Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 10

message: It's ironic and unfortunate that this page suggests the use of gender-neutral language, yet it hosts a section titled "man-made" objects. 71.254.77.193 (talk) 02:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: A fair observation.  I've changed "man-made" to "manufactured," which admittedly doesn't completely purge the gendered etymology but improves things.  "Artificial" would also work, strictly speaking, but the secondary meaning ("false") might be potentially confusing.  The Tom (talk) 23:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I would never think of "man-made" as anything other than gender neutral, sort of like "human" or "mankind" - which although they have "gendered etymology" (at least for me) don't have any gender specific meaning whatsoever.  For the kinds of categories "man-made" intends to cover, I'm not sure "manufactured" is quite synonymous since manufactured has a connotation of a large scale industrial operation, or use of industrial machines.  The distinction is with naturally occurring features like mountains, rivers, etc.  I'm not sure I'd think of buildings as being "manufactured".  Trying to avoid using "man-made" here strikes me as political correctness run amuck. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Man-made objects 

message: Is there any consensus on which to use for cat names?  I ask because I recently came across :Category:Women screenwriters and :Category:Female film directors.  We should use either Male/Female or Men/Women.  I don't really care which, but I think we should be consistent.--Rockfang (talk) 07:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Male/Female or Men/Women 

message: While the requirement that says category names should stand alone clearly means no ambiguous names, I wonder if we should actually state that ambiguous category names need to be avoided?  Vegaswikian (talk) 01:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  General naming conventions 

message: I propose adding a special convention for characters to the convention.  Not having a mention of the need to not use special characters in category names is a surprise to many. So a brief mention in the convention seems called for.  Something like:
Since special characters are difficult to enter from a keyboard and since category redirects do not work in the same way as article redirects, non standard keyboard characters should be avoided in category names.
I think that is a fair statement of the implementation that has been used for deciding this in the last few years. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special conventions for characters 

message: The Heritage section was full of red-links (previous examples that are no longer applicable). Updated with current examples and text derived from:
*Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality#Special subcategories
*Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 May 16#Category:Jewish Americans
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 22#Canadians by X descent
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 August 8#Some American actors by ethnicity
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 September 5#Category:American Japanese people
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 November 5#Category:Filipino Thais
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 May 9#some category pages for British people by ethnic or national origin
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 May 16#African-American categories
:--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heritage red-links updated 

message: The Americans cannot agree to follow the Heritage naming conventions of the rest of the world.  There are two current CfR, each pointing to a series of old CfR decisions (the latter calling the most recent previous CfR "anomalous").  There has been surreptitious changing via category redirect contrary to previous consensus, and category duplication and other changes without any CfR at all.
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 2#Category:Turkish Americans
→ Category:American people of Turkish descent
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 3#Category:Americans of Polish descent
→ Category:Polish-Americans
*Proposed Compromise -- rather than debating these case by case, and Cydebot surreptitiously making changes without a CfD (as it did for Jewish-American activists→Jewish American activists), could we develop a comprehensive American guideline?
*#All multiple word ethnicities in the now standard form: :Category:American people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines descent.
*#All generic ethnicity parent categories without hyphen: :Category:African American people, :Category:Native American people.
*#All single word national ethnicity nouns without hyphen: :Category:Turkish Americans.
*#Any single word national ethnicity adjectives must have hyphen, even though the parent category and main article have no hyphen: :Category:Polish-American musicians.
*:Will folks enforce these in the future without exception? Otherwise, the bickering will continue.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hyphenated Americans]] 

message: Apparently, without formal discussion, the header template was repeatedly changed and reverted from policy to guideline, always by the same user, and in the final instance with a misleading log entry.
Wikipedia:Naming conventions are formally policy, but are currently mistakenly listed in Wikipedia:List of guidelines.
In particular, this policy was formally approved by the bureaucrat on 2005-09-25 13:30:49 UTC. Category titles are impossible to move, and time consuming to rename. That makes correctly naming categories increasingly important.
Without objection, I'll restore the correct heading and listing.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy status 

message: There are a number of current discussions about the distinctions between singular and plural categories. They seem to be confusing folks. 
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#American people and topics
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#Category:Tornado
We've used this convention for a very long time, since 2005-08-31 18:53:30, migrated from 2005-09-27 00:53:20. After researching the history, I've moved the existing note to the top, as it had become buried in the middle of the section list, and its lack of indentation was out of place. Maybe the more prominent location will help.
Should we change to add "topics" to the singular, as has happened in several instances over the past few years?--William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special conventions for lists of items 

message: For those who haven't yet seen the announcement elsewhere, there is an RfC going on about treatment of eponymous categories and their articles, at Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC. Please comment there.--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC 

message: We've a couple of related nominations, intended to help disentangle the many cross-categorization and category intersections that have arisen recently:
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28#Category:People by race or ethnicity
**eliminating race categories (leaving ethnicity only)
*Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28#People not by ethnicity
**splitting ethnicity from nationality (leaving nationality only)
Should the first be successful, we must amend the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policies and related guidelines to clarify that "race" is not appropriate for categorization.
The second is somewhat dependent on the first. However, the inclusion of ethnic "origin" and "descent" is already against policy without notability, and these should never have been intermixed with the less contentious (more easily verifiable) nationality categories.
:--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The first (about "race") was approved by the community, the second (about "ethnicity") wasn't. Changes should be made accordingly, if at all. Debresser (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: And was completed at the locations specified, long before your insubstantial comment above. Please don't leave random thoughts weeks after discussion had concluded, it impedes our archiving mechanism.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:05, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disentangling race & ethnicity 

message: I have placed this page under full protection so that consensus on the disputed edits, or at least an agreement to stop reverting each other, can be achieved on this talk page.  Once that agreement has been made, feel free to request unprotection at WP:RFPP.--Aervanath (talk) 13:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page protected 

message: I've copied the text of this page to User:Kotniski/NCCATS to work on some improvements. To begin with I propose replacing the lede and the first section of this page with the reworded version from there, namely:
This page contains a list of guidelines on how to name categories.  Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalise regular nouns except when they come at the start. If you wish to propose a new or modified category-related naming convention, please do so on the talk page, while also publicising the proposal at any other relevant pages.
===General naming conventions===
*Names of topic categories should be singular, normally corresponding to the name of a Wikipedia article.  Examples: "Law", "Civilization", "George W. Bush".
*Names of list categories should be plural. Examples: "Writers", "Villages in Poland".
*Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II.  However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts.
*Choose category names that are able to stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories.  Example: "Wikipedia policy precedents and examples", not "Precedents and examples" (a subcategory of "Wikipedia policies and guidelines").
*Don't include the category structure in names.  Example: "Monarchs", not "People - Monarchs".
*As with lists, avoid descriptive adjectives such as famous, important, or notable in category titles.
This improves some of the poor wordings, removes the meaningless points discussed above and replaces them with useful general rules, and hopefully improves the presentation. Any comments?--Kotniski (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I'd agree with that too.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

text: Yes, that's pretty much the same as what I did in my proposal above. Either wording is fine by me, and certainly a great improvement on what we have at present.--Kotniski (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Your version above was based on an edit of mine that has now been reverted. That's why I decided to bring up this point, even though I personally consider it an obvious and uncontentious improvement". Debresser (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

text: I see no problem there, but there is usually room for improvement. Would you have a proposal? Debresser (talk) 12:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe something like: Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II. However, abbreviations that are used as the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article (in accordance with WP:ABREV), such as NATO, should be used in category names too.--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now that sounds smart. Debresser (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New wording proposal 

message: *Names of topic categories should be singular, normally corresponding to the name of a Wikipedia article.  Examples: "Law", "Civilization", "George W. Bush".
*Names of list categories should be plural. Examples: "Writers", "Villages in Poland".
*Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II.  However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts.
*Choose category names that are able to stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories.  Example: "Wikipedia policy precedents and examples", not "Precedents and examples" (a subcategory of "Wikipedia policies and guidelines").
*Don't include the category structure in names.  Example: "Monarchs", not "People - Monarchs".
*As with lists, avoid descriptive adjectives such as famous, important, or notable in category titles.
</blockquote>
This improves some of the poor wordings, removes the meaningless points discussed above and replaces them with useful general rules, and hopefully improves the presentation. Any comments?--Kotniski (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I'd agree with that too.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: General naming conventions

message: The header of this page says If you wish to propose a new or modified category related naming convention, please do so on Wikipedia talk:, while also publicising the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, Requests for comment, and the Village Pump, as well as at any related pages. I think this is greatly ovedone. Wikipedia practise is to have discussions on the talkpage and that's it. Only if editors decide by consensus to ask for broader input, they put a notification elsewhere. And if a discussion might be relevant to related pages, like Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, they will surely put a notification there. In light of the above, and in order to clarify this text, I propose to remove part of the text and rephrase to If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify and old one, please do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider putting up a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages. I think this is better English also ("the talk page" is bold only because it links to this very same page, but will be a normal blue link when this text is on the policy page). Debresser (talk) 17:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's pretty much the same as what I did in my proposal above. Either wording is fine by me, and certainly a great improvement on what we have at present.--Kotniski (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Your version above was based on an edit of mine that has now been reverted. That's why I decided to bring up this point, even though I personally consider it an obvious and uncontentious improvement". Debresser (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page header 

message: I also think the point about abbreviations could be improved. I don't think being "official" is really the point. Surely the standard should be the same as for article names (see WP:ABREV), so that category names and article names correspond.--Kotniski (talk) 12:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no problem there, but there is usually room for improvement. Would you have a proposal? Debresser (talk) 12:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe something like: Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II. However, abbreviations that are used as the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article (in accordance with WP:ABREV), such as NATO, should be used in category names too.--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now that sounds smart. Debresser (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviations 

message: Much of the "Special conventions" section can simply be cut out, as it relates only to categorization, not to naming. Trying to preserve (and improve) the points that do relate to naming, I came up with the following version:
*Categories of lists relating to particular subject areas should have the word "lists" in their names, as in ":Category:Lists of countries" or ":Category:Cycling lists". These should appear under :Category:Lists. Use appropriate sort keys for articles and subcategories so that those beginning "List(s) of" do not all appear under "L".
*For geographical photo requests, the category name should be "Wikipedia requested photographs in xxx", as in :Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in England. Wikiprojects desiring to keep track of articles needing photos should use "xxxx articles needing photos" as in :Category:England articles needing photos and :Category:England articles needing images (for photos, maps, drawings, etc.)
*Naming guidelines for stub categories are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines#Categories.
*All WikiProject categories should have "WikiProject" (or "WikiProjects") as part of the name. Note that this does not apply to the names of categories that projects might create for the use of assessments. In these cases, the advice given in Project Categories, which conforms to :Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments is advised, though not mandatory.
*All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, if this is necessary to distinguish them from possible article categories. They should appear under :Category:Wikipedia administration.
*For categorisation in userspace, see Wikipedia:Categorization#User pages and Wikipedia:User categories#Naming conventions.
Again, please comment on this proposal.--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I object to "All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, etc.", since I have shown in #Update administrative categories section that that text has no consensus, nor is it followed in practise. Debresser (talk) 14:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's why I added the "if" clause. It could doubtless be worded better though - what do you propose (or should that point simply be omitted)?--Kotniski (talk) 14:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Since we are talking about categories anyway, I don't see we need that point. Better to leave out anything that can be used later to press points, as we have seen lately. Debresser (talk) 15:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe something very general, like Categories used for Wikipedia administration purposes should be named in such a way that they are not likely to be confused with content categories (with maybe an example or two)?--Kotniski (talk) 15:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I like that idea, yes. One example without "Wikipedia" and a second could be with (in that order). Debresser (talk) 17:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special conventions 

message: It says in the subsection about heritage: "Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors." 
This text seems to have originated in this deletion discussion of May 20, 2006, where it was used by Kurieeto and William Allen Simpson. During this discussion William Allen Simpson remarked on May 24, 2006: "This decision should be well documented." (stress is mine). Likewise he said on May 29, 2006 in this Village pump (policy) discussion: "It will result in new guidelines."  The only other editor participating in this discussion was Hmains, who was strongly opposed to the change. From there it was proposed on this talk page (archived) on July 3, 2009, and presented as "The requirement that living people must have self-identified was overwhelmingly supported on the Village pump ... I've crafted wording that reflects a cross-selection of the arguments there." The discussion on this talk page at that moment was focused on changes to hyphenation and this specific subject was not discussed there except briefly by the three same editors I have already named. I have found no other discussions at around the same time about a related subject (apart from , which does not seem to be the source of the policy refered to as "overwhelmingly supported", since it discusses a slightly other question and is refered to in another discussion on this talk page). The change to this policy page was made in this edit on July 12, 2006.
After this short treatise on "How to make policy", I'd like to propose a minor correction. The principles behind this correction were was actually alluded to in  by William Allen Simpson and in a discussion that went parallel with the deletion discussion mentioned above by Valiantis.
We have various categories :Categories:People of xxx decent. Since "descent" per definition is determined by parents, it should be stated in the instructions that categories of this type are an exeption to the rule. E.g., an American with an Italian father may not be categorised as an "Italian American" unless he has self-identified as such, but he may be identified as an "American of Italian descent". Debresser (talk) 02:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly being 'of X descent' is a fact, like date of birth, or nationality and 'self-identifying' to a fact seems very bizarre. My understanding was that an Italian American is exactly an American of Italian descent - "An Italian American (Italian: Italoamericano singular, Italian: Italoamericani plural) is an American of Italian ancestry". (WAS does seem rather inclined to mistake his own opinions for policy, often because it turns out, if one digs back far enough, that he wrote the policy.) As far as I am concerned we just need a source for an Italian ancestor (which is usually a parent as info on grand-parents is not readily available even for prominent people). It is not usually controversial to have an Italian father; BLP concerns do not arise. Occuli (talk) 13:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the wrong place to talk about this. Who should be included in a particular category is a whole different matter than what the category should be called. By dictating category inclusion standards, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) overreaches its purpose and tries to make policy that, by definition, it can't. As the intro states, "Naming conventions (categories) is a list of guidelines for how to appropriately name categories" - that's the only set of rules it can contain. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

text: I see no reason to take my well argumented opinion with any amount of salt whatsoever! The "enforcement" you are talking about has been YOU pushing things against many protests, while refering to this very same page. So your logic is no more than a circular argument, and is not valid. And again, you do not address the arguments themselves... Debresser (talk) 20:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heritage 

message: I have a comment. A big one. Quite a few editors have stated that this is not the right page for policy on inclusion criteria. If so, we have to remove these parts to :Wikipedia:Categorization of people or where appropriate :Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. BTW, I hold this last page should be merged with the first. Debresser (talk) 16:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I quite agree. (But I don't see it has anything to do with my proposed wording change above, so I've made this into a separate section.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  So we should make the appropriate proposals. Debresser (talk) 17:19, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed, inclusion criteria should be in :Wikipedia:Categorization of people, where it's relevant, not here. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

text: So if this page is to be about more than category naming, it should be renamed, surely? Or combined with WP:Overcategorization and the other pages somehow? If you call it something and include whole reams of information about something else, then people looking for that something else will not know to come here to look for it. The mess needs sorting out somehow - if you don't offer any proposals on how to do it, maybe you could stop being so negative towards everyone else's ideas.--Kotniski (talk) 06:54, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hear, hear! By Jove! Debresser (talk) 20:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion criteria 

message: Both in the heritage and in the Residence subsections it says "The place of birth is rarely notable". What does this mean? That we should avoid creating categories of the type :Category:People born in xxx?
If the answer to the above question is yes, then we have 2 problems:
* The text had better be changed to something more clear, like "Since place of birth is not a notable characteristic of a person, do not create categories of the type :Category:People born in xxx."
* I have seen many times that a person born in place x, who has lived and worked in place y, is a member of both :Category:People from x and :Category:People from y. In the spirit of the above, we should then add an instruction not to add that first category, like "Place of birth is usually not an appropriate criteria for categorisation." An additional problem would be that common practise seems to be otherwise, and we should have a broader discussion about this subject before sharpening the instructions. Debresser (talk) 02:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *I think we have deleted 'born in' categories. John McEnroe was in one that was deleted - Category:German-born Americans. WAS probaly means 'defining', not 'notable'; or perhaps that being born in Foo does not make one Fooian (although I expect 99% of people born in Foo are Fooian or could claim Fooian citizenship). (I have no idea how to restrict/limit 'from X' categories. They seem relatively harmless. I know where I am from but anyone reading my CV would have about 20 places to choose between.) Occuli (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

text: * 'Defining' is and has always been the criterion for categories, not 'notable'. WAS seems to have difficulty with English as a 1st language. (Place of birth is rarely defining but it can very often be used as a claim to nationality; eg someone born in the UK pre-1980s had a right to British citizenship.)  Occuli (talk) 09:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

text: I find the interpretation of WAS valid (although his personal attacks are deplorable). So let's rephrase this to say clearly that "Place of birth is not generaly a valid indicator of ethnicity". Debresser (talk) 20:25, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Place of birth is not generally a valid indicator of ethnicity" is certainly true; indeed there is no causal connection whatever. Occuli (talk) 08:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Certainly. But since place of birth is at least a first indication of possible ethnicity, I like the phrase above. In gneral, I fell, Wikipedia guidelines and policies are not laws, and I have a tendency to keep their formulation on the less side of formal. What do you think about that? Debresser (talk) 15:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Place of birth 

message: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 6
*Template:Category unsourced – has no verifiable, reliable sources.
*Template:Category relevant? – both unsourced and irrelevant (unsupported by even a passing mention in the text)
I've nominated them for deletion, as they present an attractive nuisance. Editors may think it's a good idea to leave an unsourced or irrelevant category on an article, simply because these templates exist. Something like  for categories, except these present a large block of text.
In both cases, the category should be removed entirely – especially in the latter case. These have been used on biographical articles. In one case, the unsourced WP:GRS category has been left on the WP:BLP article for nearly two years! When I've removed the category, was reverted with the edit summary (revert: the fact that a maintenance item has been outstanding for a long time is not a reason to remove it.)
Please join the discussion.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: We HAVE joined the discussion. You haven't. As witnessed by the fact that you keep making your edit. We call that "edit warring". The only right thing to do in Wikipedia is WAIT for the outcome of the discussion. NOT to act upon YOUR opinion. Consensus, in other words. (Stresses added to fascilitate understanding of the important things.) Debresser (talk) 12:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

text: *Stop these ad hominem personal attacks. As the nominator, I'm obviously part of the discussion. Your egregious misrepresentation is poisoning the well. AFAICT, there is no edit warring on that discussion.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see no attacks, sorry. Ad hominem, or personal. In English or in Latin. The edit warring takes place on Wieland Speck, see Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:William_Allen_Simpson_reported_by_User:Debresser_.28Result:_.29. Debresser (talk) 12:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Closed no violation, before I'd even had an opportunity to respond. Moreover, irrelevant to this section's subject. A perfect example of your attempt to poison the well.--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories that are unsourced or irrelevant 

message: A decision has been reached at WP:NCMAC. To summarize roughly: we are going to use Republic of Macedonia for the article, because it is ambiguous with the region and with the ancient kingdom of the same name, as  well as a region of Greece, which used to be an administrative subdivision, and some minor uses.
We are going to use Macedonia wherever possible, unless disambiguation is needed. We are not going to use FYR and FYROM at all, except in discussing the present naming dispute with Greece. (Do check this rough summary with the fuller page.)
The question is: what do we do with the cats? Macedonia only refers to one modern state, and for most of the associated cats, like , now at WP:CFD simple Macedonia would be unambiguous. Do we use it, or do we always use Republic of Macedonia? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: From a quick look, we would be safest using :Category:Republic of Macedonia. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree for the main cat, which would be ambiguous. Do we need to spell it out for the subcats? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Actually, when discussing "national" this or that, there is no ambiguity since none of the other Macedonias have "national" anything.  (Taivo (talk) 21:20, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, obviously. The issue is just that at WP:MOSMAC2 we have generally favoured the approach of only disambiguating where contextually necessary, whereas WP:NCCAT has always placed higher emphasis on maximal uniformity across categories. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

text: OK, without looking, is :Category:People from Central Macedonia ambiguous and is it clear which group this is a part of?  I'll hazard a guess that to the experts this would be clear, but to the average reader it could be confusing unless you look at the parents and it probably is not ambiguous.  So the question may well be how much sorting for clarification for the average reader should the category names do in this case. I'm open on this at this time. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are right that things like :Category:People from Central Macedonia are probably obvious only for the experts (Central Macedonia is one of the administrative subdivisions on the Greek side, and there is no officially defined unit of that name in the Republic or elsewhere, even though of course informally one could use the phrase about parts of the Republic too.) But what the existence of these categories shows is that readers can deal with quite a bit of superficial ambiguity. These Greece-related cats have existed for a good while and never caused problems. Likewise, it's only obvious to the experts that ":Category:Medieval Macedonia" or ":Category:Macedonian monarchs" couldn't possibly refer to the country, because it didn't exist in the middle ages and it never had monarchs. I guess when readers come across them, it's always from the context of either an article that makes the intended scope clear, or through the category page, which of course contains a definition. If these can stand without explicit disambiguation in the category title, why should the same not go for the country-related ones? We have also used the simple adjective form "Macedonian" for all the "topic-by-nationality"-type categories without problems, even though it's just as ambiguous as the country-name noun. I think my personal preference would be something like the disambiguate-only-where-necessary rule we used for articles. Keep  for dealing with the wider region as a whole and as a parent cat for all the others; have the main country cat at  (and a daughter to the former), but from there downwards again use plain "... of Macedonia" except in the handful of cases where it conflicts with another category of the same topic under a different scope. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Republic of Macedonia]] 

message: I suggest adding the sentence "Particularly for technical subjects, use words and phrases which exist in reliable sources, so that those sources may be used to support inclusion of articles." to the end of the section WP:Naming conventions (categories)#General naming conventions. This is justified simply as a re-statement of WP:RS in this context, but also helpful as a practical reminder. If this rule is not obeyed, the words in a reference designed to support the inclusion of an article in a category will be different from the name of the category, so some measure of interpretation will be required in deciding that they do support it. This is at best pointless and at worst allows for misinterpretation. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give an example of how this would make a difference?--Kotniski (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I wanted to avoid doing that, since it would divert attention onto the particular case, whereas I think it's better to consider the general principle first. Having said that, I will tell you that the case which prompted this for me was the set of categories like :Category:Polish-language surnames, where the phrase "Polish-language surnames" is totally absent from the literature, that concept always being referred to as "Polish surnames". But I don't want to argue that specific case here, since possibly other criteria come into play. The general principle must hold anyway. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I see what you're getting at. (We really have categories called X-language surnames? Sounds a bit strange.) So yes, the addition seems sensible to me.--Kotniski (talk) 12:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names taken from reliable sources 

message: Change:
*"However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts."
to:
*"However, abbreviations that have become the official or generally used name (such as NATO) should be used where there are no other conflicts.
Any objections?--Kotniski (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: then (and I see the proposal above has been done as well).--Kotniski (talk) 06:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Good work. Debresser (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested change 

message: The right page for detailed information about when to choose lists and when to choose categories is surely Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. This page should stick to its brief of describing naming conventions for categories. So I propose deleting those points under "Special conventions for lists of items" that don't relate to what we call categories. If there is anything valuable there that isn't covered satisfactorily already at CL&NT, we can incorporate it there - does anyone see anything like that? (Personally I think it's all already covered.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good. Debresser (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All right, I'm going to remove what appears to be irrelevant. If anyone thinks any of it is important, please consider re-adding it at Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates or some other appropriate page, not necessarily back here. --Kotniski (talk) 08:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trim irrelevant info 

message: We still have the paragraph "All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, and placed in the :Category:Wikipedia administration tree." As has been noted before, this rule isn't observed (there are many categories in that tree that don't begin "Wikipedia..."). Is there any objection to the previous proposal, i.e. to say that "Wikipedia..." is required only when necessary to prevent ambiguity, and to give real examples both with and without that prefix?--Kotniski (talk) 08:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections. The new formula reflects good sense and ample precedent. Debresser (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done then, with a couple of real-life examples as proposed some time ago.--Kotniski (talk) 10:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  One more thing 

message: I've added :Category:Hills by country to the list of included landforms for which "...of country" applies. My rationale was that categories for hills are usually subcategories of the category for mountains, and mountains are on the list (as are mountain passes, volcanoes, mountain ranges, etc.). The top-level category of  is also on the list, so logic would probably dictate that all landforms should use this format. Any objections? Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections here. Debresser (talk) 22:29, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hills 

message: A recent discussion has brought me to make the following proposal.
All categories named for geographical objects that are country specific (like cities foremost) should specify the name of that country, separated by a comma. E.g. :Category:London should be :Category:London, England. I find there is hardly a day with a nomination of this kind. This would have to be slowly implemented for already existing categories also (as a project not in need of discussion for every individual nomination). One (and only 1) of the reasons I'd like to propose this is the fight against systematical bias on WIkipedia. Another is that it is just so much clearer. Debresser (talk) 22:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country qualificator 

message: Please see here. Comments, ideas, and suggestions would be welcome. Thank you, –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 22:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion has been archived and is now here.--Cavrdg (talk) 05:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dashes in category names 

message: In the first bullet point:
:*People are sometimes categorized by notable ancestry, culture, or ethnicity, depending upon the common conventions of speech for each nationality. A hyphen is used to distinguish the word order.
:*#Fooian Barians, nationality followed by heritage, such as  :Category:British Asians.
:*#Barian-Fooians, heritage followed by nationality, such as :Category:Irish-Americans.
I don't think this reflects consensus any longer. To my knowledge, virtually every recent WP:CFD on heritage categories has concluded with a move to  "Fooians of Barian descent", except a few U.S. ones like :Category:Chinese Americans (which don't follow the hyphenation rule here anyway). E.g. the example categories here are now at :Category:British people of Asian descent and :Category:Americans of Irish descent
So, I propose that we update and simplify this bullet point to read:
:*People are sometimes categorized by notable ancestry, culture, or ethnicity. Wikipedia's naming convention for these categories is "Barians of Fooian descent", as in :Category:British people of Asian descent or :Category:Americans of Irish descent.
Comments? I imagine there may need to be some sort of exception clause for some of the U.S. categories? cab (talk) 08:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that this definitely needs to be updated. The rules as listed seem to be completely abandoned.  "Fooians of Barian descent" seems to be universally preferred, but you're right it hasn't been extended to Americans yet. I've also seen exceptions made for those in :Category:Armenians_by_country_of_citizenship; I'm not clear on why. For the American ones, the hyphenation thing seems to be coming out as follows: if it's a noun, no hyphen. "Chinese Americans". But if it's an adejective, hyphenate. "Chinese-American politicians". Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality seems the more fitting place for this. In addition, I wonder if the sentence "living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage" is indeed our opinion on Wikipedia? Why not call an American born of parents who immigrated form Germany a German-American, regardless of whether he has "identified" as such? Debresser (talk) 13:35, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I didn't say I agreed with that criteria. I don't know where it came from exactly. It doesn't make much sense. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heritage categories 

message: A quick note to anyone interested who watches this page but doesn't follow every CFD: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 8#Sculptures_by_artist is a proposal to change he convention set out in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)#Visual_arts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Visual arts naming conventions 

message: We have in some cases very large super-categories that are partitioned on multiple dimensions. For example :Category:Educational organizations has a rats' nest partitioning by place (country, state), discipline/faculty (law, medicine, music, tiddlywink dynamics, etc), level of study (university, elementary school, etc), affiliation (faith, denomination, etc, including secular and interfaith). It seems clear that there is a need for some structure that sequences these dimensions. We don't have :Category:Notre Dame University under :Category:Universities in the United States because it is under :Category:Universities and colleges in Indiana. It is also under :Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States. It is not under :Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in Indiana nor under :Category:Christian schools. So how do we go about establishing and agreeing upon such choices without having every article doing it differently? User:LeadSongDog come howl 21:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Do different articles do it differently? I would have thought that once we have the categories, the articles go into them quite naturally (see WP:SUBCAT).--Kotniski (talk) 06:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, thank you. Now I see  and , but I think that I still don't grasp their proper use. For instance the former template is applied to :Category:American silent film actors, yet John Aasen only appears in that category, not its parent. Should all articles tagged for the Distingushed subcategory also be tagged for the parent category? If so, is there a bot busy doing that? User:LeadSongDog come howl 17:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

text: For some that do it differently have a look at :Category:Educational institutions of the Moravian Church. Should :Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States be double tagged as a Distinguished subcategory of :Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in North America and of :Category:Roman Catholic schools in the United States? User:LeadSongDog come howl 19:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess John Aasen should be in the parent category as well, yes. But I'm not aware of any bots that look for this sort of thing. At first glance I don't see why the RC unis in the US should be a distinguished (now called "non-diffusing" at WP:DUPCAT, because of objections to the previous terminology) subcategory of either of those parents; looks to me like an ordinary, diffusing subcategory.--Kotniski (talk) 07:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps it doesn't need a bot. Perhaps  could just transclude the parent category or something of the sort. If we can establish that all members of the distinguished a.k.a. non-diffusing category are by definition part of the parent category too, then the rest is implementation mechanics. The thing is, once you start to apply compound tags to the article, rather than :category:universities, :category:schools, :category:Roman Catholicism, :category:United States, :category:associations etc., then the selection of which ones to group together in the compound categories seems somewhat arbitrary. If the code supported it, it would be more sensible to have the category articles handle the compounding and keep the tagging of mainspace articles to simple tags. Then :category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States would be defined in software as the set of articles bearing tags for :category:Roman Catholicism, :category:universities, and :category:United States. But perhaps I have the wrong end of the stick. With simple tags, one must choose whether that institution is in Illinois or North America, unless it is to bear tags for only the most-specific simple tag applicable with the more general ones implicitly rendered somehow. User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multidimensional categories 

message: As I was browsing through categories like  and , I noticed that the subcategories tend to not match the parent articles. For example:  and culture of Australia;  and culture of the Netherlands;  and music of the United States;  and music of France. As far as  goes, the CFD that took place was due to an "Undecided by country" section that had existed on this guideline at the time, and the current name of the category was chosen due to the fact that the subcategories used the Fooian culture convention. As far as  goes, the CFD just changed Music by nation to Music by nationality. A subsequent CFD took place to rename Music by nationality to Music by country, but resulted in no consensus.
Generally, category names should match its parent article, if there is one. For the subcategories of  and , they do have parent articles, but fail correspond by mirroring one another. Considering this, shouldn't the subcategories be renamed to match the parent articles (Fooian culture to Culture of Foo; Fooian music to Music of Foo), while  be named  and  be named  (which is currently a redirect), essentially undoing the two CFDs? — ξxplicit 07:20, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Socio-cultural topics 

message: The main category is :Category:Prisoners and detainees. I have two issues. First, does this category include only people who are currently imprisoned or detained, or does it include former prisoner/detainees? My assumption is only current ones, but the category is not clear. Regardless of the answer, I think the category and subcategories should be renamed to reflect the meaning, or at least the definitional text should say so. Also, many people in this category's subcategories are no longer imprisoned or detained (some are even dead). So, if the category means current, it should be removed from those people's articles. I just noticed that this has been discussed before at Talk:Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri#Category:Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States.
The second issue is the definition of a detainee. The category says: "In the present case, while Prisoners and detainees are technically synonyms, their connotations are different: a 'detainee' might be somebody under remand (and later proven not guilty)." This is not a definition - it's just one example. So, is a person who is civilly detained a detainee, i.e., a person who is involuntarily put in an institution as part of a civil proceedings? What about a person who is detained in a rehabilitation facility but as part of a criminal proceeding? A good topical example of such a person is Lindsay Lohan who was ordered by the judge to be transferred from jail to rehab. She's no longer incarcerated, but is she a detainee?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:47, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Categories are almost never meant to capture a person's "current" status. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:35, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prisoners and Detainees Questions 

message: Do categories include the disambiguator if the article they reference is disambiguated, even if the disambiguator is not needed for the cat? E.g. if you have an artist who is disambiguated (to distinguish from a politician and a philosopher etcetera), the cat artist albums could do without the disambiguation (the politician and so on will in general not have an albums category). To take the example which made me think about this; we have Jamie Walters (American entertainer), and the :Category:Jamie Walters albums was recently moved to :Category:Jamie Walters (American entertainer) albums. Is this in any way necessary according to the guidelines? It seems to me as if it makes things needlessly complicated. Fram (talk) 11:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation 

message: Okay I don't see any conventions on WP:ENGVAR. To avoid confusion, it would make sense to have categories in a category tree have consistent spelling even if a category has strong national ties? For example: :Category:Armoured fighting vehicles by country. Marcus Qwertyus  04:59, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As a general rule, to avoid confusion, the categories in a tree are commonly spelled using the local spelling.  Also in some cases where nomenclature is different, we will choose to follow local common usage. Basically with those exceptions, we follow WP:ENGVAR for the basics. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't mind using all British spelling if it would accomplish consistency. Marcus Qwertyus  07:16, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  ENGVAR 

message: Someone recently renamed :Category:RoboCop to :Category:RoboCop (franchise).  There is currently a CfD in place to move it back here.  In this case the disambiguation seems unnecessary, as all articles relate to the same topic, and the high level :Category:RoboCop seems more sensible.  Is there a guideline/precedent for this.  Anyone have anything to add to the discussion?  --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation of film franchise category names. 

message: If a work is credited, in some capacity (written-by, or directed-by, etc.) to a team of people (and of course, for the work in question, this credit a defining characteristic), may we create a category for each member of the team? E.g. if the credit is Written by X & Y, then may categorise the work as both Works written by X and as Works written by Y? Or only as Works written by X & Y?  We currently seem to have a mixture of both approaches. The former (splitting the credit) seems problematic for a number of reasons, not least being the misrepresentation an official (legal) credit. Whatever the answer, clarification in the guideline would be useful. Uniplex (talk) 15:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we can.  A mixture of approaches is probably best, and the songwriter categories are the best illustration of why. We also have "team" categories where appropriate, which can be subs of more than one members, eg :Category:Songs written by Lennon–McCartney, a sub of both of their individual categories. But this is best only for relatively long term & prolific teams. We don't like "films by" type categories except for directors and screenwriters. Does that answer? Johnbod (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your reply. However, I'm still a little confused! Are you advocating to ignore the official credit in some cases?  Take, for example the album Bad, credited (and defined) as being produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson; is it appropriate to directly categorize this as being an Album produced by Michael Jackson? (We do currently.) Uniplex (talk) 16:24, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Works of art categories by team-of-artists 

message: :*Purpose Well, the problem here is that it's not clear what the purpose is of most of these category schemes--are they categorizing by a purely geographic region or a territory controlled by a state? This is the problem with having an article entitled "China" about the contemporary state the People's Republic of China. Note that some of these designations extend into antiquity (e.g. Armenia, Greece, India) and are not identical to our modern-day states (i.e. the Republic of Armenia, the Hellenic Republic, the Republic of India.) It's not clear what these category schemes are supposed to be doing and there is no centralized authority for determining the category tree, so it will inevitably be a hodge-podge. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: *Comment I partly agree with you.  Tibet's government-in-exile in India doesn't control any Chinese territories so categorization should be very narrow to topics related to Dalai Lama's efforts. Agree with Korea. Where do we put Northern Ireland; under UK with nothing under Ireland? China is one country with two governments which raises a challenge: if "China" means People's Republic of China, Taiwan doesn't fit under that nor is it a separate country. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

text: * Emmigration Actually, with emigration I think we should focus on ethncity.  If someone came from East Germany, Prussia or West Germany, they're German immigrants; if they came from Samoa, American Samoa, Western Samoa or German Samoa, they're Samoan. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: *Except if they moved from American Samoa to the United States they are not emigrants at all, they are not changing countries.  If someone is a German national who moved to German Samoa while it was under German control, are they really a German emigrant?  How would you deal with my Polish ancestors who moved from East Prussia to the United States.  They were not by any ethnic definition German.  Also would you class ethnic Germans who had lived their entire life in Prague and emigrated to the United States in 1900 as German Emigrants?  What about ethnic Samoans, born in New Zealand, who then emigrate to Australia?  Putting East Germany, West Germany and the German empire together probably works.  However it can not be based on ethnicity, because if it is than we have to include emigrants from Vienna and all sorts of other places.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: * Hmm, I may have been wrong here. RevelationDirect (talk) 21:59, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

text: *Divded versus Changed That may be a workable distinction. With Divided, we're potentially looking at broader supranational categories. With shifting borders we're looking at whether we include the original, current, or in-between countries in categorization.RevelationDirect (talk) 22:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: * Exactly. Jeffrey (talk) 22:17, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: * There's actually a third case - unification, amalgamation or annexation, e.g., Bavaria, Venetia, Sardinia, Sicily, Anglia, and so on and so forth. But I don't think there's anything to do with 'supranational'. Jeffrey (talk) 22:23, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion 

message: Do we have somewhere that the rules on how to categorize people as say English-language singers, or French-language writers are spelled out?John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  x-language ys 

message: *Wikipedia:Categorization/Noticeboard
Currently, category-related discussions tend to be spread out over the talkpages of WP:CFD; WP:CAT, WP:NCCAT; WP:CLS; and elsewhere. Awhile back, it seemed to me that having a category-related noticeboard might be nice, so I cobbled one together. Recently, some helpful person added a notice on WP:CAT about it. So at this point, I welcome others' thoughts on this. What do you think about it, and if positive, how and where do you think we should notify others of its existence? - jc37 06:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noticeboard 

message: Where is the logic for the convention naming some categories as "in country" and others as "of country"?  --Bermicourt (talk) 20:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the "of" indicates a naturally occurring thing, whereas "in" indicates a man-made thing? This doesn't universally hold, but generally landforms are "of" and cities are "in", for example. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:16, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "of country" vs. "in country" 

message: A new user, User:Ashamedant, has created a bunch of new categories for city landmarks and has added them to hundreds of articles. Examples of the new categories:  :Category:Albuquerque Landmark, :Category:Riverside Landmark, :Category:Santa Monica Landmark, and :Category:San Diego Landmark. In the case of San Diego there was already an existing category, :Category:Landmarks in San Diego, California; AshamedAnt has been removing that category from articles and replacing it with :Category:San Diego Landmark. 
I see a number of problems with the name of these new categories. It seems that most such categories are titled the way the San Diego one was, as "Category:Landmarks in City, State". Existing categories include :Category:Landmarks in Chicago, Illinois, :Category:Landmarks in San Francisco, California, :Category:Landmarks in Seattle, Washington, :Category:Landmarks in Omaha, Nebraska, etc. For that matter, even if the proposed new format "Cityname Landmarks" is to be used, it needs to be plural. 
I have asked Ashamedant not to do any more with these categories until the name can be discussed and community consensus reached. I have posted a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#City landmarks. Please make any comments there. --MelanieN (talk) 15:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Landmarks 

message: * The guideline says that categories should use country names corresponding to the respective article name, and lists "... of the People's Republic of China" and "... of the Republic of China" as examples. However, the articles about both countries are now at their common names, "China" and "Taiwan", leading to inconsistency between the guideline and the examples.
* The main list is rather long for a list of examples. If no examples can be removed, it could also be divided into "sovereign states", "dependencies" and "disputed".
* The European Union is listed twice, once under "Supranational" and once in the main list. I think it should be removed from the latter.
* The Netherlands Antilles dissolved in 2010, and could therefore be moved to "Historical". SiBr4 (talk) 22:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:Category names#How to name the country|#How to name the country]] 

message: —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:19, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeking input regarding the naming / renaming of categories used by the new Lua-based citation templates 

message: You may wish to participate in this discussion Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_July_22#Category:Chicago.2C_Illinois which is proposing to rename all "Foo in Chicago, Illinois" to "Foo in Chicago". Note: no other cities have been nominated at this time.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:04, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago, Illinois or Chicago? 

message: I'm wondering if some examples should be included:
* :Category talk:Madonna (entertainer) songs - as opposed to Madonna (virgin Mary) songs? 
* :Category talk:American conductors (music) - as opposed to American electrical conductors (yes old topic)
In ictu oculi (talk) 05:29, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone has just asked at my talk about the guideline for having the Category match the Article, including the disambiguator. I'm surprised to find it's not noted here, given that consensus at discussions seems to support it. (If anything Categories often retain disambiguation even if the article does not.) I'd support having it listed. Tassedethe (talk) 15:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Retention of (disambiguator) in cats 

message: Hi, can any other editor provide an opinion on whether the category "Northern Ireland cheeses" is applicable on Fivemiletown Creamery please?  I started a discussion with User talk:Jerry Pepsi on his reasons for removal, but we have different opinions.  Any help appreciated.  Thank you.  -- HighKing++   18:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Appropriate category? 

message: *I'm sure this isn't the first time this issue has ever come up, but...when it comes to biographies of women on here, why do some categories state female while other cats state women? Shouldn't they all follow the same wording? Erpert WHAT DO YOU WANT??? 07:14, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we had a big CFD on it a few months ago, the consensus was, don't do anything. There are reasons for the differences, and there wasn't consensus to choose one or the other. For example, sometimes "Female" is used in cases where the contents are potentially children and adults (children aren't usually called "women").--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Women? Female? 

message: I have submitted a proposal for an Individual Engagement Grant for the first phase of a project looking at the category systems in Wikimedia wikis. In this first phase I will research the nature of the English Wikipedia's category system, , including category naming, as the first step in designing ways to optimize category systems throughout WMF wikis. In later phases, I plan to
* Research how readers and editors utilize the category system in the English Wikipedia.
* Investigate the category systems in other language Wikipedias and in other WMF projects.
* Explore the value and feasibility of using Wikidata as the basis for the category system across WMF wikis. If deemed appropriate by the community, work with the community to develop and implement this.
* Utilize user-centered design methodologies to prototype various enhancements to the category system to improve the user experience. If deemed appropriate by the community, work with the community to develop and implement such enhancements.
If you would like to endorse this proposal, you can do so here. I would also appreciate any other feedback, pro or con, which can be posted here. Thanks! Libcub (talk) 06:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  IEG proposal on the category system in the English Wikipedia 

message: Should the naming conventions for national categories of organizations change based on whether the organizations are active or defunct? For example:
* :Category:Organizations by country uses "based in Foo" whereas :Category:Defunct organizations by country uses "of Foo".
* :Category:Trade unions by country uses "in Foo" whereas :Category:Defunct trade unions by country uses "of Foo".
Is this appropriate or should these inconsistencies be corrected? Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defunct organizations 

message: As someone who has been doing this manually for years, I hereby dutifully beg of anyone who is technically proficient and knows how to create and run a bot that will: 
#Automatically sort all Categories on each article and category page alphabetically;
#Create a uniform system for where to place categories on each article and category page that commence with numbers, such as years of birth/death, centuries, and any category that starts with a number/numeral. 
Please see the centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 61#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 09:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion re-opened at VPP

message: Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#CatVisor and User:Paradoctor/CatVisor#Planned features if you are willing and able to assist this innovative WP project move along it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 23:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Tech help required to improve categories

message: I think we should include the naming convention for WikiProject articles here. While somewhat self-referential, it does relate to categorization of articles and to the naming convention. I don't think there's an actual policy at the moment (:Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments is inconsistent). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming convention for WikiProject articles 

message: (I originally posted this at what is now Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transport/Archive 1, as well as Talk:Cable car.  I didn't get a response in either location so I thought I'd try here.) 
Regarding article and category naming, Which of the above names are preferred, and is the current categories structure correct?  I notice there aren't many entries in a lot of the categories in this area, which makes me think either not many cable systems have articles, or the categories are wrong/confusing?
To follow on, I've gone through the "lowest common category" of these and have found the following layout - suggested changes in bold: (Note: may have changed since originally posted 2 months ago)
*Vertical transport devices:
**Cable railways
***Cable car railways
****Cable car accidents
****Cable car railways in [country] (x6)
****Cable liner people movers
***Funicular railways
****Defunct funicular railways
*****Defunct funicular railways in the United States
****Funicular railways by country
*****Funicular railways in [country] (x31)
****Underground funiculars
****Water-powered funicular railways
*****Former water-powered funicular railways converted to electricity
***Railway inclines
****Railway includes in [country] (x5)
**Aerial lifts
***Aerial lifts by country
****Aerial tramways by country Should this (and the one below) be in this category?  Technically yes, since they are types of aerial lifts.. but would be good to avoid duplication 
****Gondola lifts by country
****Aerial lifts in [country] (x7)
***Aerial lift manufacturers
***Aerial tramways
****Aerial tramways by country
*****Aerial tramways in [country] (x16)
*****Cable cars in [country] (x9)   < ^^ I assume these category names are different due to language differences in various countries?
***Gondola lifts
****Gondola lifts by country
****Gondola lifts in [country] (x5)
**Funicular railways  Remove from this group - is in "Cable railways" above
**Ski lifts
***Aerial lifts Remove from this group - is in "Vertical transport devices" directly - not all aerial lifts are ski lifts
***Ski lift manufacturers
***Ski lift types
***Surface lifts
My comments focus on the aerial systems:
               
               /-- Aerial tramways
              /
  Aerial lifts --- Chairlift
              \
               \-- Gondola lifts
Note there is no category for "chairlifts" - is it because they are generally not notable enough to have an article, or are they a type of gondola lift (in contrast to the "chairlift" article)?
There is also confusion in that both "aerial tramway" and "gondola lift" articles state that they are also known as "cable car", yet the gondola lift article points out that the two are very different.  
Just rambling thoughts... any comments? -- Chuq (talk) 04:18, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: One factor is that terminology varies. For example, in North America one talks of aerial tramways; in Europe they are cable cars. "Defunct" is also a US term; "former" is used elsewhere. So it's fine to have :Category:Aerial tramways in the United States as well as :Category:Cable cars in Austria because that conforms to regional usage. Essentially in Europe there are: cable cars (2 large cabins, 2 carrying cables, 2 hauling cables), gondola lifts (many small cabins on a continuous moving cable), chair lifts (many 1-8 man open chairs on a continuous moving cable), funiculars aka cable railways (2 cars or trainsets running in opposite directions on a single railway), rack or cog railways and drag lifts (T-bar or button lifts). There may be a technical difference between funiculars and cable railways. So cable cars, gondola lifts and chair lifts are not the same. I've amended the gondola lift article, but the cable car is confusing because it's conflated aerial and surface transport and gondola lifts. Is that American usage? Bermicourt (talk) 14:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aerial lifts/Aerial cableways/gondolas/cable cars 

message: I'd like to suggest establishing some general principles for this. The world has thousands of languages, and most "X by language" categories soon end up sprawling masses of hundreds of subcategories.
I would suggest a rough taxonomic approach:
# large families such as Indo-European should be grouped in their own categories.
# areal units like "indigenous Australian" would also be acceptable.
# on the contrary, fine-grained taxonomic division - definitely anything less than 10, probably even anything less than 30 - should be discouraged here. E.g. :Category:Iranian words and phrases should be kept directly under :Category:Indo-European words and phrases, as currently; and not stashed away under :Category:Indo-Iranian words and phrases.
--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:55, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories by language 

message: I mean Wikipedia talk:Category names#Manufactured objects. Fgnievinski (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  manufactured is factory-made; rename to human-made 

message: The category :Category:Film scores almost exclusively contains articles on film scores, but virtually all of the categories under its subcategory :Category:Film scores by composer contain articles on films themselves, not film scores. Would the music by composer naming convention still apply, or would it be more appropriate to rename those categories something like "Films scored by X"? --torri2(talk/contribs) 22:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Film scores 

message: Hello, please participate in my proposal to include brackets in category names for more clarity, here: Proposal. Regards, CN1 (talk) 01:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for detailed but extensive change in category names 

message: I do wondering on why I not found a recommendation for the usage of Hyphen-minus with spaces around, because this would be a typographical mistake, instead of using EN DASH!?  → User: Perhelion 11:59, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Found at MOS:DASH. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:21, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, can we add a short mention to this on this page?  → User: Perhelion 01:44, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  This page really focuses on naming issues that are specific to categories rather than issues that apply to all Wikipedia content. We don't need to repeat the entire manual of style. I would ask what is it about categories that means we should single out the hyphen/dash issue? Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll be concrete, I come from Commons. This issue is there a big problem, there are hundreds or thousands of such names. In fact, the category-naming is the fully right place to mention this. Thanks again for your response.  → User: Perhelion 23:25, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This policy page is not used as a policy page by commons, is it? I thought that commons, being essentially multilingual, hasn't been as focused on manual of style issues. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:29, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  Many policies are identical, especially the English naming convention.  → User: Perhelion 22:10, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, so if commons has policies and conventions, and the concern is with commons categories, shouldn't we be adding it there, not here? I'm just trying to figure out why we need to single out one particular English-language guideline here, in the guidelines about categories. Using hyphens instead of dashes in categories in the English Wikipedia is not a pressing problem, as far as I can see. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hyphen-minus with spaces around 

message: Where intersection categories are aggregated in two ways, the current naming convention is e.g.  and , where the first thing (X) named in the parent category (by X and Y) is the first thing named in its sub-categories (e.g. , cf. ). This was chosen at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 11#Category:Occupations by nationality. 
However, editors are still finding this "ambiguous and imprecise" (e.g. this CFD). I have learned the convention, but agree that it is not intuitive. 
One current exception is :Category:Scientists by occupation (and by nationality), which was renamed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 July 27#Category:Types of scientist by nationality. 
I suggest renaming all such parent categories to a different form, "People by X and then by Y". – Fayenatic London 09:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  People by X and Y 

message: I've done a bit of work towards the goal of expanding the section on how to the name a nationality, since it currently doesn't provide much specific guidance. My draft is here. I thought I'd post it here before I added it, since it significantly expands the section. I believe it reflects current consensus. Comments can be made here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added the proposed text to the policy, and deleted the draft linked to above. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:20, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to expand the "How to name a nationality" section

message: Hello, I have started creating articles on wildlife management areas, specifically at this time in Louisiana, and there is no category: Category:Wildlife Management Areas of Louisiana, as a sub-category of Category:Wildlife management areas by state. Also, I added relevant "Geography of" categories and found that Category:Geography of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana does not exist. I would appreciate it if someone would give me some information about this. Otr500 (talk) 11:38, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wildlife Management Areas 

message: I am proposing to rename  to  as "MacOS" refers to "macOS".  I need help making this technical move request. I believe the page  already exists. Somerandomuser (talk) 20:51, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename {{cat|Utilities for MacOS}} to {{cat|Utilities for macOS}} 

message: Sometimes its tempting to, for example sort images of french churches into a category which is simply named "Churches" and make this a subcategory of the :Category:Buildings and structures in France‎ (or similar); especially in Wikimedia Commons.
I expect that it is not allowed to have several categories named "Churches" (one for each country that is). But I have never actually come across that rule. It is neither mentioned in C:Commons:Categories nor here.
If this rule exists shouldn't it be mentioned early on as one of the more prominent rules.
By the way, it is also not explained what the selection of countries is based on which are listed in the passage: "Wikipedia:Category_names#How to name the country".
And what does the recurrent "FOOs" in the list of countries in the passage "Wikipedia:Category_names#How to name a nationality" stand for?
And what names are given in the brackets behind the adjective and the term "FOOs"?
It mostly seems to be the name of the country. But in the case of Azerbaijan and Lithuania it is not.
thanks for explaining,
KaiKemmann (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can there be more than one category with the same name? 

message: The organization behind the annual Highly Cited Researchers list has changed during the years. It was (originally, I suppose) Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), then Thomson ISI, then Thomson Reuters. Nowadays it is Clarivate Analytics (per, e.g. https://clarivate.com/hcr/2017-researchers-list/ ). 
There were some 3300 researchers listed by the latest list (Nov. 2017, per https://clarivate.com/hcr/worlds-influential-scientific-minds/). This Category:ISI highly cited researchers currently has just around 300 entries (in enwiki, maybe around +100 in other wikis altogether). My claim is, that many researchers are not categorized here due to out-of-date name of this category. Old name also works against including scientists of recent years. I would strongly suggest updating the category name. Maybe new name could be Category:Clarivate Analytics highly cited researchers? Besides, could there be some kind of redirect from the old (category) names (incl. ISI highly cited researchers, Thomson ISI highly cited researchers, Thomson Reuters highly cited researchers)? --Paju~enwiki (talk) 10:24, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming suggested, current ''Category:ISI highly cited researchers'' name is out-of-date 

message: I have proposed that part or all of this page be downgraded to a guideline. Jc86035 (talk) 09:09, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy status 

message: :
I am wondering about the assignment of people to centuries. The section Time periods of this page now says that "Categories for people by century should be named :Category:xx-century foos or :Category:xx-century BC foos." OK, but how does one choose a century for the large number of people whose lives overlap 2 centuries. Or does one place the person in both centuries of their life?
As a specific example, a number of physicists have recently been moved from :Category:American physicists to :Category:21st-century American physicists. The second name in the 21st-century category is Benjamin Abeles. According to the article, Abeles was born in 1925, did his notable work in the 1960s, and retired in 1995. So why has he been categorized in the 21st century? Apparently because he is still alive.
My own preference would be to categorize people in the century in which they are notable, which would be 20th century for Abeles. As people who did notable work in two different centuries, I would categorize them in both centuries, since readers might be interested in either their work in the 20th century or their work in the 21st century (for example). But I appreciate that it is preferable to have a uniform policy on this question. What do others think?  Dirac66 (talk) 02:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with you on both points. I do try to categorize people in multiple centuries where possible. I also recognize that my current plan is imperfect (viz your point about living people, for instance). My feeling is, when cutting down the number of people within a parent category, I would rather move them to one subcategory rather than none. It's a start...and it can be built upon by others. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories by century 

message: I am working with Andrew Gray  on diffusing some of the English MP bios in the subcats of :Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707), and we've so far settled on a schema for one category per parliament assembled e.g. :Category:English MPs 1407. This solution works fine as long as there is no more than one parliament assembled per year, but an issue we are running into is that sometimes two separate parliaments would be assembled in the same year, for example looking at 1404 in this table, we can see two parliaments for that year. Our solution in these cases to disambiguate those two parliaments is to have two categories in that year; so :Category:English MPs January 1404 for the parliament assembled in January of 1404 and :Category:English MPs October 1404 for the parliament assembled in October of 1404.
As I was going through and tagging MPs to these categories, I noticed it would be easier from a HotCat-search-drilldown perspective if the category naming convention was "English MPs YYYY Month", but I couldn't find any guidance on this page about acceptable date formats for including year and month in a category name. Examples of some ideas we've discussed so far:
# English MPs January 1404 --> this is the existing solution that is a little awkward when using HotCat
# English MPs 1404 January
# English MPs 1404 (January)
# English MPs 1404, January
With option 1, an editor typing "English MPs 140.." would not see "English MPs January 1404" come up as a HotCat search suggestion, whereas the idea with options 2 through 4 is that those would show up in a HotCat search. Any feedback, particularly on options 2 through 4, or reference examples of other category trees would be welcome. -Furicorn (talk) 05:44, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I dont see anything wrong with your English MP January 1404 and English MP October 1404 having a category for all 12 months would not seem to be of much use. If it was a long parliament then MPs would have lots of categories added for each month they served. I believe most MPs are categorised by Parliamant not in the month they served. MilborneOne (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Don't worry - it's just a disambiguator term to cope with the problems of two distinct parliaments in a single year. (Most of them took place over a couple of months, in reality, but naming them by the month of assembly seems to be the generally used scholarly approach). We certainly won't be putting multiple categories on for all the months of a year! Andrew Gray (talk) 20:03, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

text: OK no problem, thanks for making that clearer. MilborneOne (talk) 17:35, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorizing people by year and month 

message: I wanted to categorize court cases related to the civil rights movement.  I created :Category:Civil rights movement case law.  Is this a proper format for such a category? Mitchumch (talk) 22:22, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a proper category? 

message: There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islands#RFC "on" v "in" categories about names of island (and other landforms) categories. Crouch, Swale (talk)  13:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  On v In categories 

message: Sometimes I need the existing guideline that says: "Don't categorise by property" (don't categorise: "Substances that are fluid at room temperature").
I arrived at this page, but did not find any hint (#Special conventions maybe?). I propose to add that guideline (by link or in text) to this page. And yes also, right here to help me going today ;-) -DePiep (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Don't categorise by property" 

message: Should  refer to "People from Foo" instead of "People of Foo", for consistency with the remainder of that paragraph (e.g. "People from Georgia...", "Fooers from Boo")?
(See also my comment in categorisation discussion that .)
Mitch Ames (talk) 03:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  People of Foo 

message: Currently, the Heritage section specifies:
*2010-07-27 22:26:20 Good Olfactory (→‎Heritage: add exception)
I'm unable to find discussion in the Talk archives. Currently, over a decade later, there are no subcategories matching this pattern.
Category talk:Israeli people by ethnic or national origin#Proposed guidelines references an archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel circa 2009, but does not mention "origin".
 could you please shed light? Should this exception be removed?William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the Israeli exception was just a reflection of what existed in the categorization scheme; acknowledging the exception wasn't meant to be an indication that the exception was a good idea. For Israeli categories, "origin" was chosen over "decent" in this 2010 CFD. In any case, it's  moot now, because the Israeli categories were changed to "descent" in a 2012 CFD.  Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: After almost 9 years, I'm surprised that folks forgot to remove the exception. Done.William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:17, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Israeli people by ethnic or national origin 

message: For some time I've been trying to iron out inconsistencies in the names of the subcategories of :Category:Paintings by collection. At the moment, there are 155 category names with the style "Paintings in the collection of [a museum, etc.]" and 35 with "Paintings in [a museum, etc.]" – see the full list below.
;"Paintings in the collection of [...]"
;"Paintings in [...]"
This is the result of multiple CfDs with inconsistent results, most notably this one (which, as originally proposed, would have changed all instances of "Paintings of" to "Paintings in", but instead changed them to "Paintings in the collection of" as that phrase had more support) and this one (intended to make all instances of "Paintings in" consistent with the new style "Paintings in the collection of", which was unsuccessful).
The arguments, in a nutshell, are as follows: "Paintings of" should be avoided for these categories as it can imply the subject of a painting, not its location (:Category:Paintings of Versailles is a good example, moved to :Category:Paintings in the collection of the Palace of Versailles in July); "Paintings in" could be inaccurate if a painting is on loan, etc.; and "Paintings in the collection of" is precise but was considered too verbose in the 24 July CfD. Note also that WP:VAMOS advises against using the phrase "in the collection of" (or, rather, "is in the collection of", which is near as damn it). "Painting collection of" was also suggested, which seems much too clunky to me, and if applied further down the category tree would result in things like "Diego Velázquez painting collection of the Museo del Prado", when "Paintings by Diego Velázquez [...]" is what follows Wikipedia:Category names#Visual arts.
My feeling is that the "Paintings in" is the best of the two existing styles, as the most concise. Category names only get longer the further down the category tree any convention is applied, and "the collection of" is probably unecessary verbiage. I don't think we need to be hyperprecise; for article titles the policy (WP:PRECISE) is to be precise enough to be unambiguous about the scope, but no more precise than that, and I can't see why that wouldn't apply to category names as well. As another editor said in July, .
There hasn't been consensus at CfD, so I'd like to resolve this and find agreement on a single style somehow. Ham II (talk) 07:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes - one can usually say that eg "the Mona Lisa is on display at the Louvre", but there are lots of paintings and other objects that aren't usually on display - drawings in particular. Many more that are generally on display may disappear for several months for conservation or loan to an exhibition. So I think that terminology is best avoided in both articles and certainly in categories. There is also the case of bodies with lots of sites, like the Royal Collection and Spanish Patrimonia Nacional (hope I've got that right), who periodically play musical chairs with their objects.  We're never going to keep up with such changes. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paintings by collection 

message: Should subcategories of :Category:Paintings by collection begin with (A) Paintings in [a museum, etc.] or (B) Paintings in the collection of [a museum, etc.]? Ham II (talk) 07:48, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes - one can usually say that eg "the Mona Lisa is on display at the Louvre", but there are lots of paintings and other objects that aren't usually on display - drawings in particular. Many more that are generally on display may disappear for several months for conservation or loan to an exhibition. So I think that terminology is best avoided in both articles and certainly in categories. There is also the case of bodies with lots of sites, like the Royal Collection and Spanish Patrimonia Nacional (hope I've got that right), who periodically play musical chairs with their objects.  We're never going to keep up with such changes. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for comment