Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 6

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Merging Categories

Is there a way to suggest a category merge like {{Merge}} for articles? I noticed there is both a Category:Eurodance and a Category:Eurodance musicians. 05:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Because categories can't usefully be redirected, we usually take this straight to WP:CFD and suggest deleting one of them. Actually, though, in this case, shouldn't Category:Eurodance musicians be a subcategory of Category:Eurodance? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Discussion page mysteriously truncated

What happened to all previous discussion? Where have the links to archived material gone? Even the straw poll below refers to "Please read the section above", but the section has been removed. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:24, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Whoa, I have no idea... —Tarnas 21:44, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Archived old discussion. Everything's fixed, I hope... —Tarnas 06:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

An article with the same name as a category should usually belong only to that category?

Are there exceptions to the following rule?

For instance, many film, book, and author/artist articles have dedicated topic categories (e.g., Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion), yet it makes sense to have both the main article and the topic category appear in a given larger category (for instance, it makes sense to me to have both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion in Category:Anime). Category pages seem like they're built exactly for this purpose: they contain a pool of subcategories in their top half, and a pool of relevant topic articles in the bottom half, and so it seems natural to me that, for instance, Category:Anime would have both the catch-all subcat Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion in its top half and a reference to the specific main article Neon Genesis Evangelion in its bottom half.

It just looks like the topic article under the current policy (Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example, again) lacks categorization at first glance: as they are now, topic articles with topic categories are categorized mostly according to how their topic categories are categorized, and it seems confusing to create that dependency between the two. Was what I'm talking about doing seen as too redundant, and that's why it isn't advocated, or can film articles, for example, be special cases? —Tarnas 23:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

This has been a long ongoing topic of discussion. It seems to me that there are some very good reasons to ENCOURAGE putting an article in both the category with the same name and the category above it. The double listing makes perfect sense to me.
  1. The double category listing sends the message to the user that there is an article about the topic, and there are also more articles to be found in the subcategory.
  2. It makes it easier to find main topic articles (by eliminating having to go to the subcategory)
  3. It puts both articles in the list of categories for the article. There would be the normal higher level listing that all other articles get put into now when they don't have their own category. There would also be the subdirectory with the same name which is the natural jumping off point that people will look for if they want more information about the subject.
  4. It makes more intuitive sense for editors. The natural inclination is to put things into categories, not to take them out of categories.
  5. It creates a complete listing of articles at the higher level category. It is confusing to have to look at the subdirectories and the list of articles to get a complete list of topics.
As an alternative if people want to be really consistent about the no duplication rule, a better way to do it would be to only put an article in the HIGHER level subdirectory. Then both the article and the subdirectory would be listed. In the lower level category, the one with the same name as the article, there would be a link which would be entered manually (e.g. "This topic is about motion pictures. For an introduction to the topic see film".) You would also have to do the same thing in the film article (e.g. "For more film topics see: Category:Film). This would actually probably be a more consistent and user-friendly way to do things than have duplicates, but harder to set up. Either system would be an improvement to just putting the article in the category with the same name. I would like to add some text to the project page about this if there is consensus. Could we take a straw poll to see where people stand? I've added one below. -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Whoa! I just read through most of this dicussion page, and realized that my question here has been debated A LOT! One theory put forth above is that there's a disconnect between the impulse to categorize and to classify, but I think the biggest problem of all is that there's two competing notions of hierarchy: one that there is a "tree", in which it's possible to have "sub-categories", and the other that there is a web of interconnected articles and categories. This is noted on Wikipedia:Categorization ("Categories do not form a tree"), but the whole Wikipedia:Categorization policy page seems to be riddled with uncertainty about how to apply the notion of a relatively tree-less hierarchy.
     The overwhelming problem, I think, is that there is this concept of "sub-category": there should be no true "subordinate category" when the hierarchy of categories is not a strict tree, there can only be related categories, some more or less subordinate to others. This becomes most counter-intuitive when the idea of "subordinate category" leaks into "subordinate article", where the policy becomes one of including an article only in one category: Deism only in Category:Deism rather than in Category:Religious faiths, traditions, and movements as well. This policy ignores the dual nature of categorization: to organize both related categories and related articles in readily available fashion, not to nest articles deep in hidden categories. To dictate that a given article should not be further categorized is to miss a strong point of relating a topic to others directly on its page.
     The impulse to manage and prune categories has become too counter-productive in this way: there is, for instance, room for all African-American actors in Category:Film actors, Category:American actors, and Category:African-American actors. I think redundancy is okay and desired: it makes things easier to find and reflects the true multi-categorizable nature of most topics. —Tarnas 01:54, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes it has been debated quite a bit. I can't say we've reached a consensus. I agree with what you are saying (I made many of the same points higher in the page), and I'm trying to keep an open mind and come up with creative solutions. -- Samuel Wantman 07:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Topic article straw poll

Please read the section above, and respond below. This is non-binding, just a starting place for the discussion to see where people stand. Thanks -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

How should an article be categorized if it is the topic article of a category? Add your name to any of the following options that you find acceptable (Short comments welcome):

A. The article should only be in the category with the same name. That category will be in the higher level category and will appear as a subdirectory. For an example Film is only in one category: Category:Film

  • Cleanest and most logical. —Ashley Y 21:14, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Puts articles into their most specific category, reducing redundant clutter on the article's page. Bryan 02:08, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep. Redundant clutter can be a problem in cats with dozens of subcats and 100+ articles. This is how I categorize stuff in math & physics (usually). linas 03:57, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Reduces clutter. CalJW 02:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Redundancy means more maintenance. This is easiest and it doesn't make navigation any harder for the user. ··gracefool |☺ 15:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Reduces clutter (see Category:National Football League teams where most of the teams are listed twice - and the rest aren't only because I was gradually changing them all to A). If the category has many parents, it would reduce a lot of clutter. With B, every time you added a parent category or two, you'd have to do the same in every one of the category's articles. BTW, "B is the current solution" is listed a few times in the pro-B side as reasons to go with B which doesn't seem like a good reason to me. If Americans all thought that way, we'd be singing, "God Bless the Queen". wknight94 16:01, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

B. The article should be in both the category with the same name and the higher level category. The category with the same name will also be in the higher level category. Both the article and the category will be listed in the higher level category. This seems to be the current norm. For an example Musical theatre used to contain Category:Musical theatre and Category:Theatrical genres.

  • Easy and functional -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The most natural solution, already widely used. —Tarnas 00:45, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Jmabel | Talk 17:26, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Easiest from the user perspective. Otherwise some articles of a type will be in a main category while others will only be in a subcategory. Provides a bit of useful redundancy, IMO older≠wiser 22:49, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • This is pretty much the current standard and I find it the easiest to use. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Classifies the article in its proper place in the upper category, links the article with the (sub)category of instances of what the article is about, and is not a redundant categorization so long as the article is separated conceptually, denoted by a unique section (" "). See comment below. - Centrx 21:26, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The example seems to have been changed to type A. If I take it right, type B encourages more categories, which I think is a good thing...in some cases. Cacophony 06:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Seems to be the current solution. -- User:Docu

C. The article should only be in the higher level category. The category with the same name will also appear as a sub-category in the higher level category. There should be a link entered in the category with the same name directing users to the topic article. There should be a link in the article directing users to the topic category. For an example see Suspension bridge

  • Consistent and user-friendly, but more work to maintain. -- Samuel Wantman 00:10, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

D. The Wikipedia software should be changed so that articles and categories are merged. There would be space in each article that showed links to "subarticles", and putting [[Category:Panthera]] in Tiger would put a link to Tiger in the subarticle section of Panthera, as well as showing Panthera as a superarticle in the Tiger article (just like categories are now). Some articles would be mostly subarticle links.

  • Best. —Ashley Y 21:23, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Acceptable. This is actually possible now. All it would require is to put the entire topic article into the category page. The disadvantage of this scheme is when you are just looking for the subarticles.
  • This seems pretty drastic and complicated. Cacophony 06:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Plan C. would be best, I think, if we're thinking of the same thing, and I don't think it would be hard to implement. It's consistent with the idea of categories including brief self-descriptions: in the description, the main topic article could be mentioned/linked, and thereby omitted from the actual category. —Tarnas 00:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I think you and I are thinking of the same thing. Yes it isn't that hard to implement and it exists already on many categories and articles. The more I think about it the more I think there are advantages. It does make the notion of what should be in a category clearer, and it might get more people looking in categories. I have come across many new users who don't understand what categories are and how they work. If all the main topic articles had text that said "For more articles about about this subject see: Category:Foo", that helps makes it very clear. Category:Suspension bridges is a good example of how a category would look (notice that Suspension bridge is not be listed under articles.) Take a look at Suspension bridge and notice that there is a link and description to Category:Suspension bridges listed under "See also" but Category:Bridges is the only category the article is in. -- Samuel Wantman 02:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, rereading your idea, we aren't thinking of the same thing: since it's impossible put a topic cat in a topic article without the topic article appearing in the topic cat listing (e.g., can't categorize Hunter S. Thompson as Category:Hunter S. Thompson and somehow leave the former out of the latter), the precedent is, I think, to re-list the topic cat so that it appears as the first article in the topic cat listing, under an asterisk or something similar (e.g., [[Category:Hunter S. Thompson|*]]). I think it's nice to actually have the topic cat in the topic article at the bottom, and in the history of wikipedia categorization I think cats used to be at the top, but the format became clumbsy and got in the way of immediate information. —Tarnas 02:08, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It sounds like you are describing plan B. It is possible to put a topic category in a topic without the topic article appearing in the topic cat listing. You just put it in the article like so: [[:Category:Hunter S. Thompson]] Better yet if it was made the first item in the See Also section:
See all the articles in the Hunter S. Thopson category...
Perhaps I'm not understanding you. I don't want to move where categories display. I still want them at the bottom except for the topic article which would only be in the top section in plan C. Take a look at Category:Hunter S. Thompson. It now looks like it would in plan A and B. In plan C the only change would be that Hunter S. Thompson would not be in the category listings on the bottom, but it would be linked as it is now, on the top of the page. -- Samuel Wantman 07:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Plan C would remove the HST cat from the blue-boxed bottom of the HST topic article. I'm not into that, in which case I'm for plan B. Having one (very relevant) cat exist in the "See also" section fragments the whole unity of the category-article structure and requires users to learn a new process: topic cats don't show up on topic article bottoms, but somewhere in the end linking text. Not something I like so much. —Tarnas 18:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Plan B is troublesome because there are often several higher-level categories, and inevitably they get out of sync. It also clutters up the pages of those categories with items appearing as both articles and subcategories. We have a sensible simple rule of an article not being in a category and its supercat, why make a special exception? —Ashley Y 21:14, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

  • That "sensible simple rule" is the exception. The way it is, a topic article can't take on the categories that are attributed to its topic category, so a topic article (probably the most important article in a topic category) isn't allowed to be categorized directly, but must instead be categorized through its topic cat: see Neon Genesis Evangelion and Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion, where the topic article isn't allowed to be (logically) categorized as Category:Anime because its topic cat is. In every other case, an article, not having a topic cat especially about it, is allowed to be directly categorized wherever it is seen fit. —Tarnas 21:41, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Sure, Neon Genesis Evangelion belongs to Category:Anime, but only through Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion, so it doesn't directly belong to Category:Anime anymore than it directly belongs to Category:Animation. Putting it in only in Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion is correctly directly categorising it. —Ashley Y 22:04, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
My point is that this rule of indirectly categorizing a topic article through its topic category is silly and not sensible: yes it follows the current rule, but that's what I'm debating, the current rule doesn't make sense to me. I can't see the harm at all in having an article and its topic category listed in the same category, it's slightly redundant but also much more comprehensive and promotes the purpose of categorizing things in the first place: making information easily accessible from poolings of topics. I can clearly see the harm in this current policy: it makes categorizing a topic article that has a topic cat unduly confusing, and obscures the direct link between a relevant category and a relevant topic article by forcing a user who's looking, say, at Category:Anime to pass through Category:Anime series and then Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion before reaching Neon Genesis Evangelion. This extra running around is against the spirit of the dual categorization model: categorizing both categories and articles. —Tarnas 00:17, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Are you arguing that Neon Genesis Evangelion should be categorised in Category:Anime or merely in Category:Anime series (as well as Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion)? If the former, then you end up filling Category:Anime with all the series, which seems to defeat the point of Category:Anime series. Categories tend to fill up with articles easily, and creating subcategories is a way of mitigating that, but only if we don't have articles in the supercats as well. —Ashley Y 02:19, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
That's exactly what I'm arguing. I don't think this defeats the purpose of narrower categories, though: just like I was explaining in the "An article with the same name" section above, the only reason to use the current system of socking away articles in highly specialized subcategories is to reduce redundancy, but the whole idea of having a web of related articles interconnected by a non-tree-like category hierarchy is that there should be a certain amount of redundancy: it should be easy to find things, and thus they should usually exist in several places at once (that is, most topics can be categorized in many ways).

As I said in the above talk section, the categorization policy is riddled with uncertainty about the non-tree-like hierarchy axiom: the entire concept of "subcategories" is highly flawed, given that in a non-tree-like hierachy there will be few truly vertically "subordinate" categories, much less "subordinate" articles which are made to only appear in one category. This practice thwarts a primary purpose of the dual categorization model, as I say above: articles and categories belong in more categories, not less, so as to promote more opportunities for finding topical information through category browsing.

Having Neon Genesis Evangelion in Category:Anime, Category:Anime series, and Category:Neon Genesis Evangelion definitely doesn't defeat the point of having the narrower categories: the narrower categories are just that, more sharply defined categorizations of topics—topics which should be covered by varying degrees of precision (that is, in this case, in all three categories mentioned). One thing, though, that we still need to discuss is this idea of cats "filling up". —Tarnas 06:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Part of the point of narrower categories is to clean up the supercats, so they're not full of subordinate articles, and putting Neon Genesis Evangelion in Category:Anime defeats this. Otherwise, why not put it in all its ancestors, Category:Animation, Category:Film, Category:Japan, etc., etc.? You seem to have no clear rule as to when an article should be in both a category and a supercat. I think it's simplest that they should never be. —Ashley Y 06:44, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
Well, so this is the question of categories "filling up". I don't see much reason not to put an article in all of its "vertical" ancestors, so in the case at hand, Category:Animation and maybe then Category:Art. So what if there are thousands of articles listed in a cat, that provides broad-base access to all relevant articles for alphabetical eye-browsing while there's a means to sift through the articles (choose subcats) at the top of the cat: the article listings will slim down as more narrow subcats are opened up.

But, I'm beginning to see your point. My way of doing things would lead to a bloated tree-like cat hierarchy. Maybe the redundancy I desire in the cat system is being addressed in other ways, like with portals. —Tarnas 07:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I think there is a separate issue being brought up here. I don't think putting articles in more than one place in the hierarchy leads to them being everywhere in the hierarchy. The problem as I see it is that users expect articles to be listed with their siblings. If their siblings appear in different places in the hierarchy, it seems to make sense that ALL the siblings that fit the categories definition would be there. Thus, the duplication between Category:American actors and Category:African-American actors. -- Samuel Wantman 07:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Plan C makes no sense to me. Suspension bridge should obviously be in Category:Suspension bridges, it's the most relevant article to the category (though don't change it while it's an example). —Ashley Y 21:14, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

On the surface it might not seem to make sense, probably because it is very different from what we have been doing, but I think it actually makes more sense than the way things are. I'll explain. If you look at Category:Bridges, the top section lists all the subdirectories. Each subdirectory contains articles about individual bridges of each type. The bottom section contains articles about all the different types of bridges and lists of bridges. Likewise, Category:Suspension bridges contains articles about specific suspension bridges. The article Suspension bridge belongs in Category:Bridges but does it belong in Category:Suspension bridges? It is not an article about a specific suspension bridge, it is an article about a type of bridge, and that is why it was put in Category:Bridges. Luckily, we have the very top section of categories which is very much under utilized. This is the logical place to insert a one paragraph intro to the subject and a link to the topic article. If the topic article is linked from the intro, there is no need for it to be linked in the bottom section. The only thing missing is a link from the article to the category. I believe this should be done in bold from the SEE ALSO section of the article (for an example see Suspension bridge.) The reason why I think this is an improvement is because we can explain what is in the category (i.e. "for articles about specific suspension bridges see Category:Suspension bridges"). Plan A and B confuse the categorization scheme. Plan A moves articles away from all its siblings and puts it with its children. Plan B has the article with both siblings and children which makes the relationships harder to understand. Plan C makes the rules of categorization clear -- no exceptions necessary. Keeps siblings with siblings and has explained links to help the user navigate. -- Samuel Wantman 07:17, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, ignoring A or B, C would be bad for two reasons. First, Category:Suspension bridges is misleading: there are basically only articles on specific bridges in it, and no articles on suspension bridge topics in general except the one list. Following your logic, Category:Bridges would only include articles on specific bridges, since Category:Suspension bridges would only include articles on specific suspension bridges... but of course it doesn't and shouldn't. Category:Subatomic particles might be more representative, if less disciplined: it includes articles on specific subatomic particles, on facilities for observing them, and on theories/discussions of them in different groupings. And second, there's the reason I gave above, which still stands: Having one (very relevant) cat exist in the "See also" section fragments the whole unity of the category-article structure and requires users to learn a new process: that topic cats won't show up on topic article bottoms [in blue boxes], but somewhere in the end linking text. Not something I like so much. —Tarnas 07:51, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I grant that your second point has merit. There is the disadvantage you mention, but I can also see that as an advantage. However for your first point, I am not claiming that Bridges would only have articles about specific bridges, I am saying that there are distinctions made about every category about what belongs in the category and what doesn't. Once we make those distinctions (hopefully with an explanation on the category page), If any articles are listed, I'd like ALL the sibling articles that meet the criteria to be listed. Category:Suspension bridges is like many other pluralized categories (e.g. Category:Musicals.) I would be happy with either B, or C (and even D). B and C are actually very similar. B will have duplicate links to the topic article, where C will need a manual link from the article to the category. Perhaps B is better for this reason, it is easier to overlook a duplication than to make a manual link. I could also see a combination of B and C. B would be the case for most categories, but C would be the case for pluralized categories like actors, musicals, and suspension bridges (BTW, the only reason Category:Bridges is singular is because there is also Category:Bridge about the card game.) -- Samuel Wantman 08:16, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • An important reason to include the article in the category with the same name is so that a person reading that article is linked to the category of things that are instances of what the article is about. This would suggest A or B. The problem mentioned above with A is that a user looking at the upper category would not see the article in the article section; although the article can be found in the category with the same name, the article belongs in the category of which class it is a member. So, this leads to B. That B results in the same article in both a category and its subcategory is avoided if the article in the subcategory of the same name is conceptually classified and denoted as the eponymous article which defines the category. Conceptually, this makes the article not part of the category, but the content associated with the category. This has been denoted, in the past at least, by putting the article in its own section of the category, labelled "*" or " " or otherwise. The blank section seems best, for it puts the article at the very top without a section header ("A", "B", etc.). So, B is the best solution, at least in this respect, though the article in the subcategory should be in a section of its own. - Centrx 21:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
    • C links to the category with the same name also, but in a different way. See Suspension bridge for an example. -- Samuel Wantman 07:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • A combination of B and D, which would require a technical solution, would be for categories to automatically put the first paragraph of the topic article, denoted by " " categorization in the above space that is currently editable. There would be a second editable space for categorization, interwiki links, etc. - Centrx 20:51, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I think there is no one answer because the nature of the articles themselves are so diverse. Including an introduction on the category page is a great practice. The Wikiprojects would be a great way to come up with the best guideines within a particular subject. Different schemes for different subjects. Cacophony 06:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Multiple Category Search/Selection method?

One of the problems I've seen with categories is that many are created which are not proper classifications of information, that is "overcategorization", which if the principle is followed leads to endlessly convoluted and redundant category schemes (see Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_August_3#Category:Free_Linux_software). Yet, these categorizations are helpful for searching for information that satisfies multiple classifications. So, while "Free Linux software" or "Windows compression software" is not a valid category, it is useful to be able to list or search for Linux software that is Free software and Data compression software for Windows. The way to do this using proper categorization is to have a system by which categories can be selected/searched, so that a person can select a list of articles that are in more than one category, say "Free software" and "Linux software". So, I was wondering if there is any technical initiative to do this, whether under way, etc. or other suggestions. - Centrx 15:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I certainly support this idea. I am setting up a Wiki and do not want to go down the path of a huge number of categories which become difficult for novices to comprehend. The capacity to do a multi-category search/listing would be great. Can be done using the Search feature now but is not practical as I would like to include simple links in the article that list articles matching more than one category. Thomas 19 August 2005

Fiction

I was wondering about the policy of categoring articles on fiction. I was looking at the articles in Category:Fictional companies and found out out that some of them are also categoried in the non-fiction categories. For example Oceanic Airlines is also in Category:Airlines and Cyberdyne Systems Corporation is in Category:Companies of Japan. Should they be removed from them? --Laisak 13:06, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I think so. -Sean Curtin 05:45, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
I would say they ought to be removed. - Centrx 17:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Updating the section on category duplications.

I would like to remove the following section:

An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, for example Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software. An article with the same name as a category should usually belong only to that category, for instance, Deism belongs only in Category:Deism.

and replace it with this:

Normally, an article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, for example Golden Gate Bridge is in Category:Suspension bridges, so it should not also be in Category:Bridges. However there are occasions when this guideline can and should be ignored. Duplication is warranted when the set of subcategories are incomplete, when an article is the topic article for a category, and in a few special cases when it just makes common sense. For more about this see Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories

I've written the subpage Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories. I'd be thrilled if we could finally reach conseunsus about this. We've talked about it forever. I've tried to come up with what I think is the accepted norm in practice, and the consensus of our discussions to date. -- Samuel Wantman 10:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hm... It's been 3 days and nobody has said a word. In standard consensus decision making "silence equals agreement". If this goes a week without comment, I'll just make the change. -- Samuel Wantman 08:45, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
I like the new policy subpage and the new rule system, it needs some tweaking but it's a very good start in a new direction. Keep it! —Tarnas 19:02, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry but no reaction in three days does not equal a consensus (especially on a relatively backwater page like this - try CFD/talk). I'll go and read it now. Radiant_>|< 09:34, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
I fairly strongly support keeping the original wording, as these rules make the category system much easier to use. For instance at George W. Bush if you want to get to related articles you have to search through a fairly large, and ugly, block of text before you find Category:George W. Bush. By contrast Albert Einstein is much easier to use and better looking with the parent cats still easily accessible from the category page. - SimonP 15:35, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
It is a trade-off. You force everyone to do two page loads to get to a parent category. The Bush example is an unusually large list of categories. Another way to handle this situation would be for the first link under "See also" to be something like this:
This would be a very clear way for people to find the category. -- Samuel Wantman 07:57, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
I support the renaming. I have come across many cases where only one of two subcategories that an article should be placed in exists. We should be flexible. CalJW 02:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Category Question

I created a category but it says that "There is 1 subcategory to this category" the thing is that it links back to itself. What did I do wrong?? The page is here: [[Category:Historic Houses of North Carolina]]

There was a category link on the page. Fixed it to a better suited category. --Laisak 20:49, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Semantic structure

Is'nt this problem a problem of semantic structuring? Lists and categories have something in common - they comprise of a list of items which are hierachically linked.

So what is the difference?

  • Categories usually do not link items by an order other then alphabetical (it's possible though, but it is a pain) Lists primarily do that
  • the formatting of lists gives mor freedom
  • Categories live bottom up, lists top down (though categories can do something that lists can)
  • Pointers versus Edges - Categories use edges, while lists only use pointers. The concept of edges implies automatic handling of "the second side" of the link. (a new category is created only with a new article -> the category page has to be maintained) - the other way around it is not possible (currently).
  • orphaned links can be created by lists, but not by categories (currently)
  • readers often want to know the semantics of a lemma and browse through equivalents or antonyms - tat's why navigation bars are so popular

What we need

What we actually want to achieve is a semantic structure, where we try to use non primitive constructions, without having the primitives integrated yet (Neither categories, lists or navifgation bars are). We need some basic primitives to link articles in a structured mannor.

  • External structuring information: (already done with categories) "element of" <-> "category"
  • Properties: "name of property: value" (currently not well solved) - to make automatic structured list generation possible as well as defining proper prede- and successors
  • list formatter: The lists associated with categories should be formatable by specifying a template
  • navigator: a navigation bar, that displays some prede- and successors and the category, also with an adjustable template (format probably like the category entry + template link)
  • semantic browser: a browser that can read the data and display it like the visible thesaurus or freemind would be really great
  • structuring: It is already demonstrated in Wikipedia:Wikispecies, well we do not have to go that far but the goal would be something like OWL for semantics

--BoP 22:31, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments

I've read this three times, and I still don't understand what it says. -- Samuel Wantman 05:30, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

P-) - To make a long story short: If articles can be an element of a category (i.e. article:George Washington element of category:people) they are supposed to have certain properties (in this case: date_of_birth, deceased, nationality, profession etc.). These properties can be used to generate dynamic lists or sort them within groups. (i.e. all presidents of the United States sorted by their date of birth).
These lists would be generated by a template which can be part of a different article. This template might also be a navigation bar taking the reader to the previous or next president of the US. You might also have a real dynamic list of all presidents sorted by any column by choice of the user. Even dynamic charts would be possible. --BoP 17:24, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
It just isn't going to happen on a consistent basis. It is the nature of Wikipedia articles to vary in completeness. The fact that people aren't instructed that they must do this and they must do that or their efforts aren't up to standard is one of the reasons why so many are willing to contribute. Also, the idea seems to imply that categories are a form of search tool, but one of their greatest merits is that they facilitate random browsing. CalJW 02:44, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Categories should be able to assist searching. But these are really software issues, before they can be policy issues. ··gracefool |☺ 15:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Merging main articles in categories into their respective category pages

I think it would be more efficient use of wikispace if the text in the "starred article" in a category, which summarizes that particular category, went onto the category page per se, and then the article in the main namespace simply redirected to the category page. However, I will probably get significant opposition to this proposal because it would look silly having the name of the main article appear after "Category:" at the top of the page, applying this to all such articles would take a heck of a lot of time to accomplish, and it simply doesn't fit the fundamental style of an encyclopedia. If that is the case, then such an action could only be applied to less-frequently viewed "starred articles".  Denelson83  02:48, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

But not all category pages are organised this way. Some have more than one article under the * heading. Some have none. And furthermore, the category page (the bit above the list of articles and categories populating a category) is used very inconsistently, with some people using it to merge articles as you say (an example is Category:Nature), and some people using it (correctly) to describe what the category contains, how it relates to other categories and articles, and what NOT to put in the category (examples are Category:Operas and Category:Disasters). I've also seen people putting links to categories in the "see also" sections of articles. Also, your proposal effectively turns categories into articles with a much larger "see also" section. This may be appropriate for some categories. I have seen some categories which, by bringing together related articles, are showing people the potential for a new article about the whole category. Effectively prompting people to write * articles that don't yet exist for a category. This is more appropriate for 'topic' categories than 'list' categories (for which the * article is typically a list). Carcharoth 04:29, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Even if all categories had one main article, which most don't, the articles would often be way too long. They subcategories and categorised articles would become footnotes. And I don't want to see the main article for categories I visit frequently every single time I do so. CalJW 02:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Contra categorization

I posted what was below to express agreement with Larry Sanger's comments; now I see those are no longer here.

I agree. On a number of occasions I've had to explain the seemingly obvious fact that topics lists are far superior to categories, and I've been horrified a couple of times when someone proposed deleting a topics list because there's a category. In particular:
  • Topics lists can readily be organized; categories cannot be organized (except to the extent to which subcategories do that). See, for example, list of probability topics, list of geometry topics, list of combinatorics topics.
  • Topics lists can contain invisible links to talk pages, so that when you click on "related changes", recent edits to talk pages are included. Here's how you do that:
[[omphalology]] [[Talk:omphalology| ]]
Since only a blank space appears after the vertical slash, the link to the talk page is invisible.; it can't be clicked on, but it affects "related changes".
  • An inappropriately named category cannot be moved to another name except by editing all pages that link to it!
  • One can put red links into lists but not into categories.
  • more to come ... watch this space
Michael Hardy 19:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
it is one of the great merits of Wikipedia is that it allows people to use whichever of several methods of navigation they prefer. Many people value categorisation, and where there are both categories and lists the categories are usually more complete now even though the lists had a three year head start, which strongly indicates that categories are more valued overall. If you don't like them, just ignore them. Good lists are also valuable of course, but there are many many poor and incomplete ones. CalJW 02:50, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Category:Japan geography stubs

Regarding [[Category:Japan geography stubs]]

With around 4000 articles in this one category, to say it needs subcategories is an understatement. I have proposed two ideas on the talk page, but I figure I might recieve more input if I ask here as well.

  • Split by prefecture
    • Would create 47 subcategories
    • There would only be about 80 articles per subcategory, if divided evenly
    • Would be easier to organize, as the prefecture is almost always mentioned in the current articles
    • Would keep number of articles to a manageable amount
  • Split by region
    • Would create between 8-11 subcategories
    • Ambiguity over location of some prefectures in relation to regions (Niigata Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture) would cause problems in categorization
    • Still leaves around 400-500 articles per subcategory, if divided evenly

If it seems okay, then please comment, because I will create the subcategories as soon as I am able to once I recieve some support. I, personally, would prefer dividing by prefectures, but again, I would like some sort of consensus before I even go anywhere.

-Nameneko 01:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

  • What about by type of geographic feature? E.g.
  1. Prefecture
  2. District
  3. City
  4. Town
  5. Village
  6. Mountain or mountain range, river, other topographic feature
  • Would there be any merit in that? District, city, town and village would bear the brunt, and if necessary, could be further detailed by region, e.g. tohoku-village-stub. Or, district-city-town-village could be consolidated and broken up by region, e.g. tohoku-muni-stub. Or tohoku-localgov-stub. Fg2 07:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


Thanks for the speedy feedback! I, personally, prefer the idea of grouping the cities together if we were to follow that idea. My problem with sorting by region is the abiguity and the possibility that there will still be too many articles in the category. I thought of a possible, alternate idea using some of your ideas:
  • [prefecture]-geo-stub or [prefecture]-stub (x47)
  • japan-topo-stub (x1)
However, looking at that, the topographical stub seems almost redundant. Perhaps a category (rather than a stub) could be made for Japanese topographical features, but I think that having a prefecture-per-stub idea would work best for the large amount of categorizing work that will need to be done if/when the subcategories are created.
My main concern is this: is it appropriate to create 47 new subcategories to divide a single category (albeit with 4,000 articles)?
-Nameneko 06:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Isn't there a way to organize entries within categories? I know the |* alphabetizes before A, but additionally I think I've seen categories with an additional level of organization. If it's possible, why not create categories for regions, and within those region categories, organize by prefecture, alphabetically within the prefecture. That's far below 47. (But I don't know how to do that!) Fg2 07:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
In regards to re-alphabetizing the 4000+ stubs, something like |Miyagi:Cityname or |Aomori:Townname on entries in the Tohoku section for example, would probably do the trick. There's probably a more elegant solution though.
I personally favor adding the prefecture-stub to the entries. Then, having the prefecture stubs be nested sub-categories of each region (Tohoku.Aomori, Tohoku.Iwate, etc.) would solve the 47-subcategory problem. Ambiguity should not be a problem either, because the Niigata-stub sub-category could be in both the Tohoku category and the Kanto-stub category.Neier 14:15, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Adding the prefecture name to the stub category sounds reasonable to me, and I think could largely be done automatically using user:pearle or user:whobot. Whatever is decided should be run by the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
A disucssion is being made at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals#{{japan-geo-stub}]].
-Nameneko 19:46, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Pages without category

I think it is better to start a Category for Pages without Category, as an temp place for Pages without Category before they can be placed in a proper category.

The person who wrote the above MAY HAVE been intending it as a comment on the Japan discussion, in which case an extra "=" at each end of the heading would help. BUT MAYBE that person has never found Special:Uncategorizedpages? Robin Patterson 01:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


Categories Not Going Live

Last night, I added two new categories to the article on "Paul Franco", and then edited each to add parent categories. But as of this morning, the two new categories have still not gone "live", at least for me: if I click on them (e.g. "Americal political writers"), I get an edit page for the category, showing only the parent entries I edited. How do I make the category go "live", where the links bring up the usual list of other articles under that category, etc.? BeteNoir 16:17, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Purge? -- Zondor 17:23, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistency

There are contradictory statements in two guidline articles, concerning the question whether pages should belong to the parent categories of the categories they define. For example, should Musical notation be placed in Category:Musicology just because Category:Musical notation is in it? See the two oppoiste statements here and the other here, in both to be found in the example of Microsoft Office categorization. Which version is the official? Karol 16:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories and subcategories

There is a guideline that reads "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory". Why is this?

I think there is a practical utility in placing an article in categories that are linked vertically. Take languages for example. People who look for a specific language, say Bulgarian, but do not know to which family it belongs, might start in a category called Languages, where items are listed alphabetically rather than genetically. At the same time, putting Bulgarian also in the category of Indo-European languages and Slavic languages can help them find the article if they know Bulgarian belongs to one of these families.

Am I missing something? --AdiJapan 07:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

If you want to find Bulgarian, can't you just search for it? Another solution that some people are fond of is to create a list, like List of languages.
Adding all subcats to the parents would quickly spin out of control. While I probably couldn't dig through the hierarchy underneath Category:Reptiles to find a Gecko on my first try, I wouldn't want to see (some large number) of all the reptile articles listed on a flat page (and, nevermind that Reptiles is actually a subcat of its own, so to be fair, we would need to list them all in the animals category too). The same could be said for all subcategories, even though your example (languages) has a fairly small cross-section so it gives the illusion of being manageable. Neier 12:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Think of the enormous redundancy if pages were listed in both. I think the guideline makes sense as it stands. Note, later in the page it allows for some exceptions. John Lennon is the example: he is in his own category and also the Beatles category which is the former's "grandparent." This makes sense in this case, but redundancy of this sort should be the exception rather than the rule. Marskell 15:25, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I guess a list would be the best thing in this case. --AdiJapan 15:52, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Not sure anyone's still reading this here but, in my opinion, it doesn't make sense to have both a subcategory and article listed on the same page. What is the advantage to that? Personally, I read top to bottom so I'll immediately see the subcategory and then click on it. In the subcategory, I'll see not only the article pertaining to the subcategory but also lots of other related articles. I wouldn't have seen the related articles if I'd first seen the article in the parent category and just clicked on it. In this regard, listing them both on the parent somewhat defeats doing the subcategorization at all. Detrimental and redundant. And the only advantages I've heard in scanning previous discussion of the topic is to emphasize that the article is important enough to warrant a subcategory. That seems flimsy at best. Again, just my opinion!  :) wknight94 19:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Merge

Category:Wikipedia images by topic and Category:Wikipedia images by type should be merged - or the difference should be cleary explained on the relevant pages. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 00:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Nominate it at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. --Laisak 01:37, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Rename American

I think that various categories 'American... actor, singer, poet' etc. should be renamed to 'United States... actor' or 'Actors of United States'. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 00:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe that consensus has been reached on the American format at WP:CFD. --Laisak 01:41, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Purpose of the Category feature

I'd like to suggest that someone write an introductory section for this article that reminds editors why categories make Wikipedia more useful. I've been editing long enough to remember their introduction, and the only reason I can recall that made category support a priority feature was that Wikipedians were wild about lists at the time, and using categories instead of lists were believed to be more flexible. This purpose is alluded to in Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes but I'd suggest that a complete summary belongs here, right at the beginning, and that this article focus on the why before getting into the how.

To use some different words, I'm suggesting the article begin with the narrative equivalent of use cases for categories, written in retrospect now that they've been with us for a while. 66.167.253.200 00:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC).

Categories aren't portals

Many categories have portal material on them (see major examples in the main page template Template:Eight portals links). Portals now have their own namespace and it seems sensible to turn those portal-like categories into normal categories where you only have the articles and subcategories that it includes, pretty much like a disambiguation shouldn't have anything else than the links to where it disambiguates. Please discuss on Wikipedia talk:Wikiportal. Jules LT 18:40, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Categories

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_November_10#Category:Categories. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Roman Catholic dioceses of the United States

Right now, all 200 some-odd Catholic dioceses are in this category. I'd like to create the 14 Regions as subcategories, then created subcategories under those for the states within the regions, and categorize the diocese in the state categories.

Is there a reason not to do this? Or is there a better idea? --Elliskev 21:22, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Assuming that these fourteen regions are official, this is certainly a good idea. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:55, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Category:Communist parties

There are 196 articles in Category:Communist parties. Would it make sense to split them by continent (Communist Parties in Africa, Communist Parties in Europe, Communist Parties in America, Communist Parties in Oceania, Communist Parties in Asia) ? -- Ze miguel 14:20, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

This has now been implemented. -- Ze miguel 12:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Images in categories

User:Rhollenton and I have been debating whether images should be put in categories along articles or not, now that we have Commons.

Both have expressed our arguments, but cannot convince the other. I'd like some external view. I have been looking for some Wikipedia recommendation or rule, but I find nothing but m:Help:Image page#Categorizing_images that is more about Commons than about normal Wikipedias. --Error 00:19, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I have looked at many categories and hardly anyone is placing images in them apart from Error. The dispute started over 4 images of indoor statutes etc that he placed in the Madrid category. They were of no use at all as illustrations of the city as there was nothing distinctive about them. No one who had taken images which illustrated the city - images of its most famous buildings or most characteristic streets and neighbourhoods - had chosen to place them directly into the category. Meanwhile the commons category for Madrid contains scores or hundred of images contributed by many users. Commons is growing at thousands of items a week and it takes no effort to link from a wikipedia category to the matching commons category. Many users are doing so. There is no doubt which way things are going. Other users just aren't going to follow Error's approach in any numbers now that commons exists. It is pointless and messy to have a handful of images scattered here and there when they will not amount to useful categories - and if they did they would be an utterly pointless timewasting clutter-making duplication of commons. And unlike commons they would not be immediately available to editors of other language wikipedias. If Error wants to show off his photos there are some very popular sites which have exactly that purpose. Rhollenton 00:31, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
As I already said, there is Category:Images by country, Category:Images of cities, Category:Images of cities of the United States. There are also pictures under Category:Ctenizidae, Category:Typography, Category:Cricket images, Category:British cultural icons.
The funerary statues would be better at a subcategory for Panteón de Hombres Ilustres but no such article exists yet, so I put them under the next supercategory. Anyway you have also removed Image:MadridPuertaDelSol Km0.jpg which is literally a landmark for Madrid and Spain.
The category tree of Commons is not exactly the same of English Wikipedia. And not every pic in Wikipedia is allowed to be in Commons (See Category:Legend of Zelda media).
--Error 02:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
For images that Commons permits, Commons is the place to put them, since they are then accessible to all Wikimedia projects, including the 'Pedias in all languages, as well as Wiktionary, Wikibooks and others. Also, people who want a photo of something (not necessarily for a Wikimedia project) can look in Commons, our central repository for images. And in that role, Commons welcomes photos.
Since Commons serves all of those Wikis, its category structure won't be the same as any particular one of them. Don't worry! If an image doesn't fit in any category on Commons, it's easy to create a new category.
Fg2 03:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I think categorizing images is a useful way of illustrating the category page and adds to the usefulness of the Category: namespace. I have been using them as well in Category:Burning Man and Category:Lysergamides. Kit 21:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The main article for this category is ARTICLE NAME.

This page does not have the instructions to set the main article.

Many editors are 'making' the main article for a category the 'main article' by using this format:

((category:category name| ))

Which organizes it at the top of the article list.

1] Instructions on this page to make an article the main article with guidelines. 2] In that, address thoughts on ((category:category name| ))

I have also seen: ((category:category name|!)) ((category:category name|*))

Which I like less then: ((category:category name| ))

As the ! and * symbols can get messy. PatHaugen 00:01, 9 December 2005 (UTC)PatHaugen

There is also the question of sub-categories: some sub-categories are best placed at the top of the list of sub-categories, and the same pattern (random ' ', '*' or '!') can be found. It would also be better to only use ' '. -- Ze miguel 22:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm definitely in favor of ' ' rather than '*' to move an article to the top of the list in a category. The result is much more visually appealing.--Srleffler 05:28, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

order of appearance

I can't seem to find any gudiance about the order that categorization should apprear. For example, Category:Bridges in Oregon should appear before Cat:Bridges built in 1903....and Cat:Suspension bridges should come before Cat:Bridges in Oregon. I see a lot of misplaced categories, especially in Cat:bridges completed by date cats. I can't see the forrest for the trees. Cacophony 20:56, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Including article in supercategory (including the article in categories others than the one with the same name)

A week ago, we had a policy:

  • An article with the same name as a category should usually belong only to that category, for instance, Deism belongs only in Category:Deism.

Now I see an exact opposite policy:

I don't remember seeing any discussion, let alone consensus, and I don't like the new policy. Did I miss something (in which case please direct me to it)? Otherwise, if this is just someone unilaterally reversing policy, I am inclined to restore the old policy. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure who made the change. There is not agreement about this policy (it has been discussed for months and months without a clear consensus).
As for the reasons why an article might be listed in a subcategory and the parent; I think there are very good reasons to do this and I have been an advocate for this change for many months. For example, it makes sense to me to put the article Suspension bridge the category that it defines; Category:Suspension bridges as well as Category:Bridges. In this example, I imagine someone browsing both up and down the category structure. If you were looking in Category:Bridges, you'd see the subcategories of all the articles about the specific bridges, and you'd see the articles about the different types of bridges. Someone else might start from the bottom up, let's say with the article Golden Gate Bridge, you might navigate up to Category:Suspension bridges. It makes sense to have the defining article for the category listed.
The old thinking about this was that if the Subcategory was listed in a category, you wouldn't have the defining articles listed as well. But using the bridge example, I don't think this helps make the contents of the category clear and makes the category much harder to use. If you are interested in bridges and want to find out about all the different types of bridges you'd want to scan through and read the articles about the different types of bridges. It would make sense to have them all listed together in the articles in Category:Bridges. If some bridge types have subcategories (not all do), it gets very awkward to scan through the articles by having to first go to the subcategories for some of them. If you are looking for a specific bridge, you would want to go to the subcategory.
There seems to be agreement that articles should be in the category they define (like Suspension bridge being in Category:Suspension bridges). Another possibility is to put a link to the defining article in the introductory text of the category. The problem with this approach is that the category would not be listed at the bottom of the defining article. One possibility is to manually add the link to the category. However, if you look at the straw poll above this was not a popular option.
At this point I don't honestly think we can state one way or the other what the consensus is. Perhaps we can come up with some text that explains the lack of consensus and the reasons why you might want to do it one way or the other. -- Samuel Wantman 09:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
BTW Jmabel, you voted FOR this change in the straw poll! -- Samuel Wantman 09:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I'll explain the recent policy change. The policy used to be include Kansas City Chiefs only in Category:Kansas City Chiefs so I was going through changing all of the National Football League teams which weren't following this (other sports leagues were following this so the NFL was out-of-whack). I also changed a few other pages including List of mayors of Tampa, Florida. This last one was immediately reverted by User:Docu. I pointed out the policy and s/he agreed but said that policy had fewer votes. So s/he went to Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Topic article straw poll, added his/her vote and then changed the policy (with a simple example). I then added my vote and changed the policy example to the more reasonable Kansas City Chiefs example... Personally I think Category:National Football League teams looks ridiculous listing every team twice — once as a subcategory and once as a team. How could that not look confusing to the zillions of less experienced users?! wknight94 12:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I think this boils down to a presentation issue and should be addressed with a change in the code for how category listings are displayed. Currently subcats are displayed first in a section of their own by name (without any indication other than the section they appear in that the name is a category rather than an article). Then there's a section of articles that are members of the category. For categories including only subcats and no articles, or categories including only articles and no subcats, there's no issue. For categories including both subcats and articles, the two sections look similar and in the case where there's a category and article with the same name, the identical string appears in both sections (visually separated, sometimes by a large distance). I'm not a UI designer and don't know quite the right answer, but I think a joint display (in alphabetical order) containing both subcats and articles where there is some visual distinction between subcats and articles would basically fix this. The idea is to reduce the visual distance between the like-named subcat and article, while showing them in some fashion that the difference is apparent. Then, when browsing, the user could easily select category or article depending on where their interest lies. Perhaps subcats and articles should simply be intermixed, sorted by name, with categories shown as category:name (in italics) rather than just the name. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:29, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
...none of which would be necessary if the main subject was only a subcategory instead of both a subcategory and an article. It simply seems to me that the average user's experience would be better if you only showed the subcategory and, when they clicked on it, *poof* they'd see their subject and, as a bonus, a whole bunch of stuff related to their subject — all on one screen! As long as the subject itself was listed first in that screen, it would be easy to find it. Listing the subject in the parent category's page introduces the risk that the average user will click on the subject's article and never see the subject's main category and never see all the things that were painstakingly grouped with the subject. wknight94 18:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Sounds to me like you're arguing there should be a single namespace, i.e. Category:Suspension bridges and Suspension bridges would not be different. Some users have taken to transcluding articles into the like-named category. This strikes me as a bad idea. If categories and articles are going to be in different namespaces (and they certainly are today), the same name can be used in both which I believe inevitably leads to the problem we're talking about. Note that using a single namespace is clearly possible - for example, most computer operating systems use a single namespace for folders and files (which is pretty close to the same problem). Could the category and article namespaces be collapsed? Sure, but that's a far bigger change than I'm suggesting. Could we create a rule that if X is both a category and an article, X is only in the one category? Sure, but then getting to the article via the parent category is indirected through categoryX. What I'm suggesting is list both in the parent category, and let the user decide which one they want. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:31, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about the namespaces. What I'm suggesting is simply going back to the old (meaning two days ago) standard which matches your statement, "Could we create a rule that if X is both a category and an article, X is only in the one category? Sure, but then getting to the article via the parent category is indirected through categoryX." I prefer that method a lot. My previous point was that I think the average user would fint it helpful to go through "categoryX" because then they would accidentally see a bunch of related articles that they may find interesting too. As far as letting the user decide whether to click on the subcategory or article, in my years as a commercial software developer, I've found that giving users a choice like that can be a bad thing. They'll inevitably click on the one they didn't want. wknight94 19:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hm .. sorry for all this, but I updated the page to the poll on this talk page. The current version is close the initial version (at least to the one we had just after we decided that the article with the same name as the category should also be in that category).

In line with this, "George W. Bush" is in Category:George W. Bush and the following: 

<!--categories for career-->
[[Category:American aviators|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Baseball executives|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:CEOs of America|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Current national leaders|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Governors of Texas|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Presidents of the United States|Bush, George W.]]
<!--categories for other accomplishments-->
[[Category:American entrepreneurs|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Harvard alumni|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Yale alumni|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Time Magazine Person of the Year|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:U.S. Republican Party presidential nominees|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Worst Actor Razzie|Bush, George W.]]
<!--categories for biographical trivia-->
[[Category:1946 births|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Children of U.S. Presidents|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:George H.W. Bush|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Bonesmen|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Born-again Christians|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Pro-life politicians|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Delta Kappa Epsilon brothers|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Methodists|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:People from Connecticut|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:People from Texas|Bush, George W.]]
[[Category:Drunk drivers]]

-- User:Docu

So, in line with the new policy, Category:George W. Bush should have all of these as parent categories, right? Someone better fix that!  ;) wknight94 01:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
yeah .. maybe I should change my mind and support the version that would place the article only in Category:George W. Bush  ;) -- BTW with the exception of the year of birth category (as it should only be on articles). -- User:Docu
On this basis I shall revert your change back to how it was... —Ashley Y 01:11, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Clearly there is not consensus on this issue. I've changed things to reflect that there is not a consensus. Let's decide the issue here on the talk page before stating the policy elsewhere.--Samuel Wantman 07:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Was the version you reverted back to once agreed on? e.g. Wikipedia:Categorization&oldid=9182763#When_to_use_categories reads: Note: An exception would be an article that defines a category, and so is itself a parent article of subtopics as well as one in a series of like topics - for instance, placing Ohio in both Category:Political divisions of the United States and Category:Ohio. Another example would be cities for which there are categories: New York City belongs in both Category:Cities in New York and in Category:New York City. . If it was never really agreed on, let's rather remove it. -- User:Docu


Defining subcategories

First, I'd like to ask the people getting involved in this debate to read the archives. This issue has come up and been discussed over and over since shortly after categories were first added to wikipedia.

Every time this come up I become more and more aware of the root of this problem. To summarize I think the problem is that we don't have a clear definition of what a subcategory is. It has different meanings depending upon how it is used. Here is the different meanings that I can think of, and examples of them:

  1. A hierarchical sub-grouping this is the most basic meaning of a subcategory. If a hierarchy is thought of as a tree, than the branches of the hierarchy are just smaller sub-units of the hierarchy. So for example, Category:Bridges in New York is a subcategory of Category:Bridges in the United States. In this type of hierarchy, every article is a sibling of the same type (for example articles about bridges) and they are only listed at the bottom of the hierarchy, and there are subcategories for every possible article (for example, every state)
  2. A subject grouping This is a subcategory of articles that are all about or related to a single subject, for example Category:George W. Bush. In this category the articles are not of the same type, and the articles listed in the subcategory are not related to the higher level entries (for example, the article The Pet Goat is only indirectly related to its grandparent Category:Methodists
  3. A related hierarchical grouping This happens when one hierarchy just happens to be a sub-group of another hierarchy. Examples are Category:Best Actor Oscar which is part of a hierarchy about Oscar winners and its parent Category:Film actors. Another example is Category:Bridges in New York City which is the parent of Category:Toll bridges in New York City. One hierarchy of categories (toll bridges in the United States) is a subset of another hierarchy of categories (Bridges in the United States).

These three methods of sub-categorization coexist. This is a good thing, but it leads to the problem we are discussing. We either have to come up with a set of rules that work for all these types of categories, or create different rules for each type. The no duplication rule works fine for the first type, but it doesn't work well for the second and third type. Only adding the subcategory and not the topic article to a category makes sense for the second type, but not for the first and third type.

For this reason, I think the easiest solution is to say that duplications are allowed under certain situations and topic articles and subcategories both get added to categories.

The only downside to this is that the second type of usage may make the article cluttered with category listings. That doesn't seem so terrible. I like the idea of having all the parents listed. The only problem is finding the topic category (for example, finding the link to Category:George W. Bush. This can be dealt with two ways. We can make the standard to list the topic category first. and/or we can make a link to the topic category in the SEE ALSO section. I think both would be good.

A while ago I wrote Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories, which deals with this topic. -- Samuel Wantman 10:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The oft stated rule, "a category should not be in a category and its parent category." could continue to stand if we just change the definition of what a parent is. I don't believe that Category:Film actors is the parent of Category:Best Actor Oscar. If we define a parent to be ONLY a larger grouping IN THE SAME HIERARCY, than we can keep this rule. By adding the classification at the top of the category page, and a sentence or two explaining what belongs and doesn't belong in each category, this can be made clear. -- Samuel Wantman 00:44, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure it's quite that simple, but I think something like this is the way to go. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:54, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm convinced that there is no one way to categorize things. The subjects are too diverse for one magic rule that will make everything perfect. Cacophony 07:58, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
So what do you suggest? Everything here are guidelines. If we have a common understanding to point to, we can avoid most problems. When the guidelines don't apply we can change them or ignore them. I'm discussing this because I didn't like the old magic rule, and want to loosen it. If I proceed in isolation, without the consensus of others, my changes will get reverted. That is why I'm discussing this. -- Samuel Wantman 08:40, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you should draft a proposed guideline, based on your ideas above, expect it to evolve a bit as others contribute to it, and see if we can forge a new consensus that there are several different types of categories that need to be thought of and worked with differently. It sounds like you may be on your way to a synthesis of two ideas that have been at war with one another since categories were introduced. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:27, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
The usefulness of categories are restricted if articles are limited to one category. It is crazy to say that Portland, Oregon should only be in Category:Portland, Oregon. There are few articles that only contain one category, and I think those should be expanded. The trend has been to do this. Here is a random survey of broad articles. Philosophy, Egypt, Gold, Roman Catholic Church, Fruit, Cat, Dog, Bicycle, Japan, God, Airport, Communism, Coffee, Tree, Tobacco, Metric system, Penguin, Fish, Vitamin, zoo, snake, Jesus, Harvard, Israel, war, flower all contain multiple categories in addition to "their own category". The ones that only contain "their own category" (one category that directly relates to the title) are: Automobile, The Beatles, Calendar, Hat, Computer, Art, Quebec, Family. So the most common practice being used right now is to include a topic article (a broad subject that also has a category for the same subject) in many different categories (including a category that is the "parent" of the article in question). The trend should be towards more categorization and away from the restrictions of heirarchies. This needs to be defined as a wikipedia guideline. Quebec should be in Category:Canadian provinces and territories as well as Category:Quebec. Cacophony 09:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
First off, can we stop generalizing by saying that one side or the other is "crazy"? This seems to be a pretty evenly-divided issue so clearly neither side is crazy for their opinion. Second, even the examples you are in favor of don't correctly follow your standard! Egypt includes the catgory Bicontenental countries but not the category North Africa. Category:Egypt includes North Africa but not Bicontinental countries. How can the article be in one set of categories but the category for the article is in a different set? That's a perfect example of the difficulty of maintaining that standard. You end up with duplicate work which will only be done if people are aware of it which I bet most people aren't. Among your examples, only Philosophy is correct per your standard. (I don't know why you included Bicycle since Category:Bicycle and Category:Bicycles don't even exist — that doesn't even apply to this discussion. Same goes with Category:God which doesn't exist but does have two articles associated). wknight94 13:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
My list was ovbiously hastily put together, but thanks for going through every single one and finding the discrepancies. If the "One category only" scheme were adopted, I don't understand how Category:Cities in Oregon would work without containing Portland, Oregon. I guess the solution would be to include Category:Portland, Oregon in Category:Cities in Oregon, but that really cripples Category:Cities in Oregon because you have to click through two subcategories in order to find the article Portland, Oregon. Of course, my example again is full of errors, because the example I used above contains both Portland, Oregon AND Category:Portland, Oregon. It seems that the "One category" camp would like categories to be heirarchetaly structured, but we aren't talking about a simple heirarchy. The thing that I am having trouble with is seeing the benefit behind limiting categories. I guess that attempts to simplify the article, but I think it complicates the categories. I think that having a little bit of clutter at the bottom of the page is a small price to pay for having fully functional categories. And besides, to change now would take a lot of uncategorizing. Cacophony 21:28, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that's the disagreement. I see with no trouble how limiting categories simplifies things and pulls people into a category-browsing mode which would, in turn, lead them to find articles related to the one they're looking at. That's the purpose of categories in the first place — so people can find related articles in one expected area. The alternative is to have the same articles show up over and over throughout the category hierarchy which would lead me to simply stop browsing. To your other point, I don't see at all how the one-category-only scheme cripples anything at all. It's one extra click so how is that crippling? And, in that one extra click, you see everything related to Portland, Oregon rather than just Portland itself. The other flaw in your logic is the idea of clicking twice to find Portland, Oregon. You don't need categories to find a particular article. Categories are not a search tool, they're a search-for-related-things tool. If you want to find a particular article, like Portland, Oregon, just type Portland, Oregon in the search box. wknight94 01:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

My own experience tells me that, as stated above, categories are not a comfortable way to search for specific articles; this is also what other people have told me. They are good, though, for looking through subject topics for similar, related, or just interesting things (when bored) - for this, it's nice to have them visually appealing and compact (everything on one page). Having both an article and its parent in some category doesn't ruin anything if the category is'nt overpopulated, but it also doesn't add anything to the category, since the inclusion is already there via the parent. I think it should be policy that pages are not placed in categories that include their other parent(s ), in order to restrict redundancy (a bot can do this); this doesn't mean that an article cannot be in a number of other categories, in which its parents are not included. This is my personal feeling, though. Karol 08:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Working towards consensus about subcategories

Here is my latest stab at an attempt at consensus about categories and subcategories. Please read this and the subpage and respond below. It would also be helpful to read the archives of past discussions.

Proposal

Here are some general rules to guide decisions about categories and subcategories:

  1. Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles.
  2. An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used as categories become less effective the more there are on any given article.
  3. Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory. For example Golden Gate Bridge is in Category:Suspension bridges, so it should not also be in Category:Bridges. However there are occasions when this guideline can and should be ignored. For example, Robert Duvall is in Category:Film actors as well as its subcategory Category:Best Actor Oscar. See #5 for another exception. For more about this see Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories
  4. Check to see where siblings of the article reside. If there are few if any articles in a category, the article probably belongs in one of the subcategories.
  5. Articles should be placed in categories with the same name. However, the article and the category do not have to be categorized the same way. The article can also be placed in categories populated with similar articles. The category can be put into categories populated with similar subcategories. For an example of this see George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush.
  6. There are often occasions when articles might ideally be moved from a category to two or more of its subcategories, but not all of the subcategories exists. In such cases consider creating the additional subcategories, but if you decide not to do so, leave the articles in the parent category for the time being.
  7. Bend the rules above when it makes sense, but only if no other solution can be found.

Comments

Please comment by stating what concerns of yours are NOT being met by the above rules. Try to suggest additions or variations that would address your concerns. Mention articles and categories as examples of your concern. If you have no concerns, say "'No concerns'". Thanks. --Samuel Wantman 09:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think that #4 should be elevated to #1, really. The whole reason to have categories is so that users can browse through category pages (not to be used as feature of the individual articles). Category:Bridges in New York should contain all the bridges in New York, and not be fractured into subcategories. If it means that at the very bottom of the page there is two very similar tags (cat:bridges in NY and cat:toll bridges in NYC), then so be it. It is better to have clutter at the bottom of the page rather than fractured categories. Cacophony 20:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, I agree. I've moved it up to #1, so for anyone reading the previous comment, # 1 used to be at #4. -- Samuel Wantman 20:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Articles that have categories of the same name should not usually be in any other category. —Ashley Y 00:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • That goes to the question of the meaning of categories, e.g. should Category:People contain only people? Which categories are to be maintained as pure lists? Mirror Vax 00:49, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Why is that? Is the purpose to clean up the bottom of the individual articles? That leads to categories that are needlessly broken up into subcategories. The Cats FAQ asks Q: Can pages be in more than one category? A: Yes, it is expected that most pages will be members of more than one category. Is your reasoning that the bottom of the pages should be uncluttered, or that things should be part of a strict hierarchy? Think about topics that are really diverse, like George W. Bush. Should every article in Category:George W. Bush (such as Domestic policy of the George W. Bush administration be included (via subcategory) underneath Category:Harvard alumni? Cacophony 01:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Ashley, As this isn't a vote, but an attempt to listen to, and address concerns, I'm wondering what your concern is that we need to address. What are the problems created by having topic articles in more than one category? The only one I have seen mentioned is the clutter issue. As Cacophony points out, that leads to some strange subcategories. Instead of cluttering the articles, the subcategories get cluttered, often with categories that don't really belong there (like with the Bush example). Sometimes subcategories do contain offspring of the parent categories. For example, Category:Suspension bridges contain articles about specific bridges, and all of these belong as a subcategory of Category:Bridges, but often they don't. I think these rules will help clarify what subcategories are. -- Samuel Wantman 03:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps related - do #5 and #3 combined mean that, for example, George W. Bush should not be in Category:Presidents of the United States because Category:George W. Bush is? Or that none of the articles about US states should be in Category: States of the United States because there is a category for each one (and each state's category is in Category: States of the United States)? Or does #4 mean this is a case-by-case depending on how other similar articles are categorized? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Rick, thanks for pointing out the confusion in how this is stated. You are good at this sort of thing, perhaps you can suggest some better language. The point is that the categorization of a topic article is one of the exceptions to the "no duplication" rule; and that once the topic article is put in the category with the same name, the article and the category get categorized SEPARATELY, each judged on it own merits as to which categories it belongs in. Articles should be placed into all the category hierarchies to which they belong, at the place that makes sense within each hierarchy. Categories should be made into subcategories of other categories if the articles they contain are truly part of the family. Being part of the family is determined by looking at the parents and the siblings. In the George W. Bush example, that article is in the topic category Category:George W. Bush and is also in numerous other categories to which it belongs. The category on the other hand belongs in very few places. In fact, I believe it is an orphan category, merely a collection of articles that happen to relate to George W. Bush. It is not really part of any other hierarchy. But it has to be somewhere, and the places where it seems to best belong is among its natural siblings, other orphan categories like itself. These are Category:Presidents of the United States and Category:Bush family. Does this help? -- Samuel Wantman 06:10, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I've reworded #5 slightly. -- Samuel Wantman 02:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Once you decide you can put the category in Category:Presidents of the United States (which is ultimately a member of Category:People), why not put the category everywhere where the article goes? The logic of your position is that the category does not belong anywhere that the article belongs. Instead, the category belongs in something like Category:Articles by person (which doesn't exist) - and nothing else. Mirror Vax 08:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
What I am saying is that the category should be in places where it makes sense to be. What purpose is served by having Category:George W. Bush in Category:Methodists if the article George W. Bush is there? If you are browsing through Category:Methodists it makes sense to find the GWB article, but not the GWB category. The GWB category has moved away from methodists into things related to George Bush. GWB is a Methodist and belongs in a category with other Methodists. Ariticles related to GWB have no intrinsic relationship to Methodists. The point is that these decisions are made for each article and category on their merits. In this case the category doesn't belong where the article belongs. In many (perhaps most) other cases it would. For example, both Suspension bridge and Category:Suspension bridges belong in Category:bridges. --Samuel Wantman 09:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Further to the above, if Category:George W. Bush had a subcat Category:Presidency of George W. Bush, that would fit into the hierarchy (it would go in Category:Presidency by president, which would belong to Category:Presidency of the United States). But people are lazy about creating categories (myself included), plus categories are often voted for deletion on the grounds that they are too specific or contain too few articles, which further discourages such hierarchy-building. Mirror Vax 08:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, so what is your point? What are you suggesting? What is your concern? -- Samuel Wantman 09:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't see why articles and categories of the same name should have different yet approximately parallel sets of categories. You end up with redundancy and confusion. Much simpler to have one set of supercats (that the cat has) and have the article only in the cat (with the exception of things like "stub", "articles for deletion" and so forth). —Ashley Y 09:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
First, articles and categories of the same name might be categorized exactly the same, but might be categorized very differently. See the George W. Bush and Suspension bridge discussion above. As for why, please read some of the archives going back to the point when categories came into being at wikipedia. There are basically 3 different overlapping ways that articles get put into subcategorized. There are groups of related articles on a subject (like Category:George W. Bush containing articles related to GWB); branches of a hierarchy (like Category:Suspension bridges being part of the Category:Bridges hierarchy); and related categories, which is when the branch of one hierarchy just happens to be a subset of another hierarchy (such as Category:Best Actor Oscar which is part of a hierarchy about Oscar winners but is also a subcategory of Category:Film actors). These three ways of doing things coexist together. That is a good thing. It makes for a better browsing experience for users. But by not being flexible about how things are categorized it makes for problems. Without duplications, some categories seem incomplete, fractured, and confusing. This leads to conflicts and long discussions. One side states policy, the other claims a better browsing experience. In reality the old rule is not always enforced. Look at the actors in Category:Best Actor Oscar, they are also in Category:Film actors as they should be. This proposal is in essence trying to codify practices that are already in place, and to create new guidelines so that we all understand what we are doing. With luck, this will result in a better browsing experience and less conflict between editors. -- Samuel Wantman 10:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I realize that I have not fully answered your question, and perhaps I've neglected to say something important. If there is redundancy between an article and a category with the same name it should mean something. For instance, if you look in Category:Bridges there is duplication between the names of the subcategories and the articles. The articles are about the different types of bridges (like a suspension bridge), the subcategories contain articles about specific bridges of each type (like the Golden Gate Bridge). This information is communicated in the description of the category and it makes sense. In GWB's case it wouldn't make sense to have a subdirectory called George W. Bush in the Methodist category. -- Samuel Wantman 10:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
This thread continues here...

This has all gone pretty far afield, and I am uncertain if there are unanswered concerns by Ashley or Mirror Vax that would lead them to reject the proposal. While this thread is interesting and has brought up some fine points about categorization and some new ideas, It might be a bit much for a casual reader trying to figure out what is going on. I propose to take it outside. --Samuel Wantman 07:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The quick answer is it would be in both, but it seems a bit more complicated. I'm not a biologist, but It appears that the categorization of cats is not strictly following the biological distinctions of family, genus, species, etc... As I don't know the subject matter, I would ask what should the categorization look like if there were articles about all the genus and species of Felines? I'd also ask whether articles only categorized by taxonomy would be more or less useful to someone browsing. I suspect it would. The category would be helpful to explain the families, genuses and species. Many article entries would have the same name as categories and both the article and category with the same name would be in the same categories. This should be explained in the category descriptions. So I'd use the categories to explain biological taxonomy. I'd probably rename the category "Felidae". Category:Felidae would look something like this...
Doing it this way would fully exploit the capabilities that categories have. The top part would shows the taxonomy the bottom section would have everything organized alphabetically.
There are probably many other ways the category could be done that would work with the guidelines, and even the possibility of not following the guidelines. What ever makes the categories more useful and easier to browse. -- Samuel Wantman 11:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite of page

I have started a rewrite of the Categorization page, incorporating the new guidelines above. It seemse that sections of the page could use a little restructuring. Anyone with suggestions or willing to help with the task, please take a look here. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 07:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Establishments and disestablishments

Is it really a good idea to have Category:2005 establishments and Category:2005 disestablishments, both subcategories of Category:2005? (There are other, similar subcats on other years.) Seems like it might be overkill to me... (Note Category:2005 incorporations, as well.) - dcljr (talk) 09:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems to make sense to me, and is in accordance with custom practice and policy both previous and proposed. -- Samuel Wantman 01:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Obvious omission

The guidelines overlook an obvious "trouble case", namely a category's eponymous article. (Some of the discussion above touches on it, but I wanted to start a discussion specifically aimed at this question.) The guidelines explain that things generally belong only in the most specific subcategory for which they are suited; so for example Queen Elizabeth I, who is undoubtedly a person, and a famous person, and a monarch, and an English person, shouldn't be filed "loosely" in any of those categories but instead in a specific subcategory like "English monarchs" or some-such. Mind you, she might separately be filed in another category "red-haired people" insofar as "English monarchs" isn't a subcat of "red-haired people."

So let's say there are a lot of Elizabethan-related articles ("love life of Elizabeth I", "personal grooming of Elizabeth I", "List of Elizabeth I's favorite foods", etc.). Somebody then comes along and decides that there are enough Elizabeth I-related articles to make a category to hold them, Category:Elizabeth I. Swell. Now along with all those tangential articles, this category also includes a main article, an eponymous article, Elizabeth I herself.

The question is: should Elizabeth I be removed from category: English monarchs and category: red-haired people, and replaced by category:Elizabeth I? Of course not! There's a principled argument against it (there's really no need for an article about Elizabeth's favorite foods to be in a subcategory of red-haired people), and there's also (more importantly) a practical argument against it. The category system is not browsed top-down, most of the time; people tend to use it to jump laterally among similar articles. That is to say, they come across an article on Elizabeth I and think "there's a cool lady. I wanna learn more about other English monarchs" and follow the category link thither. Such lateral links are impossible if we decide, through a completely illogical spasm of tidy-mindedness, to decree that Elizabeth I must belong only to her eponymous category.

I feel the guidelines page should explicitly address the issue of eponymous categories. Doops | talk 20:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Having looked at this talk page again, I realize that the question of epoynmous categories has been more than "touched on" above: it has been discussed extensively. However, the guidelines themselves still remain absolutely silent on the issue. If there is no consensus, that too is worth mentioning in the guidelines so editors aren't left adrift. To reiterate my opinion, I am very much opposed to the fallacious notion that X and things related to X are necessarily members of the same categories. The notion that an article should belong ONLY to its eponymous category smacks of a belief that categories form a tree. We all know that they do not. Doops | talk 23:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm not certain I'm understanding your concern here. Perhaps the guidelines are not clear and could be worded better, but I think the issue is addressed. #3 says that ariticles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory, but there are exceptions and specifically mentions #5 as an exception. #5 says that Articles should be placed incategories with the same name, and then goes on to say that there are not rigid rules to decide where the article gets categorized and where the eponymous category goes. Each gets decided on its own merits. Just because X is a member of its eponymous category containing things related to X, it is not necessarily removed from the categories containing eponymous category X. In practice, I think it will be common for the article to be in many more categories than the eponymous category. If you look at George W. Bush and the eponymous Category:George W. Bush you will see that the article is in many more categories than the category. There is a long thread above which discusses this.
As you say about categories, people "tend to use it to jump laterally among similar articles". But there seems to be consensus that people want the eponymous article to be in the category as well. The norm is to not list it alphabetically, but to make it appear at the top of the list of articles. As such, you could think of it as a courtesy listing. The reason it is there is mostly for the convenience of someone reading the article having not seen the eponymous category. A reader will see at the bottom of George W. Bush that there is an entire category of articles related to him. If he were not in the category, the article would not list Category:George W. Bush as one of the categories.
It is possible to link the category from the eponymous article and vice versa without making the article a member of the category. I actually proposed doing it this way a few months ago (see the most recent archive). However, this way of doing things has some disadvantages: It takes more effort to make the links, the link doesn't appear with the categories listed at the bottom of the article, and it is totally opposite from the previous policy of limiting the categorization of such an article to be in ONLY its eponymous category. Ultimately, I agree that it would make more sense to not have it as a member, and eventually perhaps we'll get to that point. I think this is one of those cases where it makes better sense to do it the way that you are saying, but it is not the most practical solution nor one that is likely to have wide acceptance. -- Samuel Wantman 01:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if I was being unclear. I wasn't commenting, one way or the other, on the question of whether articles should be in their eponymous categories; I was just opposing the misguided notion that they should ONLY be there. And, yes, your proposed guidelines listed on this talk page do (as you point out) address the issue; but I can't cite that where there's a disagreement! Unless I'm mistaken the actual guideline page (Wikipedia:Categorization) is silent. Doops | talk 03:10, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
AH! I thought you were commenting on the proposed changes. The project page won't change until we have consensus here, which seems imminent. And to anyone about to add a section below this, please read the top of the page! Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 04:15, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
OK. It looked to me more like discussion had stalled or at any rate been inconclusive; in which case I was hoping that some mention be added to the article right away, even if all it said was
Note that confusion may arise in the case of articles with eponymous categories. A proposal to cover such a situation is currently in discussion on the talk page; but until it is agreed on it's best to note that some editors believe such pages fall under the "smallest possible category" rule and others don't.
Because I was getting "smallest possible category" quoted at me as justification for removing a page from all but its eponymous category as though that settled the argument. Doops | talk 04:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

New version is ready

A rewrite is complete. Assuming there is no more discussion, It will go live on January 17th. Please take a look here. Feel free to make any needed edits, but comments about substantial changes should go on this page. Use the history page to see the changes. -- Samuel Wantman 09:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

A different perspective: Topical and Instancial categories in Wikipedia

It seems obvious to me that Wikipedia has two category types:

Sometimes, the exact boundaries are not so clear-cut, but this is typically due either to a cat's small size making a split unnecessary or to a cat that should be renamed or split: Category:fruit could do with a split to make it a true topical cat, as it currently has mostly instances in a topically-named cat. It is also pertinent to mention that instancial cats should have as few topical articles as possible.

As far as I can see, 90% of the cases of difficult categorization are due to an article being in both a topical and an instancial cat. In the case of Suspension bridge/Category:Suspension bridges it is in an instancial cat that is a child of a topical cat (Category:bridges). Delhi Metro/Category:Delhi Metro is a topical cat being a child of an instancial cat (Category:Metros in India). I think it evident that an article should not be in two cats of the same type if one is a child of the other. However, when the two cats are of different type, use of common sense will most often allow a user to determine a reasonable solution.

Sometimes, adding an extra cat to empty the parent can also solve the problem. For example, one could create sometihing like Category:bridge structures under Category:bridges and move nearly all articles there, with the exception of Bridge. Another option is to take all the individual bridges subcat and move them in a subcat like Category:individual bridges, made to hold only categories, this extra level allow for both options for classifying suspension bridge to be pertinent, is fonly because the article is not a in cat and it's direct parent (kinda like the whole spelling issue). I used a similar scheme to clear individual bird species out of Category:Birds into Category:Birds by classification and other subcats (such as Category:Birds of prey).

Category:Articles by person are a case of strange categorization: relatively very few people article warrant a topical cat (although I can easily think of a couple more than the existing ones), making them the oddballs of Wikipedia categorization. However, since the topical cat Category:Bill Clinton is unreasonable to have as a subcat of any people cat (as pointed above), the cat+subcat problem is not even present, in my opinion. However I think a policy as to the categorization of Articles by person categories is necessery, if only for consistency. Look at the differences between the categorization of Category:Thomas Jefferson and Category:George Orwell, for example. Circeus 16:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis about the different types of categories, if not all your conclusions. Categorization at Wikipedia is inconsistant, but that is partly by design. I think many people expect the categorization of articles to be a consistant classification system. That is NOT the case. There is a multiple overlapping tree structure which resists rigid rules. Categorization is a tool for browsing, as such, decisions have to be made category by category and topic area by topic area based on utility. The organization of cats must be useful and comprehensible. Eventually, we might determine all the different ways categories are used, and create rules to govern the categorization of each type. I don't think we are there yet, things are still evolving.
As for your suggestions of adding more categories to divide hybrid categories. I suspect that this will make sense in some cases. But in many cases (like Category:Suspension bridges) I think it leads to over categorization. You would be replacing one category with three, adding consistancy to the classification of articles to the detriment of utility. I don't think this makes sense. If the categorization were overly confusing, and the division of one category into three removed the confusion, that might make 3 categories more useful than 1, but I don't think that is often the case. Certainly, if it does make the categories more useful, they can be divided. But I would resist the common temptation to make a pristine structure of categories the top priority. That path leads to great frustration.
As for the categorization of Category:Thomas Jefferson and Category:George Orwell, George was classified neither by the old guidelines or the new ones. His article belongs in many more of the cat groupings to which George was a member, the cat probably should be removed from a few. Since most of the articles relate to literature, the cat probably belongs in the literature cats and perhaps a few others. Tom was classified according to the new guidelines and looks ok.
A category will sometimes combine both of your types in one category. It will be intesting to see how this evolves over time. In the case of Category:Bridges, the subcategories are your Category:individual bridges by type, while the articles are your Category:bridge structures. If this is explained in the heading of the category, it should be understandable and easy to use. Perhaps your suggestion will make sense for situations when both the subcats and articles are both mixed types. Let us see how this evolves over time. -- Samuel Wantman 21:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
As for your suggestions of adding more categories to divide hybrid categories. [...] My pseudo-proposal for bridge wasjusttomakemy explanations clear in by applying the two solutions that are most often appliableto the curent example. The extra category worked very well to unclutter Category:birds. I did not intend them to be the normal responses in every case, but at least directions to consider when appropriate.
A category will sometimes combine both of your types in one category. True, and that is something I believe should be avoided. Otherwise, Your counter points on how how Wikipedia is still evolving and edited by many stands true. Circeus 21:35, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Circeus Topical categories and Instances categories correspond, more or less, to what the object model in Computer Science often calls "is-a" properties versus "has-a" properties or what Aristotle called (I believe) "essential" and "non-essential" properties. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I think a simpler way of talking about it is to draw an analogy to article space. Some categories are equivalent to "see also" lists (or lists of topics) in article space. Other categories are equivalent to "List of..." articles in article space. Because the category system doesn't make a clear distinction between the two, they tend to get mushed together. There are quite a few non-people in Category:People, for example. Some people care deeply about that, while others don't care at all. More people would care if categories could be used for searching, and not merely browsing. If, for example, you could take the intersection of two or more categories (including subcats), there would be more incentive to keep the lists pure. Mirror Vax 08:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

An interesting example of the separation of topical and instancial cateogories are the categories Opera and Operas. The former is a topical category about Opera and the latter contains instances of operas. The difference in usage is delineated on the Opera category page. "Operas" is placed as a subcategory of "Opera". --LiniShu 13:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Another example is Disasters and Disaster, the former being a category containing Disasters, the latter being a collection of general articles related to the concept of disaster. A while ago I tidied these categories up, but since then things have gone a bit messy again, despite the text I put at the top of the category to explain the suggested structure. It seems that people just categorize without going to check whether what they have done makes any sense in the wider scheme of things. Carcharoth 19:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Images in categories

I've been noticing more and more images being added to categories. There's nothing on this page about it, but I was under the impression that it was a no-no. Anyone know where this has been discussed? -- Samuel Wantman 11:53, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I've seen images in categories as well, and what is worse, no visible way to remove them. Here is one example I found Category:Volcanic_events. How to get rid of those silly pictures?? I've also noticed that some people insert article templates at the top of a category, instead of an explanation of the category structure (which is what I thought was supposed to go there). A good example of this is Category:Nature. Another thing I have noticed is people putting links to categories in the "See also" section of articles, which seems to violate the "no internal references" policy of Wikipedia. I've done this myself sometimes, linking to a category page from a disambiguation page, rather than linking to a list in an article. All seems to be a bit random sometimes. Carcharoth 19:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I removed all the pictures from Category:Volcanic_events and requested comments here. I'll remove pictures from other categories the same way, and see if we can generate some discussion. I think categorization of images should happen at commons. -- Samuel Wantman 10:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree that most of the time, adding images to categories is not helpful. However, I don't know if they should be forbidden outright, because there are times when they can be valuable, like Category:Hieronymus Bosch paintings. - EurekaLott 18:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Even the example you cite probably should NOT have pictures in it. Here's my reason: If you click on one of the paintings you do not get a page that is user friendly to a novice reader. Many people might be baffled to end up on an image page. Also, the images are so small on the category page, that I can only make out one or two iconic images. A better way to display these images would be to create a new page Hieronymus Bosch paintings, add all the images, and briefly discuss them. As the discussions for each painting lenghten, they could be turned inot separate articles. I have created the article and removed the images from the category. Take a look and tell us what you think. --Samuel Wantman 21:56, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello to all. Creating guidelines about this topic will be very helpful. Can the built-in ability to put images into category pages be used to advantage?
  • A "summary article" for images, like Hieronymus Bosch paintings, is a good place to merge stubs about the topic, and later, for an introduction to see: Main Article: X. An appropriate lead paragraph needs to be authored for the summary, but this may duplicate information in the detailed articles. The summary can also suffer like a "List of" article - with ranges of incomplete information to fill the hierarchy.
  • Using Commons can also be confusing to a novice users coming over from Wikispace. For editors, Commons image categories may be sorted differently than at wikipedia, a problem if you want "chair" photos and the only commonscat is "furniture". Links to Wiki articles are easier from a Wiki category page than from a Commons category.
  • Use this interesting feature of Wiki categories to quickly find available articles - and images. Text links to detailed articles in the category are on the same page as related images. Editors can quickly put images in categories, and the thumbnails are pre-formatted, with captions. The small thumbnail size can be enough to identify paintings and other objects, even if useful only sometimes. Do you think the sample message below will help to clarify the issue? (insert at top of category pages w/ images):
{{catphoto}}
- Dogears (talk) 01:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Archiving

I haven't carefully checked the last few "archivings" of this page, but be please aware that archiving all discussion up to the actual day that you're making the change is probably not a good idea. One should check to make sure that earlier discussions aren't ongoing, and that appropriate time has been given for recent topics to be discussed. I think a good rule of thumb is to not archive any discussion that's more recent than a couple of weeks. - dcljr (talk) 12:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The archiving was conversation up to about a week ago. It included the discussion up to the implementation of the new re-write which just "went live". I archived the page because the discussions were related to a page that was no longer being displayed. If you read through them you might be confused about what was being discussed. That said, I should have noted this when I archived everything. For anyone looking for the discussion about the re-write, it is in the last archive, but the issues have been discussed since the time that categories were implemented in Wikipedia, roughly two years ago. It makes for an interesting read. -- Samuel Wantman 21:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Categories and subcategories

There is a guideline that reads "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory". Why is this?

I think there is a practical utility in placing an article in categories that are linked vertically. Take languages for example. People who look for a specific language, say Bulgarian, but do not know to which family it belongs, might start in a category called Languages, where items are listed alphabetically rather than genetically. At the same time, putting Bulgarian also in the category of Indo-European languages and Slavic languages can help them find the article if they know Bulgarian belongs to one of these families.

Am I missing something? --AdiJapan 07:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

If you want to find Bulgarian, can't you just search for it? Another solution that some people are fond of is to create a list, like List of languages.
Adding all subcats to the parents would quickly spin out of control. While I probably couldn't dig through the hierarchy underneath Category:Reptiles to find a Gecko on my first try, I wouldn't want to see (some large number) of all the reptile articles listed on a flat page (and, nevermind that Reptiles is actually a subcat of its own, so to be fair, we would need to list them all in the animals category too). The same could be said for all subcategories, even though your example (languages) has a fairly small cross-section so it gives the illusion of being manageable. Neier 12:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Think of the enormous redundancy if pages were listed in both. I think the guideline makes sense as it stands. Note, later in the page it allows for some exceptions. John Lennon is the example: he is in his own category and also the Beatles category which is the former's "grandparent." This makes sense in this case, but redundancy of this sort should be the exception rather than the rule. Marskell 15:25, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I guess a list would be the best thing in this case. --AdiJapan 15:52, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Not sure anyone's still reading this here but, in my opinion, it doesn't make sense to have both a subcategory and article listed on the same page. What is the advantage to that? Personally, I read top to bottom so I'll immediately see the subcategory and then click on it. In the subcategory, I'll see not only the article pertaining to the subcategory but also lots of other related articles. I wouldn't have seen the related articles if I'd first seen the article in the parent category and just clicked on it. In this regard, listing them both on the parent somewhat defeats doing the subcategorization at all. Detrimental and redundant. And the only advantages I've heard in scanning previous discussion of the topic is to emphasize that the article is important enough to warrant a subcategory. That seems flimsy at best. Again, just my opinion!  :) wknight94 19:55, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Not sure that this is the right way to go about this, but I copied this from the archives page because I wanted to make a similar point.
I strongly feel that the contents of subcategories should sometimes and maybe always be in the category pages. Take the various Musician pages, which is the category that got me thinking about this issue. There's a Category: Musicians, there's a Category: American musicians and there's a few Category: [PARTICULAR STATE] musicians. By Wikipedia rules, anyone who's in American musicians should not be in Musicians, and anyone who's in, say, New York musicians should not be in American musicians.
Now ask yourself: What's the use of a category that is effectively "Musicians except musicians who someone has chosen to put in a geographic subcategory (or some other kind of subcategory)"? Who would possibly be interested in that particular subset of musicians? If you're interested in Musicians in general, you have to browse through the very long list of every subcategory by nationality. And if you're interested in American musicians, you can look in "American musicians who do not come from a state that has a subcategory, or who come from such a state and have not been put in that subcategory." Again, what's the use of that particular subset? And then you'd have to look at musicians from each of the subcategorized states.
If no one is interested in looking at musicians in general, or in American musicians, why have those categories at all? Because the current system is certainly not serving people who are interested in those categories.
The arguments against including subcategories in categories are that the categories will become very large, and that including categories in subcategories creates redundancy. I don't think either argument makes sense. If you bought a book with biographies of musicians around the world, you would expect it to be a big book--there are a lot of musicians! Likewise, a Wikipedia category that includes all musicians in Wikipedia ought to be big as well. (As for the awkwardness of such a large category, presumably it would be dealt with by breaking it into separate pages alphabetically, just like any reference work does--Musicians A-B, or even Musicians A-Ab.)
And redundancy is really not something an online encyclodedia should be worried about--space, thank gosh, is not an issue. You can use a category tree to organize the material in every way you think people would find useful, using virtually no additional bandwidth. You ought to be able to find a category that includes all the Rock musicians and all the Punk musicians and all the Hardcore punk musicians--and why wouldn't you want to put a hardcore punk band in all three categories?
One more example: There's a category called Female bassists. And there's a category called Bassists. One's obviously a subcategory of the other. Do you really want to remove all the female bassists from Bassists, thereby turning it into Male bassists? That's essentially what the categorization rule does with every category.
At the risk of being a little redundant myself, the question of what the main category is for is I think key. What possible interest would people have in a category of leftover articles not placed in subcategories? Either people are interested in looking at the articles in that category, in which case the articles in subcategories should be in the category, or they're not, in which case why have the category at all?

Nareek 16:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Categorization just went through a rewrite which includes new guidelines that deal with this very issue. The discussion you copied from the archive was talking about the previous guideline which was different. Here are the relevant new guidelines:

So, as you can see, it doesn't say that they can't be in both a category and its subcategory, it says that they should not USUALLY be in a both. The subpage goes into more detail about this. Many people (including myself) argued for this flexibility. I believe a new emphasis should be made on making decisions about categorization that make the most sense for the subject matter, and once the decision is made, to apply those decisions to ALL the articles and subcategories that relate to the subject. If articles are going to be duplicated between a parent and child category it make sense for both categories to be complete -- to have ALL the articles that belong there.

That said, there are many times that it makes sense to not have the contents of subcategories in all the parent categories. If the subject is big, then it makes it very difficult to browse through a subject if everything is there. If there is a complete set of subcategories populated with a large number of articles, then it makes sense to only put the articles into the subcategories.

Please read the new guidelines. I suspect that they need some clarification about this, and perhaps you could help with this. -- Samuel Wantman 16:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very helpful. So I guess the upshot is that subcategory articles can be included in categories in some cases, and it should be decided on a case by case basis? If that's a fair summary, maybe I should take this discussion to the Category:Musicians talk page.
Yes. The upshot is that it should make it easier for users to browse through the categories, and fit one of the exceptions mentioned on the subpage. If it does not fit one of the exceptions, but there is consensus to have the duplications, you should probably let us know on this page so we can consider whether the guidelines need some tweaking. -- Samuel Wantman 19:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I've tweaked it. It was out of touch with what actually happens, eg on treatment of members of hyphenated American sub-categories. But I still think it is too long and complicated and needs to be made a lot easier to follow. Golfcam 22:38, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I very strongly object to a swing to dogmatism in the opposite direction. There will be many cases where this sort of multiple categorisation is very messy because it will push many of the subcategories off of the first page. It will also generate immense category clutter on some article pages. And in any case, how do you decide which categories should have topic articles? There are many which don't exist, but could or should. This proposal is for a scattergun approach, when we should concentrate on flexibility and accuracy based on what is best in each area. CalJW 05:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone considered the ramifications for sorting efforts? For isntance, there's a number of people (and projects) who make efforts to make sure all articles about musicians are properly categorized into all the neccessary subcategories. It's much harder to see what has and hasn't already been sub-cat'ed if all the articles are still in the top level category. As has been repeatedly mentioned, there's a time and a place for everything, but I like the idea of having athe gernal guideline be to not duplicate into higher lievel categories. That's my $0.02. B.Mearns*, KSC 19:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
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