Wikipedia talk:Categorization

See also: Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

Warning template for red-linked categories: Template:Uw-redcat

I have just created Template:Uw-redcat, and added it to Template:Single notice links.

This is to warn users who add pages to no-existent categories (see WP:REDNOT), causing them to be listed at Special:WantedCategories. On average, 50–100 such redlinks appear every day, and it is nearly a full-time job to keep the list clear.

So far, there has been no standardised warning for this. I hope that the wording I have used makes sense.

I opened a discussion on it at WT:UW#Template:Uw-redcat, and suggest that any further discussion should take place there. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:23, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Subcategorization

Is there any specific policy or protocol for placing pages within a parent category and subcategory? For instance, you'll see in Category:Public high schools in the United States by state, where N.J. is the only state that does not contain ALL public high school pages (only a subcategory of them broken down by county listing), along with categories with places of worship, municipalities, unincorporated communities, etc. They are only organized by county. Shouldn't all pages be included in these categories (hence this template) since pretty much all of the other US states follow this practice? Only a couple of editors are against this since it was discussed previously. I find it useful for the reader to have the option to view listings by both county and statewide. Tinton5 (talk) 04:14, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

WP:DUPCAT says "some [subcategories] are simply subsets which have some special characteristic of interest". It doesn't provide an exhaustive list of what constitutes a "special characteristic of interest", although it does say that "gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality should almost always be non-diffusing". Mitch Ames (talk) 11:41, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

The general principle is to diffuse, per WP:SUBCAT. Non-diffusion creates category clutter on articles, and is hard to maintain because experienced editors will instinctively remove the duplication, and tools such as WP:HOTCAT gives no warning.

I don't see any particular reason for a DUPCAT here. The by-county subcats of Category:Public high schools in New Jersey by county all look quite well-sized.

By contrast, some of the undivided categories for other states could do with subcatting, for example Category:Public high schools in California (957 pages), Category:Public high schools in Texas (757 pages). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:14, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

As someone who has had a lot to say about over-and-inappropriate-diffusion, I have to say I agree with BrownHairedGirl on this specific one - I can't say I see a benefit to having undiffused categories here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:09, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

As someone who thinks about diffusion and occasionally rants about it, some properties lend themselves naturally to diffusion and some don't. The acid test for me is: does each article fall naturally into exactly one subcategory? By that yardstick, schools by county seem perfect for diffusion. In contrast, to take another example from above, ethnicity doesn't diffuse neatly: many notable people have multiple, unclear or disputed ethnicity. Certes (talk) 01:36, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Shouldn't this encyclopedia follow some consistency? General practices are to diffuse and subcategorize each page and/or topic within its parent category, at least that is what I've been told and have seen. I have witnessed categories all over the place which sometimes don't even belong in their present subcategories. Tinton5 (talk) 03:54, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Diffusion in geographical "cuisine" and similar subcategories

I'm sure this has been discussed before (and I've read the recent discussion above), but I can't seem to find a good answer. My specific question is whether the kebab article should be in Category:Levantine cuisine, and/or the geographical subcategories Category:Lebanese cuisine, Category:Syrian cuisine, Category:Jordanian cuisine, etc. It's also a general question about how to categorize food items and dishes, and similar things that are found in multiple geographical areas.

This guideline says each categorized page should be placed in all of the most specific categories to which it logically belongs and WP:SUBCAT says an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it. What does "logically belong" mean, and how low is "as low as possible"? Kebab dishes aren't exclusively Lebanese for example, so if "as low down as possible" is meant to be the category that includes all relevant subcategories, then probably it would have to be Category:World cuisine.

It seems more likely that it means that a dish should be included in all "Category:Country cuisine" categories that notably feature it, and not in any "Category:Region cuisine" categories that are supercategories of those countries. In other words, the kebab article should not be in Category:Levantine cuisine. It should also be taken out of Category:Balkan cuisine and added instead to each of the 11 geographical subcategories (Albanian, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Kosovan, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Romanian, Serbian, and Turkish), and similarly for Category:South Asian cuisine. What about Category:Arab cuisine?

This would imply that Category:Levantine cuisine shouldn't have any articles about specific dishes listed in it, and that the 100+ dishes currently in the category should be duplicated and moved down into each of the constituent country subcategories. The same would apply to all "Category:Region cuisine" categories; for example no specific dish articles should be present in the categories Category:Mediterranean cuisine, Category:Middle Eastern cuisine, Category:Asian cuisine, etc., or even in Category:World cuisine.

Is this correct? It doesn't seem to reflect current practice very well, as most of the "Category:Region cuisine" categories have many dishes listed directly under them, and often at the same time in the subcategories. It would be a big change to actually enforce the without duplication in parent categories above it part of the guideline. I'm also not sure how desirable that is. But it's inconsistent; looking at the list in Category:Middle Eastern cuisine, one would certainly expect to see the kebab article in there (there are a number of specific types of kebab listed). I can't figure out if I should add it, or remove all the specific dish articles.

It might also cause issues with verification, as the articles may have references to a dish being "Levantine", but not specifically mention the constituent countries. Are we sure that all such dishes are present in Cypriot cuisine for example? This is even more troublesome with the larger categories - do we actually have "Category:Country cuisine" categories to cover every country in Asia? Can we accurately determine to which specific countries in Asia that oolong, cocopandan syrup, and mochi - and kebab - do or don't belong? What countries exactly make up the Middle East?

One more example, Adana kebab is in Category:Cuisine of Adana and also in the parent Category:Turkish cuisine. Since it's served all over Turkey, it doesn't seem like it should be restricted only to the former category, while it wouldn't make sense to leave it out.

There's also the question of categories themselves, for example Category:Syrian cuisine is a subcategory of Category:Levantine cuisine, which is itself a subcategory of Category:Middle Eastern cuisine. It would seem then that Category:Syrian cuisine should be removed from Category:Middle Eastern cuisine. Currently Category:Lebanese cuisine is not in Category:Middle Eastern cuisine; again I can't figure out whether I should add it, or remove the other Levantine countries instead. Also, Category:Kebabs is in Category:Middle Eastern cuisine, but not in Category:Asian cuisine or any of the south/central/east Asian cuisine subcategories. Should it go in any of those, or in Category:North African cuisine, or should it be removed from Category:Middle Eastern cuisine and placed "as low down as possible" in each and every of the Middle Eastern (and Asian, African, European, and even the Americas') "Category:Country cuisine" categories?

Any comments or pointers to previous relevant discussions or consensus are appreciated, thanks. --IamNotU (talk) 17:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

This geographical categorization can get out of hand. We should be categorizing articles (based on the definining characteristics of the subject), not attempting to use categorization to create lists of what people eat in each country. I'd suggest not categorizing a food for more than one geographical area (based on where the food originated) - e.g. kebab may belong in Category:Middle Eastern cuisine (or a subcat of that), not in categories for Lebanon, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq ... DexDor ^(talk) 18:05, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

DexDor, thanks for your comment. I've never paid much attention to categories, so these are probably rather "newbie" questions. Do I understand correctly that you'd suggest not being strict about the "as low down in the category hierarchy as possible", and instead put the kebab article in Category:Middle Eastern cuisine, and remove it from the lower categories like Category:Levantine cuisine, Category:Lebanese cuisine etc.? Or do you think that sometimes being in multiple parent/child categories is ok? It feels odd to remove kebabs from Category:Turkish cuisine for example...

Your comment brings up another question that I didn't want to add to my already long post - should categorization be primarily about the origin of a dish, or where it is a significant part of a particular cuisine? For example, should the kebab article not also go in Category:Central Asian cuisine, or Category:South Asian cuisine (and then, be removed eg. from Category:Pakistani cuisine)? --IamNotU (talk) 02:25, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

The rule about being as low in the category hierarchy applies after you've determined what the definining characteristics of the topic are. In the case of kebab: Jordan (for example) isn't a defining characteristic (the article doesn't even mention Jordan); that's someone (wrongly) using the category to create a list - information about the popularity/history of kebabs in Jordan belongs in the text of articles/lists (e.g. Kebab and Jordanian cuisine) where it can be referenced (similarly for Turkey).  Otherwise it could lead to people creating categories such as "Cuisine of Omar's cafe" and putting the Kebab article in it. DexDor ^(talk) 06:39, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Regarding origin - absolutely. For example, we (now) categorize weapons (e.g. missiles) only by country of origin; not by every country that uses them, every war they have been used in etc. DexDor ^(talk) 06:39, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Subcategorizing vs. different approach: expatriates, emigrants, and x people of y descent

So, I'm thinking particularly of categories like Category:Canadian expatriates in the United States (sorted with the key "-") and Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States (sorted with the key "+") that are subcategories of Category:American people of Canadian descent, even though a significant portion of those expatriates and immigrants aren't/weren't U.S. citizens. Should the subcategorization be replaced with {{category see also}} instead? Or maybe it's enough that they all share the same parent category Category:Canada–United States relations? During the years I've noticed lots of reverting categories back and forth ([1], [2]), which is why I'd love to see a conclusion to this inconsistency. --Kliituu (talk) 20:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

• Who counts as an American person? Rathfelder (talk) 08:29, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• It makes it much easier to retain the current tree, given many (if not most) of these people do take citizenship and you don't actually have to have citizenship to be regarded as American (or any other nationality) in anything other than a strictly legal sense in any case. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• It's certainly very unusual for biographical articles to say anything explicit about citizenship or nationality, and I think the reality is that for articles about people who migrate attribution of nationality is just guesswork. Rathfelder (talk) 20:36, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Kliituu, Necrothesp, and Rathfelder: I think that there are three issues here:

1. Is there is a useful distinction between emigrants and expatriates?
   Rathfelder and I had that discussion elsewhere, and we disagree: I think the distinction is worth retaining, Rathfelder thinks not. I don't think that can be resolved without an RFC
2. Should expatriates be categorised under descent categories?
   e.g. should Category:Canadian expatriates in the United States be a subcat of Category:American people of Canadian descent?
   I think this question is fairly straightforward: the WP:DEFINING distinction between an expat and emigrant is that the expat does not take up the nationality of the host country. So whenever I encounter an expat category parented in a descent category, I remove it.
3. Navigation between the various categories.
   That is the only plausible argument I have seen for categorising expatriates under descent categories. I don't that navigational convenience justifies such miscategorisation, but it is a reasonable approach. However, I have a solution to that: {{FooBarHumMigNav}}, which I have been intermittently working on for a few months as a Lua module.

There's still a little tweaking to do, but it's nearly ready for rollout. It takes no parameters, and when placed on a bilateral human migration category, it creates a navbox for the categories for descent, emigrants, expatriates and expatriate sportspeople between the two countries.

To demonstrate it I did a few tests on some pages, and self-reverted:

• Category:American expatriates in Japan
• Category:Irish emigrants to New Zealand
• Category:Chilean people of Irish descent
• Category:Spanish expatriates in the United States
• Category:Japanese people of American descent
• Category:Japanese people of American descent
• Category:Finnish emigrants to South Africa
• Category:Ivorian expatriate sportspeople in France
• Category:Venezuelan expatriate sportspeople in Portugal

I'd really welcome feedback on whether this is a good idea, and if so whether it needs tweaking.

Also pinging some other editors whose feedback I'd value: @Oculi, Black Falcon, Marcocapelle, Fayenatic london, and Ymblanter:. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:14, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a matter of definitions. If an expat is defined as a citizen of A but not a citizen of B living in B and an immigrant is defined as a citizen of B living in B who previously was (or still is) a citizen of A and who previously lived in A, then the distinction makes sense. (Note that by this definition, most immigrants have been expats first - I myself was a citizen of one country, lived for 15 years in another country, and then applied for the citizenship, meaning I was an expat for 15 years and then became an immigrant). This is not a definition everybody would agree with, and one would certainly need an RfC to move forward. Also, in many cases it is impossible to determine who is a citizen of what country - for example, the edit-warring in Maryam Mirzakhani probably costed my a year of my life, driveby editors would come, change her definition into "Iranian mathematician", and all my explanations that she was educated in the US, had a job in the US, and only published with the US affiliations - would be disregarded because people would insist that I prov she is a US citizen. May be one needs a much broader scope RfC on in which situation can one define a person (and, in particular, a living person) "an American (Canadian, Finnish etc)...".--Ymblanter (talk) 14:38, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I would be happy with a rule that we forbid categorizing people with a nationality or nationalities unless we have explicit and reliable documentation of their citizenship, and that when we do have such documentation we merely include as categories all documented citizenships rather than trying to decide for ourselves how one of those citizenships relates to another. But too many editors and readers are too invested with waving their flags to make that likely. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:32, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

And I would very strongly oppose that, David Eppstein.

Nationality is one the two basic traits of en.wp's categorisation of people, but it is very rare to have an explicit source declaring citizenship. If we applied David's rule, we'd have to rip apart most our categorisation of people. At a rough guess, that principle would mean that 95% of our biographical articles would cease to be categorised by nationality.

Categories exist to provide navigation between related articles, not to serve as a legally-verified database of citizenship. Our readers are best served by categorising people according to the nationality with they have a clear association. We do not need to concern ourselves with whether they legally became citizens. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:20, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

• I dont regard the distinction between emigrants and expatriates as worth a detailed discussion, because I think it is too messy to be resolvable. There is a great deal of subjective local usage because being an ex-pat is frequently seen as more respectable than being a migrant. You can only definitively distinguish the two in retrospect. Legally there isnt a distinction in most places. My guess is that there is explicit mention of nationality or citizenship in fewer than 5% of biographical articles. For most the best you get is places of residence. So to that extent our categorising by nationality is almost entirely suppositious. We could get round that problem if we categorised biographies by place of residence, but I dont think there will be much appetite for that suggestion.

So I am quite content with BrownHairedGirl's approach, which certainly seems to be an improvement. Rathfelder (talk) 16:49, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

• Agree with BrownHairedGirl on the principle that expatriates and emigrants are different, however in practice it will be difficult. We can probably only be certain that someone was an expatriate in case he/she meanwhile moved to another country or moved back to his/her original country, but if we would stick to that we would be limiting ourselves quite a lot. So I am actually uncertain whether it is useful to keep separate trees for expatriates and emigrants. On the other hand descent is something really different, that should only apply to children and (possibly) grandchildren of emigrants insofar they who were born in the new country. Also I agree that we should not bother about legal citizenship (as mostly unverifiable), the key criterion should be the country of living. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:34, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
• I support all the conclusions and suggestions of BrownHairedGirl. The new human migration nav template should have a longer name for clarity. I would place it below any category description line. In the case of expatriate sportspersons, it can be included at the end of {{Fooian expatriate sportspeople in Bar cat}}. – Fayenatic London 11:26, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

• If we are going this way then expatriates should not be included among people of Fooish descent. They are still Fooish people.
• I've had a little trial categorising expatriate Georgian sportspeople and I think this is the way to go. But had forgotten that sportspeople move about so much. One person may be categorised as an expat in a dozen countries. Ideally I'd like to take them out of the countries they have left, but think that is probably impractical. Rathfelder (talk) 22:20, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't actually see a lot of point in retaining the expatriate categories. As far as I'm concerned, an emigrant is someone who moves to a country and intends to stay there permanently or more or less permanently (e.g. some people emigrate to Britain from the Caribbean, stay for decades and to all intents and purposes become British, but then retire back to the Caribbean; they're still emigrants, even though they eventually return to their country of birth), even if they don't actually do so, or who ends up staying permanently even if they didn't originally intend to. It has nothing to do with actual citizenship. I'm not sure what an expatriate is, as it has different definitions depending on context. Is it a person who lives in a country for a bit? So what? The trouble is, the term "emigrant" often tends to be used of people from developing countries and "expatriate" of people from developed countries, even if their situations are pretty much identical. If we do retain the two separate types of category, however, then I definitely don't think it's worth using both on one article. If someone ends up staying in a country then the emigrant category is sufficient. I also do think both emigrants and expatriates should be categorised under descent for navigational reasons. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:40, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

• Expatriates are mis-classified by descent at present. The French ambassador to Belgium is not "of French descent". He is just as French as the inhabitants of France. Rathfelder (talk) 08:24, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
  • It's simply for ease of navigation and because so many emigrants have been miscategorised as expatriates. But why's it even worth categorising at all? So he lived in Belgium for a while. So what? Unless he lived there in any sort of permanent way (i.e. was an emigrant) why is that notable? -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:57, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm quite happy to keep the expat categories if they are clearly distinct from the migrants. Ambassadors, governors of colonies and the like with a significant part in the history of the place. I guess we have to accept the sportspeople, but generally we should be looking for people who played a significant part in the place where they were an expat. And if its clear that they were really a migrant then they should be in that category. Rathfelder (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC re: Categorizing all works (albums, songs) by an artist by genre

I've submitted an RfC re: the categorization of all works (albums, songs) by artists by genre.

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Music#RfC_on_categorizing_all_works_by_an_artist_by_genre.

Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:02, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

CatAutoTOC: What size thresholds for TOCs?

One of the may deficiencies of Wikimedia's crude category system is that it does not automatically generate a table of contents for the category. Editors have to manually add a TOC if it is needed.

So a few weeks ago, I created Template:CatAutoTOC, which generates a table of contents on a category page if the category size exceeds a certain threshold. It is now used on about 35,000 categories, nearly all via category header templates.

The size thresholds I applied are:

1. < 100 pages = no TOC
2. 100–1200 pages = {{Category TOC}}
3. > 1200 pages = {{Large category TOC}}

However, I just noticed that {{Category TOC}} says it should not be used for categories containing less than 200 pages.

One way or another, that discrepancy needs to be resolved.

I can see the case for the threshold of 200, because it is one pageful, and a TOC is arguably un-needed on one page. Personally, I think that a TOC is still useful on categories in the 100–200 page range, but that may just be an oddity of mine.

What do others think?

What should the size thresholds be? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:37, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

WP:DRAFTNOCAT

For WP:DRAFTNOCAT please add an info that class=Draft in WikiProject templates on "Draft talk" pages works as expected. While at it the section could also state that any {{stub}} template might violate DRAFTNOCAT, unless it is smart enough to have no effect outside of the article namespace, e.g., {{authority control}} is smart, but {{US-record-producer-stub}} is not smart and caused havoc on my first draft. –84.46.52.44 (talk) 16:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I just tested {{US-record-producer-stub}} on in the Draft:sandbox. See my version.

As you can see, it doesn't categorise when used in draft space. So I can't replicate the problem. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:55, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

It shouldn't be necessary to use |class=Draft on a WikiProject banner template in Draft talk: space - when used outside the main Talk: space, almost all (there are five or six exceptions) WikiProject banners will autodetect the class when there is no |class= parameter. Same with |importance=. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:39, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

"Organisation"/"Organization" in descriptive category names

I have opened an RFC about whether to standardise on the "Z" spelling in descriptive category names, i.e. to use "Organization" in all cases. I estimate that this affects the naming of about ten thousand categories.

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC:_spelling_of_"organisation"/"organization"_in_descriptive_category_names. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:07, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Categories requiring diffusion

Hi. Currently, Category:Categories requiring diffusion has 6,457 subcategories, many of which have nothing to diffuse currently and together making it hard to find what needs work. As early as 2010 it was remarked that the category itself requires diffusion (Category talk:Categories requiring diffusion#Subcategories?). I'd like to suggest that all categories that only have 1 subcategory, and have no direct pages in them, be removed, which would reduce it by a few hundred. Other suggestions include adding a switch in Template:Category diffuse to only add the category once there are a certain number of pages that need to be sorted into sub categories. Thoughts? --DannyS712 (talk) 03:42, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

• Its certainly not much use as it is, so I'm in favour of both suggestions. Rathfelder (talk) 14:28, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Redirect categories

I am trying to create a redirect category page, but it doesn't work. The redirect page is Talk:Whites only, but the category that is displayed is Category:NA-Class Civil Rights Movement articles instead of Category:Redirect-Class Civil Rights Movement articles. What am I doing incorrectly? Mitchumch (talk) 23:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: I don't think that specific template works with class=redirect. You just need to add the functionality to Template:WikiProject Civil Rights Movement --DannyS712 (talk) 23:59, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

What do I need to do to modify the template to recognize redirects? Mitchumch (talk) 00:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: See the instructions at Template:WPBannerMeta#Assessment --DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

The following parameter appears to be set-up for "extended" in Template:WikiProject Civil Rights Movement.

|QUALITY_SCALE = extended

|class =

Do I need to use "inline" or "subpage" parameters to employ "redirect class"? Mitchumch (talk) 00:50, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: I think you need subpage, and then you have to set up the subpage itself. Sorry, I'm not the best person to ask about this - maybe try Template talk:WPBannerMeta? --DannyS712 (talk) 00:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I will do that. This is more involved than I thought it would be. Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 01:03, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Using |QUALITY_SCALE=extended won't make the template recognise |class=redirect, because it's not one of the seven classes listed at Template:WPBannerMeta#Assessment. It needs to be either the subpage or inline method; I can do it for you, if I have a clear mandate from the WikiProject. However, I go out to work soon, I can pick this up at (say) 16:00 (UTC), bot not likely to be any earlier. BTW it shouldn't be necessary to explictly set |class=Redirect because the class is autodetected - if the WikiProject banner is not set up for Redirect-class, it defaults to NA-class. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: OK, this is ready to go. There are two edits required, both very simple: (a) on the main template, alter |QUALITY_SCALE=extended to |QUALITY_SCALE=subpage just like this; (b) on the documentation, alter |QUALITY_SCALE=extended to |QUALITY_SCALE=subpage (so that it matches the main template). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

How to nominate for deletion most of the entries in category Films by producer

I nominated Category:Films produced by B. F. Zeidman for deletion as a test case (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 March 17). It was declined "without prejudice against a fresh wider nomination". I contend that, with a very few exceptions (e.g. Val Lewton), producers don't leave much of an imprint on the films they work on, and thus the vast majority of these categories are WP:NONDEFINING. How do I make a "wider nomination" without manually adding literally hundreds of entries to a mass Afd? Clarityfiend (talk) 19:22, 8 April 2019 (UTC)