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When is categories too small?

User:Taemyr/bridges by period, the argument is essentially that most of these categories are far to small. I am a bit unsure of how to proceed though, since I am not confident of how precedences run for this kind of thing. And tagging 100+ articles for merging can be seen as disruptive. Taemyr (talk) 01:29, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, categories that are parts of established series can be rather small. If you have more then 5 or 10 articles, it becomes less likely to win support for an upmerge. When you have several large categories in there as a group nomination, it is likely going to fail. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Most of these categories have 1 or 2 articles, although there is some with 5 or more sprinkled in. Taemyr (talk) 03:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States by nationality

There's a disagreement here whether the category applies to released prisoners. Can I get some category experts to chime in. Thanks, --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 05:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Addition to speedy criterion #1

Based on a series of full CfD discussions, I propose adding the follow to criteria #1:

• This includes grammatical corrections that have been approved for similar cases by a full CfD.

This covers an issue raised in some recent speed rename nominations. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

• I have no problem with this. --Kbdank71 20:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
• Seems fine, though the full cfd should probably be linked by the nominator. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Subcategory under wrong parent

What does one do if a (sub)category is under the wrong parent category? I see instructions and templates for deleting, merging and renaming but none of those really apply. Is there a way to "move" a subcategory? Specifically, Category:People from Chinatown, Manhattan really should be under Category:People from Manhattan, not Category:People from New York City, where it is now. In other words, it needs to be moved 'down' one level. Station1 (talk) 21:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit Category:People from Chinatown, Manhattan, and change Category:People from New York City to Category:People from Manhattan. You're not moving a category, you're just recategorizing it like you would an article. --Kbdank71 21:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I should have figured that out. Station1 (talk) 03:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sporting knights: a more precise definition of the category

I'm interested in Category:Sporting knights. I'm not proposing to delete or necessarily rename the category, but to better define who qualifies for inclusion and who doesn't. At the moment, there are some people in it who were sportsmen who were knighted, but whose knighthoods were for reasons other than their sporting achievements. In one sense they're "sporting" "knights", but in another sense they're not "sporting knights". Some would say they should be included regardless; others would surely disagree. And there needs to be a discussion about it so that we're agreed what the rules for the category are. The talk page for the category directed me to the Help desk, which suggested I either raise the issue on individual talk pages for the knights in question, or use the CfD process somehow. The first suggestion seems inefficient - there's no guarantee I'll capture the attention of all users interested in this general category, unless I post the same question on dozens of talk pages, which I just ain't gonna do. The CfD idea seems to be all about deleting or renaming, which is also not what I'm wanting to do. I'm a little stuck as to how to proceed. Any ideas? -- JackofOz (talk) 23:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The aim of the category was to include only those who were knighted for their sporting achievements. It seemed reasonable to include team leaders such as Clive Woodward, Frank Williams and John Hunt, as they were closely involved in the sporting achievements. There were others included, such as Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart, who were knighted long after retiring from sport, because the knighthood strongly related to their sporting careers. The category incorporated 2 existing categories for Cricket and Football which had been separately compiled. There is a similar Category for Sporting dames. The List of sporting knights and dames, which lists by sport, provides scope for noting those knighted sportsmen who fall outside the category. Any queries over individual entries could be aired on the talk page of the relevant list. Cjc13 (talk) 17:20, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Cjc13. I guess my question then is, how would anyone know that "The aim of the category was to include only those who were knighted for their sporting achievements", without asking questions such as the one I've asked. I think that's a perfectly rational basis on which to have such a category, but without any information anywhere (that I can see) about this restriction, people could well feel that including other knighted sportspeople is justified. I'm sure there are many other categories where there's some sort of qualification like this, but there's nothing explicitly stated anywhere that makes newly arrived editors aware of them. It's not usual to have a note on a category that tells editors the "rules" for the category (who's in and who's out), but maybe there's a case for doing so in this instance. I think that would be better than leaving it unstated, and new editors finding their reasonable inclusions of other knights (notable sportspeople knighted for reasons unconnected to sport) reverted. We all learn things on WP through trial and error, but it doesn't always have to be trial and error. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:39, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. I have now added a line of explanation to the category. Cjc13 (talk) 23:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Good outcome. I've augmented the note to include other Commonwealth knighthoods (there may not be any such knighthoods related to sport, but theoretically there could be). -- JackofOz (talk) 00:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

In fact there are: Viv Richards had a knighthood from Antigua and Barbuda and Clyde Walcott had one from Barbados. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy backlog

Can someone look at the last two discussions and see if there are in fact objections that are holding up these nominations. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Which ones? The registered historic places cats? Looks like just questions to me, not objections. --Kbdank71 15:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually someone took care of the ones that were pending for a while. Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy removals; opposition to hyphenations

An editor unilaterally deleted the entire list of the century/millennium hyphenation changes that were listed on the speedy page, arguing in the edit summary that they are not speediable.

How should we approach this? Three very recent CfDs ([1], [2], [3]) have approved and re-approved such changes, and the general sense I have taken from the general discussions about these was that these should now be speedied. But now that opposition has been expressed here, should we have full CfDs for all of them? At least for those who participate at CfD, that would get really old really fast since there are so many of these categories. If they are just going to be approved renames as the others have been, what's the point of having a full CfD vs. a speedy change? For now I've restored the list at WP:CFDS but of course won't process any more until we have some sort of consensus on how to proceed. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, since this was challenged and a third (or was that a forth) CfD was run I see no reason to t|ake this back to a full CfD. Yes, I am involved in this, but that does not matter. To remove these entries requires a sound reason. I suspect that WP:BOLD does not apply here. I was wondering where those tagged categories went. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree with above. No need to run a full CFD since time and time again consensus has been to make the change. --Kbdank71 01:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

"unilaterally deleted"? In my book, speedy equals uncontroversial. Since this is about a controversial mass move of literally thousands of long-standing categories, I dare say they aren't "speedies". So there were one or two votes for implementing "adjectival hyphenation" in century cats. I happen to think this is a terrible idea, but I am of course prepared to accept a true consensus for this mass move. By "true consensus" I mean an above-board advertisement of these plans of mass renames, with an input of at least several dozen community members, and at least 80% support votes. Once you can point to such a true consensus, I will accept your renames as speedies. --dab (𒁳) 09:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

"Unilateral" means done by oneself or without consultation or notification of anyone else. The removal met that definition. Seeing as how 100s of categories have been tagged and listed and you are so far the only user to object, I think "controversial" may be a bit of an overstatement here. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Good Olfactory, if you want to implement a giant renaming spree, it is your burden to establish consensus before declaring it "speedy". Can you please appreciate the point that this isn't some remote category in the backwaters of Wikipedia that may well be renamed based a two or three votes consensus? This affects thousands and thousands of long-standing categories. Did it occur to you that Wikipedia has been going for eight years, with its share of grammar nazis, and until late 2008 nobody ever objected to "20th century philosopher"? I will tell you why: when "$Nth century" is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated is simply not a rule that is alive in the real world. I readily admit it sees some use. But by no means is it more common, or "more correct" than the unhyphenated spelling. Check the google books results for

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

at first glance well below 1:10. This is nowhere near anything that would make this giant move at all arguable. What irks me is that this huge transition went underway with all of two CfD votes, no community review, and nobody even bothered to check who is prescribing this, which major publications use it and which don't, the very basic minimal standard for any significant rename. Now I have made my point. It is now up to you to seek wider input for this, and if you manage to gain an 80% consensus for this thing, I will graciously step down and embrace our brave-new-hyphenation order. Otoh, if you do not, I fully expect you to send in the bots with equal zeal to "speedily" undo this disaster. --dab (𒁳) 09:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, it's not gonna happen per what I said above. CfD is where decisions re: categorization are made, and that's where the issue was addressed multiple times, and the discussion was in agreement that future ones should be speedied. Feel free to try to reverse this decision at CfD, though. (Incidentally, it wasn't me who initiated these changes—I was merely involved in applying it consistently to the entire category tree—so you're probably referring your comments to the wrong person, ultimately.) You really just need to propose the change back in a CfD since the addition of the hyphenation has been proposed and approved multiple times already. Mind you, someone recently proposed the to change it back again, and those who expressed an opinion were unanimously opposed to eliminating the hyphen, so I don't think there's much support for it at this stage. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:03, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Help needed for massive name-change of categories

Hi all - sorry to impose, but I'm going to need help with this one (possibly a bot), as I have dial-up and am also recuperating after surgerym, so I'm not at full strength or concentration level! I've just noticed Category:Olympic medalists and all its subcategories, especially the Category:Olympic medalists by nation tree with all its 100+ subcats. As was recently pointed out inr enames for the equivalent Commonwealth games categories, most English-speaking countries use the British spelling of medallist (with two Ls), and it seems to be normal practice to also use this spelling for continental Europe, Commonwealth countries, and countries using continental European languages as their main tongues (e.g., Latin America and former French colonies). What';s more, the IOC's English-language website uses the double-L spelling exclusively. That's likely going to require at the very least the majority of the by-nation categories to be renamed, which is a lot of work for a recuperating, dial-up, no-bot editor. Any help would be gratefully appreciated! Grutness...wha? 01:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

• Are you wanting to nominate them all in one go or did you want to do a test nom first? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
• We just did a rename of a slew of medal(l)ists categories. I'll try to find the discussion. --Kbdank71 15:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_January_7#Commonwealth_Games_medalists There's your precedent. BTW, my bot isn't written to tag categories, sorry. --Kbdank71 15:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
• Yeah, I was thinking the Comm. Games ones would serve as the "test case", since a lot of the same countries are involved. Grutness...wha? 23:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Request for Reconsideration

In my work resolving DEFAULTSORT conflicts and adding the listas parameter those pages that lack it I have noticed that sum Vital information missing categories have moved from the article page to the Talk page. I have learned that the decisions to do this was made here almost two years ago. I would ask that those decisions be reversed and the tags that have been moved be moved back to the main pages as soon as possible and not in 2011.

• All categorization tags on an article are at the bottom of the page, out of sight. The only indication to a casual user that a piece of so-called vital information is missing is the category listing at the bottom of the page. It is extremely unlikely that a user will get down that far.
• All categorization tags on a Talk page are at the top of a page. All project banners are also at the top of the Talk page. The full header for a Talk page is longer than two un-nested project banners. Any addition to the clutter at the top of a Talk page decreases a user's willingness to make a useful comment about the article and improve the quality of the article.
• If it is not desireable for a category to be listed at the bottom of a page the category should be a hidden category but the tag for the category should be on the page that generates the information.
  • The date and place of birth are only on the article of a person. The tag for the category should be on the article page and the category listing should be on the article or hidden.
  • The quality assessment of an article is in the project banner on the Talk page the category listing should be on the Talk page or hidden.

JimCubb (talk) 22:59, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What "vital information" are you talking about? --Kbdank71 14:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Errors in century and decade categories

In going through the century renames, an interesting error shows up in that at least 2% of the entries in most century categories are incorrect. Remember that the 20th-century runs from 1901 to 2000. The 1st-decade of the 20th-century runs from 1901-1910. So when you place a category of the 1900s in the 20th-century, you are adding 1900 which is not correct and at the other end of the century we are dropping the last year of the century 2000 which is included in the 21st-century. I think that a 2% error is worth discussing to see if there is a simple fix. Vegaswikian (talk) 16:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

We could categorize '00-'09 directly into centuries, bypassing the decade categories that span two centuries. - Stepheng3 (talk) 18:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'm pretty sure in the cases that you refer to, Vegaswikian, it's just a matter of the template that categorizes not being appropriately tweaked to account for this. It's a bit simpler to write a template that just puts any non-BC 4-digit year category that starts with "2" into "21st-century foo", but I believe it's not a huge deal to make an exception for the years that end in double-zero, and many templates already do it. If you keep track of what the 2% are, we should be able to make some pretty simple changes to the template(s) that can correct it. (Of course, if there's no template applying categories, you can just change the century category manually.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Therre are a lot of categories that have it right, Category:20th century years by country, for example, goes from 1901 to 2000. I checked a couple of 7th century, sorry, 7th-century cats that are also correct. Shouldn't be a big deal to fix them as we find them. --Kbdank71 21:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the relation to decades in that example, though. Of course Category:1800 by country should be in the 18th-century cat and Category:1801 by country should be in the 19th-century cat, so it's not surprising that they are. The problem here is where to put Category:1800s by country (or rather its parent Category:1800s). —JAO • T • C 22:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I see what is meant now. Decades unfortunately don't line up nicely with centuries, there being one year's difference. (Not sure exactly why, since obviously the first decade of the first century was 1–10. We really should have made a year "0", I suppose.) I would guess that an 1800s decade category would go in a 19th-century category, since only one year (1800) is actually an 18th-century year. Then the 1800 year category can be manually added to the 18th-century category. There's going to be some duplication, but I see it as unavoidable as long as we have the lack of perfect overlap in the way we define a century and the first decade of a century. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep many of the templates shortcut this and seem to ignore the actual years in a century. If this was just years it would be easier to correct. But with the decade categories including years from 0-10 it is much more difficult. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Barring Stephen's proposal above, I'm not sure there is a good solution. Even if we did what Stephen suggests, it would orphan the decade categories that end in "00" in the sense that they would have no century parent category, which would probably trouble a lot of people. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If it were just the decades, the best thing would probably be to put Category:1800s in both Category:18th century and Category:19th century—after all, it does belong in both. But there's also the issue with the indirect categorization of articles, as used by several tools. The best thing I can say about this at the moment is probably that it's tricky. —JAO • T • C 09:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a tricky problem. From looking at the Opera cats I just re-worked, it looks like the century categories are correct. Category:21st-century operas goes from 2001 on. The decade cats are incorrect. Category:2000s operas starts at 2000. However, if you look at 2000s as "starting with "200-", and not the "200th decade" it is correct. I guess if we wanted to fix it, at least for opera, we'd just need to fix Template:Operadecade. I say "if" because it's not just opera that has the problem, and that adds up to a lot of work. While technically incorrect, I don't know if we're going to get a lot of people that are flummoxed by the year 2000 being in the wrong decade. --Kbdank71 17:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

That's why we are talking. The only solution I have is to create decade categories as Category:20th-century, 1st-decade operas, and not Category:1900 operas. This makes it clear that we are grouping by decade and not by the digit in a certain position of the year. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I know, I'm just wondering if this is a problem that we can live with. You and I, having read and understand the issue, would know what Category:20th-century, 1st-decade operas means, but someone just coming across it? And I don't have any better ideas. I think we may wind up introducing more confusion than if we just left things where they are. After all, there are millions of people who thought that the new millennium began in the year 2000. --Kbdank71 21:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is probably not a huge deal. The problem will exist because there is in fact a one-year difference between the way we group decades and centuries. I don't think anyone seriously thinks that "1970s" means "1971–1980"—to most people it means "1970–1979"; similarly, "1800s" means "1800–1809", but the 19th century happens to have begun one year into this decade. I know it ultimately makes little sense, but I think it's one that users can probably figure out without us trying to perfect the dating system. That said, I've always thought there was a bit of a risk that users would interpret decade categories that end in double zero as century categories, since so many people say "1800s" when they are referring to the 19th century, or more precisely the period 1800–1899. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we dealt with this back in the dark ages of Wikipedia, but...I see nothing wrong with 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, etc. being in the 19th centry, while 1800 is also in the 18th century. Whether 1800s should also be in 18th century is open, but I don't really see it as necessary. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Organization

The organization of this page is horrid. Most users coming to this page will do so with the intent of nominating articles for some kind of discussion. We should make it easy for them by having appropriate subsections, so that it's obvious where to look for delete, rename, etc. As it currently stands, a user coming to this page has an easier time finding the nomination process for "speedy renaming" than just straightforward "renaming". The way the article currently reads, it's like a mess of red tape. Proper organization will significantly reduce this problem. 70.251.251.175 (talk) 02:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)