, but is a major concern in areas like games where the same game is called by different names. 2005 07:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of what you say is true, but here is the problem:  Subcategorization continues unchecked.  Categories get divided into smaller and smaller subgroups that have use for browsing only for a small group of people looking for something very specific.  All I am am askig for is for us to say that there is a certain point in the categorization tree where something is "notable".  A game may be notable for being a board game, a director may be notable for being a film director, etc... For each subject area we can discuss where this point is.  Once there is consensus on where that point is, we can lable that category and any of its subcategories  to let people know that everything at that level and below is included in the category.  That way people can subcategorize to their hearts content without destroying the ability to browse through categories at the level where many people want to browse.  It is not helpful to take the child actors and silent film actors out of the actors category.  It doesn't help to take the toll bridges out of the bridge categories.  There are categories where this process has worked very succesfully.  At the WikiProject Bridges (which I am part of) we decided to put all US bridges into geographic categories by state, and to duplicate listings at any smaller geographic unit.  This may also be the best solution for Philatelists (currently under discussion at CFD) and British categories (see below). --Samuel Wantman 07:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The main problem is different people have different categorization trees in mind. It may be very hard to get consensus on this (eg there's a serious argument over disambiguation page about what to put in democracy (disambiguation). They are arguing something which is considerably certain to me). What's more, people may disregard your rules, sometimes no matter how obvious or clear they are. Finally, the faster way to locate a specific topic is never by browsing category. It is search. 3 steps: 1) type the name; 2) Press search; 3) Select the link. Done! So category is usually for people who have no specific ideas or forget the title or subject involved. Every category method has its own flaw. Like sorting by geograhical locations, its problems emerge when the person does not know the location of the bridge or if the person wish to look for a particular type of bridges only. The best way in my humble opinion is to allow multiple taxonomies and category methods, as many as practically and technically possible. In this regard, each one can offset and remedy the disadvantages of another, while maximising benefits. It's what I do when I organise my personal stuff in my computer. --Wai Wai (talk) 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is impossible to come up with a catch-all scheme for categorizing, it needs to be done on an individual basis.  The purpose of the categories is to provide a way for users to be able to find similar articles, not to have a tree heirarchy.  I find myself on the other side when it comes to images on the commons, because images are much more difficult to navigate than article names.  It's all about what works best for browsing a category.  The "what works best" standard can also change as the category grows.  Cacophony 23:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   Category duplication 

message: Is there a single continuing space for discussion of "should there be a limit on the number of categories on an article" or does each restart of the debate get archived again?  Currently the page says "categories become less effective the more there are on any given article", which strikes me as completely baseless.  True, the more articles (after a certain point) in a category, the less effective the category is; however, the more categories in an article, the more effective the article is. jnestorius(talk) 01:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a limit is not necessary. What's more, there is no hard and fast rule to decide the limit. Finally unless there are far too many words/terms in a page, it should be fine, eg it is relatively easy for me to find the desired term as long as there're less than, say, 100 words starting with the same alphabet.--Wai Wai (talk) 19:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Number of categories per article

message: I've been cleaning up :Category:Politics, and noticed how many articles landed in it that were barely related to Politics at all, and how it has turned into a "dumping ground" for articles. Since it seems to me that there are categories that people will abuse in this manner permanently, I created :Category:Categories requiring diffusion and  to mark those categories for maintenance. It is these categories that I expect to never be "completed" in any sense, and will require monitoring to ensure quality. Cwolfsheep 13:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category diffusion effort 

message: The issue I want to raise is probably related to #cat vs. article in cat and #Eponymous categories (again) above, but I'm not sure it is really covered anywhere. By my understanding, the point of putting a category in a parent category is to indicate that the members of the subcategory could be considered members of the parent category. For example, I would think that  should be a subcategory of , not , as it seems strange to categorise seasons, players, coaches or club songs, under "clubs". To refer to the example at Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories#Topic article rule, in deciding whether  should be a subcat of , the question is whether something such as Dude, Where's My Country? should be in  (assuming that Dude, Where's My Country? is correctly categorised to start with). Obviuosly this descision depends on whether it is meant to be an "is a" category, or how close the relation between article and category needs to be, but whatever view is taken on this, I would argue that the associations become too loose without the simple criterion "a subcategory's members could be members of the parent category". JPD (talk) 17:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your reasoning --Lini 22:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorising categories 

message: Wouldn't that be awesome?! (Russell's paradox). WikiSlasher 10:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Category%3ACategories+that+are+not+self-inclusive.   Created by yours truly, April 1, 2005. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow. That April Fool's joke lasted nearly a whole year? :-) Carcharoth 23:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Categories that do not contain themselves 

message: What do people think about the use of  on pages that are already in a category, but where the tagger is unsure whether it should be in the category or thinks it should be in other categories as well? I was assuming that tagging the pages to a "best guess" category would flag them up to the people interested in those categories, who would then recategorize if necessary, but I've seen the  tag being put on pages where there is already a category. I've created an alternative template  which I think would be a good solution. Let me know what you think (or point me in the right direction if I've missed something obvious). Yomangani 11:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category check needed

message: there is an issue that is arising where a series of people are using Template:CatDiffuse as justification to restructure and subcategorize the larger categories.  The issue is that many of the things that they are subcategorizing are also being decategorized across the board as redundant categories.  This is causing a general dis-integration of wikipedia and will likely make it harder to find relevant knowledge.   I'm bringing discussion here to encourage discussion on the catdiffuse talk page, because the template is fairly recent and the problems that it is causing in terms of justification of categorization can either be nipped in the bud, or depending on consensus promoted. --Buridan 11:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  catdiffuse 

message: Please browse Wikipedia:Guidelines for user categories and comment on whether it should become official policy.  Thanks! --M@rēino 03:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed guideline for Wikipedian categories 

message: I added a Category:SAR Wikipedians to my user page, since I am a SAR member. When I checked the category listing, I see that I am listed under U, instead of C, probably because I am User:Crockspot. But the others listed are categorized properly by the first letter of their username, even though they are listed as User:Username. Did I do something wrong? Is there a special usage syntax for userspace categories? Or will this sort itself out all on its own? Crockspot 20:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to list as follows: Crockspot Cacophony 23:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you! I knew it had to be something simple. Crockspot 14:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Probably a stupid question 

message: Hi - I'm a bit concerned with articles associated with professional wrestling - that is in the performing arts category. However articles about the WWE and the like, which all start with a link to the professional wrestling article make use of all sorts of sports categories and no mention of performing arts. I am also currently discussing this issue here
--Charlesknight 17:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrestling 

message: Thanks to User:Cwolfsheep for the idea of the catdiffuse tag. I've been working on :Category:Economics and have diffused about half the articles using a categorization system based on the JEL classification codes. I think this has worked really well, and that a similar approach might be useful in other areas covered by an academic discipline JQ 06:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category diffusion in economics

message: For a month I saw an article containing a Category:-tag. Is it something implemented or something that is going to be implemented ? (I.e. as a way of categoring articles on wikipedia.) // Rogper 20:04, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: That's in the next version of the software. We'll be installing the updated version this weekend, then enabling the categories and a few other new features later once everything's a little more thoroughly tested. --Brion 02:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha, that is a interesting news! :-) BTW, is there any newsgroup or discussion-list where you talk about issues like this ? (never mind, I found where it is.) // Rogper 16:38, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Where? Andrewa 09:19, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: The best bet for this sort of discussion is the Wikitech mailing list. Best starting point for mailing lists is Wikipedia:Mailing lists. Pete 11:43, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category-tag

message: I don't know who came up with the categories idea, but adding it to some pages has, with all due respect, ruined them. Look, for example, at the Professor Birch article, the Pokémon Colosseum article, or the Chansey article. I know these all belong to the Category Pokémon, but since these are pages I've contributed to, they're the only one's I've seen (since they are on my watchlist) in the last couple of minutes.
So that this criticizm is constructive, I'd like to suggest that instead of having the text floating at the right pushing everything over, simply align it at the right over the article like this:
category alpha
This is the begining of the article; blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...
--Fern 00:28, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd bring it to meta:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. grendel|khan 01:15, 2004 May 31 (UTC)
For the record, the rule is 
#catlinks {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    width: 34%;
    text-align: right;
    float: right;
}
As you can see, it's already floated to the right.  kelvSYC 17:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Placing 

message: A "Categories: American football" link is at the top of Philadelphia soul, right above information about soul music. It actually applies to a team in the Arena Football League, information about which is at the bottom of the page. I don't know and haven't been able to find out anything about Categories yet, so I'm asking anyone/everyone, can we move the Category link from the top? Hyacinth 00:15, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Top

message: I doubt that allowing this is a good idea: User:Eequor/Eequor is flagged up by :Category:Goddesses. -Sean Curtin 04:30, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories on User pages

message: Has anyone else gotten the problem of being blocked by Wikipedia "Spam protection filter" while putting categories on articles? If you put the same text on a bunch of articles one is automatically blocked?
: That bug seems to have been fixed. -- Infrogmation 04:22, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "Spam protection filter" problems 

message: 66.167.49.222 18:26, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template and category namespaces 

message: I know I had the impression that it was policy or quasi-policy to not include category redundancy on a page--i.e., if we have a science fiction writer, that page would get :Category:Science fiction author but not also :Category:Writer. But I can't seem to find out where I got that idea from. Am I smoking crack? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 20:22, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You probably got that impression from the first section in :Category talk:Writers --ssd 03:48, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question regarded redundancy 

message: Could someone please explain me why I'm seeing random amounts of whitespace before the categories at the bottom of the page whenever a page is edited? Compare for instance  and . The first one has no extra whitespace, the second one has a huge white space (four lines, looking at the page source) after the , and I see no difference in the wiki source for both versions .
cesarb 23:17, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whitespace 

message: I was excited when I first heard of Wikipedia:Categories because I apparently misunderstood and thought that the list which a category generates would then be useable as a template.
For instance, we have a list of diatonic functions at :Category:Diatonic functions, which would fit perfectly at Diatonic function.
Given that this appears to be impossible, it seems like a waste of time for me to create categories since, as the page states, they are much like "What links here" except less useful. In almost all cases they show you a list (in meta-space) which it is then necessary to duplicate elsewhere (in non-meta space).
So, question one is: Am I mistaken and is this already possible? Question two: If it is not now possible, could it be done in the future? Hyacinth 20:30, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Template

message: I don't wanna cause too much trouble here, but shouldn't ":Category:Main page" be ":Category:Main Page", since the Main Page has both words capitalized? - dcljr 08:59, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Main ?age 

message: The lag time between when you remove something from a category and when it actually gets removed remains irritating - I removed a ton of people from :Category:Great Officers of State to more specific categories earlier this evening, and it still shows them all there on the Category page.  When trying to clear out a category, it would be very helpful if things no longer in the category would actually go away, so that one can see what is still left there.  Is this being worked on?  What's the deal? john k 05:48, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've noticed that if you add another article to the category or (maybe) actually change the category page, it tends to update the listing of articles. (At least, I think that's what's happening.) Aranel ("Sarah") 21:39, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lag time 

message: I just created :Category:Goa'uld yesterday, to hold the articles for fictional characters from Stargate SG-1 who are members of the Goa'uld species. Everything seemed to work normally, but none of the articles I added have shown up in the category. An example of one I've added is Apophis (Stargate). Is perhaps the apostrophe causing trouble? Bryan 02:13, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Everything's in there now. I guess something's just being very slow to update in the database. Bryan 07:17, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem with Category:Goa'uld?

message: I was looking at Michael Jackson and saw a load of categories including :Category:Michael Jackson.  That category is a subcat of :Category:United States musicians, but Michael Jackson is also included there - one of them should surely be removed.  However, should we remove virtually all of the categories and just place them in the Michael Jackson category? violet/riga (t) 19:43, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I know this is an old discussion, but I've noticed a similar situation over at :Category:United States television networks. I should think (speaking as a librarian and cataloger) that categories should reflect a hierarchical structure. Any article placed in :Category:Michael Jackson should be assumed to also be a part of any category of which :Category:Michael Jackson is a subcategory. We shouldn't need to repeat ourselves. – Seancdaug 07:30, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcategories instead of numerous categories 

message: :Please feel free to move this discussion to a more relevant place.
If I were to add Winston Churchill to a category alpvcy, the usual procedure is to edit the page and add at the bottom Churchill, Winston - the idea being last name followed by first name. I wanted to know if this is a standard practice. For South Indian names, editors unaware of the local custom assume either caste names such as Reddy or suffixes such as Rao to be last names and add categories accordingly, creating a huge nightmare in terms of categorisation. I request help on two counts - (1) Wikepedia standards, if any, on the naming issues and (2) How to ensure continuity, especially in South Indian names. (apart from having a warning visible in the edit mode, which can be tedious to insert in all articles). --Gurubrahma 06:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding an article to a category 

message: Is it right to say that, in an encyclopedia, categories need not reflect established fact? Andy Mabbett 16:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories need not reflect established fact

message: As noted above (Wikipedia_talk:Category#Categories_on_User_pages), it seems that articles being developed in the sandbox or in user subpage sandboxes are added to the relevant categories. Perhaps there should be a comment somewhere (on this page? on the instructions for user subpages? on the instructions for the sandbox? all three places?) that this should be avoided until the page goes 'live'?
Ziggurat 03:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sandbox categories 

message: Not sure if this is the right place for this, but :Category:Treaties and :Category:Official documents are two separate trees that probably should be if not merged, then put under a closer tree.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 04:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you missed that fact that :Category:Treaties is a subcategory of :Category:Official documents.  This seems like a good relationship to me. -R. S. Shaw 04:52, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge categories? 

message: I think its bad taste to categorise based on ethnicity even when a census such as the United States Census, 2000 is avalible. For instance US census considers all middle easter people as "white". A number of arabs, kurds, etc would disagree
Currently we have :Category:Kurdish provinces, :Category:Kurdish cities, :Category:Kurdish inhabited region. I'd ike to note that we do not even have any census data on kurds. 
If these categories are ok, I am sure no one would mind me tagging france, uk, germany... etc with categories like "White cities", "white provinces", "white inhabited region". How about categories like 'Arab inhabited region' or 'black inhabited region'
--Cat out 09:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Categorisation based on ethnicity