Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

Hopelessly large scope

I don't mean to be overly discouraging, but I suspect the scope of this wikproject is hopelessly large. I personally categorized all the articles about towns and villages in Japan (perhaps 3500 articles). This took several months. I have, off and on, also tried to keep up with wikipedia:orphaned categories, which are usually categories created by well meaning editors that either weren't added to any parent category or accidentally duplicate an existing category. This task by itself takes more time than I'm willing to donate to wikipedia. Ensuring consistency? Ensuring all articles are categorized? Laudable goals, but unless you have several dozen (maybe several hundred) people helping, all of whom agree about the overall structure, I highly doubt you will succeed. Perhaps this should start with an attempt to codify some categorization policies and guidelines. I'm trying to increase the usefulness of one such guideline, see wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes (and its talk). As far as I know, we don't even have "a collected wisdom page" reflecting oft-repeated discussions from WP:CFD, e.g. albums should go in a "albums by artist" category, various naming patterns like "<geographical feature> of <country>", etc. Without some sort of written guiding principles, perhaps even official wikipedia policies, behind this effort I predict you'll inevitably run into highly obstreporous editors who will actively undo what you're trying to accomplish. My advice is continue to think big, but start small. -- Rick Block 04:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the advice, and the good work (just had a look at your user page). They are probably unachievable unless everyone spent 80% of their time doing grunt work and maintenance. But I do believe that with a concerted effort we could get a lot closer than we are already. The projects for names of countries/counties and regions have pretty much sorted out Foo in Country. Something I have done in the past two days is create a mind-map showing the first 6 levels of the category system - User:GregRobson/categorymap. You'll find that it's not too badly organised but there are entire branches in the wrong place. I have added your page wikipedia:categories, lists, and series boxes to the Project as a useful reference. Greg Robson 06:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cat Watch

Hi there! I was thinking about starting a project like this except that I just realized it already existed. I have a herculanean task to propose, and a way to go about it, and I do think that (just like the WikiProject stub sorting) that with a couple of people it can be done.

[1] The category namespace is very large (about 25000 of them...) and very inconsistent. I've asked for a monthly list of new categories added, as well. Now it would be possible to go over this list, alphabetically, and find and fix inconsistencies. This is feasible precisely because large groups of categories, with similar names, can be automatically passed - e.g. (year) births and (country) (profession).

Suppose that we have ten participants, and each gets a list of 100 categories each week, then it would be cleared in a number of months. If, of course, people want to tackle this since it is still a lot of work.

Many categories would fall under the 'speedy renaming' criteria that already exist on WP:CFD. What we would require is a direct way to input these to a bot, so that e.g. a group of misspelled categories can be dropped there and be reclassified by a bot. What we would also need is a bot to remove all references to non-existent categories (i.e. those that don't have a category page). Comments welcome! R adiant _>|< July 7, 2005 13:54 (UTC)

I like this proposal. We should have a seperate subpage for this type of project, to further explain and detail what needs to be done, and links to the places to complete them. ∞Who ?¿? 00:20, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reworking the project page

The project is a good, and obvious devellopment, however, I find the general wording to be a bit confuse and imprecise. Unless someone sees a problem with it, I will reowrd the page in the next week. 18:31, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Sub pages for projects

Along with Cat Watch proposed by R adiant above, I think we should setup a precise list of topics/projects that will be worked on. These will have their own sub-pages off the main project page, so each project can be discussed and laid out in detail.

One such project, is "General Categorization proposals", or similar name. Where we can raise issues of large category naming structures, and discuss how it be properly named or categorized before bringing it to WP:CFD. This would not work parallel to CFD, but for its benefit. Sometimes a single category is nominted for renaming, and later ends up being an umbrella nomination. This way we can avoid having several similar categories nominated seperately, and keep from bogging down CFD. Also, with proposing it here, we can have comments and discussion on the naming and tree, before placing it on CFD. This may seem redudnant, but I think will make work on CFD much easier. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated. ∞Who ?¿? 00:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestion. I think we should propose certain naming conventions (e.g. no abbreviations in cat names), put them up for discussion to the general public for awhile, and if there is a consensus on them, add them to the speedy renaming criteria so that there will actually be consistency. R adiant _>|< 08:40, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Read this!

Category:Wikipedia_categories_in_need_of_attention contains a lot of material for us to work on. R adiant _>|< 12:19, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Thats a good chunk of stuff, good find. I added it to "Current projects" on the project page, if anyone thinks it needs a better location or title, make necessary adjustments. ∞Who ?¿? 21:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

COTW

Is anyone interested in a categories collaboration of the week? Maurreen (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, interesting idea. What do you propose - we find some broad subject area and clean up its categorization? Or something else? R adiant _>|< 17:18, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I'm thinking of, especially categories with too many articles in the main cat. Also uncategorized pages. But the work could vary with the needs we see and with our desires. Maurreen (talk) 17:28, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It could complement the "Cat Watch" you suggested above. But just so you know, I'm generally not keen on renaming categories for the purpose of standardization. Maurreen (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should be aware if you're not already, that Beland and his bot pearle have compiled a page and some subpages at Wikipedia:Auto-categorization that could be useful. Please have a look. Quinobi 20:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

subpages

I have noted two subpages that sounded appropriate to me, /issues and /proposals (where one is already listed) are on the main page now. Circeus 21:23, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

OK. This might be something for an Issues subpage. I've found some rather complex issues relating to Categorizing Occupations within the Construction Industry. Say you're a Painter, that is you make a living painting peoples homes either inside or out. Where and how does one find an article about this occupation on Wikipedia? The Standard Occupational Classification System might work. I would say then from following that, said occupation might be under Category:Construction_and_extraction_occupations which leads to Category:Construction_trades_workers where the painter does not show up, although his co-workers, the electricians, carpenters, and plumbers do. Some highbrow Cooper Union grad might take offense if it did. So my pal the painter would then be called either a decorator, which is only deserving of a Wiktionary entry, or an Interior decorator which might justify a raise for some guys I know. This may constitute some very deep systemic bias as well as a totally spastic categorization scheme. Just something to think about. Quinobi 08:10, 3 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]