Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 4

Categorizing infoboxes

There is a discussion at Template talk:Infobox that could use input from this project. It regards the categorization and naming of infoboxes. Primefac (talk) 13:14, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. — The Transhumanist 07:28, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Category breadcrumbs

I notice that Japanese Wikipedia has a very nice breadcrumb trail at the top of each category page. For example, Google Translate shows the breadcrumbs for Category:スポーツ競技 (Sports competition) as Main category > Culture > Entertainment > Sports > Sports competition. This would be a very nice feature for English Wikipedia as well.

To some degree, this would run afoul of the very messy categorization in English Wikipedia I describe in several discussions (see Special:Contributions/RVS). There are many extremely deep as well as cyclic categorization link chains, unfortunately.

However, it's probably sufficient to deal with this by simply showing just the previous 4 or so links. Probably this is what is done in Japanese Wikipedia, and/or perhaps there is not as much of a problem with messy categorization links there. RVS (talk) 20:18, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

This is ja:Template:Pathnav and its subtemplate ja:Template:Pathnav/link. It's not automatic; each successive parent category is manually named, to a maximum of ten. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Ah, too bad it's not automatic. Otherwise it's easy for that to get out of sync. I suppose since the categories are not a tree, an automatic version would sometimes have to choose among multiple parents. But that would still seem to be a step forward compared to manual. Still, I suppose it's possible that it's really not manual, that the Japanese version might have a bot that keeps these in sync? RVS (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it would require some sort of manual curation. Which parent do you follow up the tree (or down the banyan)? How far do you go? Plucking Category:American singers out of the air and repeatedly following the first listed category took me via Humans, Fossils and Earth to Biology, at which point I entered a loop. I know that Category:Fossils should be omitted as irrelevant, but that's a difficult judgement for software to make. Certes (talk) 09:44, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Millennium categories

(older discussion, copied from personal talk page, seems to become relevant again according to this discussion of today and this discussion of a few days ago) Marcocapelle (talk) 20:44, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@Peterkingiron and Excelse: I sympathise with your doubts about the millennium categories but also feel that at least some distant and poorly populated millennium categories should stay, e.g. Category:Populated places established in the 5th millennium BC. And this may also differ by continent because Category:1st millennium in North America will be more useful to keep than Category:1st millennium in Europe. But then I wonder how and where we should draw the lines. I don't have an answer right now, just sharing some thoughts. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:48, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I would not object to categories such as those, but only for cases where certainty as to date is impossible even within 100 years. In general there have not been enough centuries to require anything higher, such as millennium categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Surely millennium categories are more appropriate than century categories for prehistoric archaeological cultures, where the dates are fuzzy (like Longshan culture and Baodun culture), or states from traditional folk-history, whose very existence is disputed (like the Xia dynasty). Kanguole 12:38, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
My comment was largely echoing the problem and that we have to investigate if other related categories are that much accurate or not and this CFD can become an example. The categories that you named are going to stay though. Excelse (talk) 11:11, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

-- end of previous discussion

I've notified Wikipedia:WikiProject Years about this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:49, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm still a bit hesitant about this discussion. If we are going to selectively delete millennium categories, it will not be too straightforward at what point we would start deleting. We should also consider that there may be separate needs per continent or even by region. For example in the Americas, south of the Sahara and in northern and eastern Europe we will probably need millennia at least including the 1st millennium AD, while we could refrain from millennia in a way earlier stage in e.g. Egypt and Mesopotamia. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
The millenial categories which seem entirely superfluous are those which relate to organisations or products which did not exist until the industrial revolution, or later, so there are less than four centuries to be included. Rathfelder (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

One of the problems are templates like {{EstcatCenturyType}} which require a millennium input in order to create WP:REDNOT categories like Category:Museums established in the 3rd millennium. Could probably abolish that altogether, at least make it optional. One answer might be to adapt WP:SMALLCAT to say that date categories should have scope for more than 12 entries - ie years should not be catted in decades, and decades not in centuries and centuries not in millennia (plus there's often a dis/establishment pair).Le Deluge (talk) 22:40, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

What about a rule that says, "Do not create a millennium category where 3 or more "by century" categories exist and they contain all the articles that would otherwise be contained in a "by millennium" category"? Laurel Lodged (talk) 21:38, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- A rather incomprehensible rule. Millennium categories are supposed to be parents to century categories, allowing readers to locate articles relevant to any given millennium. Ideally they should themselves contain no articles or very few articles. Dimadick (talk) 23:33, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm unhappy about templates which populate the categories. They are very inflexible.
Have a look at Category:Companies by millennium of establishment. Categorisation by century still only produces 3 subcategories in total for most. Rathfelder (talk) 19:42, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
- Most of these categories are less than 2-years old, and the category tree is still expanding. Dimadick (talk) 20:06, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Category:Expatriates

Feel free to join this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_International_relations#Category:Expatriates. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:23, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Category:xxxx-related lists

There is an extensive set of categories named according to this pattern, which seem to have been added without any thought of supplying a sort key. Consequently, they end up using the default sortkey, the article title, so the articles mostly appear in the 'xxxx-related lists' category index unhelpfully under 'L' for 'List of ...'. (See, for example, Category:Texas-related lists, where only one of the items under 'L' actually belongs there.) I've no idea how to even find all the categories of this type, nor the easiest way to fix the sort keys. I'm just doing this manually as I come across them, but it really needs a planned approach. Any suggestions? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Here's a rough list: [1]. AWB could sort them out if we can specify a rule such as: insert the article title before the ]], replacing "List of " by "|". Alternatively, we could add a DEEFAULTSORT, but that could have a wider effect. Certes (talk) 12:53, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Would it be possible to further refine the search to (a) only articles that are named "List of ..." and (b) only where the category doesn't already have a sort key, and (c) to bypass articles where DEFAULTSORT (if present) has a value different from the article title? That should cut down the numbers a bit. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:15, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

(a) I don't think so (intitle: doesn't do what it's told to), but User:The Transhumanist/SearchSuite will do that for you. (b) I hope I've already done that, by requiring ]] immediately after the category name without an intervening |code. (c) I hope I've already filtered out articles with any DEFAULTSORT at all (thereby failing to find articles with a rather pointless DEFAULTSORT|List of Foo). If you can see any lists which filters (b) and (c) fail to remove, let me know their titles and I'll look at why they're appearing. Certes (talk) 17:10, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

One more question; I've got this search up and running in AWB, so the next step is the text replacement. I know how to set up a find-and-replace regex in AWB, but how would I insert the article title before the ]], replacing "List of " by "|" ? How can a regex pick up the title and manipulate it in this way? Colonies Chris (talk) 10:18, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I think it's best to manipulate the title before. JWB (and, I assume, AWB) has a handy feature where you can specify a page name as Foo|Bar, causing it to edit page Foo with special variable $x set to "Bar". (Normally $x is just the page name.) So you could edit List of These|These and List of Those|Those, changing ]] to |$x]] in each case. An alternative (but something of a hack) is to change ]] to |Distinctive string $x]] using the full page name, then in a separate regex change "Distinctive string List of " to blank. Certes (talk) 10:44, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I've used the AWB filter to select only "List of ..." tities from the search results, and I've set up a pair of regexes, the first to change [[Category:xxxx-related lists]] to [[Category:xxxx-related lists|%%title%%]] and a second one to change [[Category:xxxx-related lists|List of yyyy]] to [[Category:xxxx-related lists|yyyy]]. That does most of the job and any further tweaks I'll do by hand. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:37, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Discussion on the use of Portal links in categories

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

You are invited to participate in the ongoing discussion over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § Discussion on having links to portals, where the portal is about the topic the category is about. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 14:17, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Bot Request to Cleanup Category:Featured articles needing translation from <language>

A bot request has been recently created to clean up articles that no longer have FA status on their host Wikipedia page from Category:Featured articles needing translation from <language>. Any comments would be appreciated. Kadane (talk) 18:28, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Category:American people of African descent

Let’s settle this once and for all: the top of its page says “Note: 'African Americans' are citizens of the United States of Black African ethnicity or ethnic descent — they are listed at Category:African-American people.” That in itself distinguishes who is actually African-American and the white people in the category with trace amounts of African ancestry (which, some of you argue, could apply to every human on the planet since humanity originated in Africa). What I’m getting at here is this; why is Johnny Depp, a white man, whose page says Ancestry.com found he has a very distant African ancestor (from 400 years ago) or Ty Burrell, a white man, whose great-great-great-great-grandmother (do the math...) was an African woman, in the same category as actual black Americans such as Forest Whitaker or Eartha Kitt? It doesn’t make sense. It’s too ambiguous. Therefore in my opinion this category should be reserved for the Johnny Depps and ”African Americans' are citizens of the United States of Black African ethnicity or ethnic descent — they are listed at Category:African-American people.” should be in the respective African-American categories as they are. In my view, anyone who has at least one parent that is African-American they should be in the African-American categories, not this extremely vague category.Trillfendi (talk) 02:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Trillfendi, there was a very long RfC at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#RfC on categorizing biracial people where the consensus was you need a reliable source to include people in Category:African-American people if only one parent is African-American. So many people were moved out of that category and moved into the broader Category:American people of African descent instead. We probably need to update the category descriptions to match that. St Anselm (talk) 18:35, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Trillfendi seems to take issues with matters like this one, where she wanted to place Wentworth Miller in Category:African-American male actors as opposed to Category:American people of African descent, arguing that the latter category is "for people with only very distant or remote African ancestry." Trillfendi was reverted by MarnetteD. Further discussion took place on MarnetteD's talk page. As seen here, I responded to Trillfendi at Category talk:American people of African descent. The close for the aforementioned RfC spoke of self-identification in addition to sources, cases where sources conflict, and that there was no consensus to update the guideline to align with the RfC sentiment. Also, before that RfC, many people were already in Category:American people of African descent on the basis that they are biracial or multiracial (even though African American people as a whole are also a mixed group). Trillfendi has a point that trying to distinguish between these two categories can be trivial. Pinging Alanscottwalker, who might want to weigh in on this. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Categories

Template:WikiProject Categories is currently transcluded just 3,312 times, yet surely every category is technically within the scope of WikiProject Categories. Should we be looking to roll out this template to every Category Talk page, e.g. via a bot, or is that not its intended use? --Jameboy (talk) 15:58, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

There is a parallel at Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates/Template:WikiProject Templates which should be placed "on the talk page of relevant Wikipedia, Help or Category pages, but generally not on the talk pages of templates". Exchanging category for template, we might say that Template:WikiProject Categories should be placed on the talk page of relevant Wikipedia, Help or Template pages, but generally not on the talk pages of categories". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:27, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense now. I've updated Template:WikiProject Categories/doc accordingly. Perhaps we should agree a guideline as to which types of categories can be tagged with the template before setting about removing any inappropriate transclusions from category talk pages. --Jameboy (talk) 00:15, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

The only category talk pages that should be tagged with the template are things like Category talk:Wikipedia categorization by topic. All the categories for articles and wikipedians could/should be untagged. DexDor^(talk) 20:15, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Catholicism

There has been almost obstructive feedback on requests on this category tree branch below, as seen on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Speedy#Opposed_requests. Could we have a general discussion about it here? My view is that "Catholicism" is rather redundant in at least several of the below instances, and in any case "Catholic Church" would be more relevant over the board. If this is not a suitable way to address the issue, please let me know and please help me how to do it. Chicbyaccident (talk) 11:50, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

It is not helpful starting a discussion with 'almost obstructive'. CFD/S is meant for entirely obvious renames only and rejection at that platform just means it is not entirely obvious. Better avoid CFD/S entirely for cases like this and just calmly post these nominations here right away. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:11, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

OK. Chicbyaccident (talk) 13:00, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

@Chicbyaccident: I moved this discussion to this other platform, since it is not an actual nomination suitable for CFD. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:05, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Is there an actual proposal here? Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:12, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Ordering items on a category page

I was wondering if there is any category equivalent to MOS:ORDER, which specifies the standard ordering of items within articles. There are a number of different elements that can go into a category page, for example:

navigation bar (especially for years)
main article for this category...
notices about maintenance categories, hidden categories, container categories etc.
commons category
portal link(s)
this category is for...
NOGALLERY
parent categories

...and probably many more that I've forgotten or don't know about. The ordering of some of these elements can affect the appearance of the category page (sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly) so I thought I'd check to see if there is a standard ordering. Many thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 09:37, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Generally, follow MOS:ORDER unless you have a reason not to. Is there some object that is commonly found on a cat page, but which is not covered by MOS:ORDER? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

No, @Jameboy: is right, MOS:ORDER doesn't really work for categories ("navigation should be at the bottom of the page") etc. My general rule is "whatever looks neatest", although there doesn't really seem to be any good arrangement for eg a Project articles category with all the trimings. In general that means a bit of an "inverted triangle" to the overall look. There's one order for commons/portal/navseasoncats that looks dreadful, all spread out, whereas there's another where all the floats work together and it's much tidier - but other navboxes need a different order because they are aligned differently. So FWIW, I generally use something like :

NOGALLERY
notices about maintenance categories, hidden categories, container categories etc. (the pagewide coloured boxes)
portal link(s)
commons category
navigation bar (especially for years)
main article for this category...
this category is for...
TOC (but only if there's >400 articles)
parent categories

but don't take that as gospel. Le Deluge (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

That's useful thanks. I didn't even have a rule of thumb before. Now I can at least use the above as a starting point, with the understanding that it isn't an exact science and tweaks may be needed. --Jameboy (talk) 16:03, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Years and decades in continent categories: High and Late Middle Ages

I am considering a CfD nomination to upmerge years and decades in continent categories to global years and decades categories for the period 1000-1499, very similar to this earlier nomination about the period 500-999.

Example

Propose merging Category:1000 in Europe to Category:1000
Propose merging Category:1000 establishments in Europe‎ to Category:1000 establishments
Propose merging Category:1000 disestablishments in Europe‎ to Category:1000 disestablishments
Propose merging Category:1000 in Asia to Category:1000
Propose merging Category:1000 establishments in Asia to Category:1000 establishments
Propose merging Category:1000 disestablishments in Asia to Category:1000 disestablishments
Propose merging Category:1000s in Europe to Category:1000s
Propose merging Category:1000s establishments in Europe‎ to Category:1000s establishments
Propose merging Category:1000s disestablishments in Europe‎ to Category:1000s disestablishments
Propose merging Category:1000s in Asia to Category:1000s
Propose merging Category:1000s establishments in Asia to Category:1000s establishments
Propose merging Category:1000s disestablishments in Asia to Category:1000s disestablishments

Generally speaking, most years in the period of 1000-1499 have a European subcategory, way fewer years have an Asian subcategory (even less with establishments and disestablishments) and only in exceptional cases there is a North American subcategory. Since this is going to be a massively huge nomination I prefer to play a bit safe and would be eager to know if there might be any objections against a nomination like this that I possibly oversee. Most specifically if there is anything that applies to the period 1000-1499 that didn't apply to the period 500-999. Feel free to comment. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tim!, Laurel Lodged, BrownHairedGirl, Nihonjoe, and Peterkingiron: pinging participants and closer of previous discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject History and WikiProject Years have been notified. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:12, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Object. Thanks for the ping, @Marcocapelle. As discussed at your recent nomination of Irish categories, I have reversed my view of these mergers, and will oppose this one if it is proposed.

This is not the place to debate to debate the merits, but in summary my objection is that the benefits to navigation of these mergers have been vastly overstimated, while the downsides of requiring multi-categorusation of each page have been way under-estimated.

In this case, the High and Late Middle ages are a well-dpocumented era in European history, so there is plenty of scope for expansion. I have les knwoledge of Asian history, so can't comment on that yet. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:03, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with BrownHairedGirl, and include the Asian categories in that agreement. I see little benefit in the mergers, and a fair number of downsides. Please ping if you reply to my comments as I don't watch this page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:15, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Oppose this nomination would not really achieve anything other than hindering navigation. Tim! (talk) 16:33, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose in part -- I still support the principle of eliminating a lot of these small categories, but this nom is not the way to start. This is going to need a long process. At this distant period, I do not think a Europe/Asia split is useful, so that I would support merging all the 1000 items into Category:1000 (except est/disest, which should be single subcategories) and upmerging 1000 om fooland to 1000s in fooland and Category:1000. When that is done we can see whether there is enough in 1000s in fooland to merit keeping it or merging to 11th century in fooland. Please provide statistics on the number of articles likely to be in the target after merger. Having to click through 4-5 layers of single item categories to find the single article at the bottom is not an aid to navigation. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:56, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Support Pre the Modern Era, the notion of continents was hazy and fluid. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:54, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Intersection of descent and occupation

After the closure of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2018_October_29#Category:Canadian_journalists_of_Chinese_descent we might nominate all subcategories in the tree of Category:People by country of descent and occupation for upmerging to their respective parent categories. However, there is no way that all of them can be manually upmerged, that would be way too much work. Does someone have a clever idea how to solve that problem? Marcocapelle (talk) 12:26, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

@Good Olfactory, Bearcat, Simonm223, Fayenatic london, and Peterkingiron: pinging closer, nominator and contributors to the discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:26, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

There is a section at WP:CFDWM to list categories for multiple merges.

When I implement merges to multiple targets, I usually use WP:Cat-a-lot to add the first target (and middle target if any), and then use Cydebot via WP:CFDW as normal to merge to the last target.

Armbrust can also do multiple merges with his bot. – Fayenatic London 15:08, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest that the normal test should apply: if there are at least five articles to populate the intersection category we can keep it. Otherwise it should be upmerged both to the ethnic and occupational categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:43, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Category:American husbands

We have this one, but do we want it? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2018_November_24#Category:Husbands. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:31, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

CFD: Proposed renaming of Wikipedian sports fans categories

At Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 5#Wikipedian_sports_fans A user has proposed renaming 718 sub-categories Category:Wikipedians by interest in a sport, to use the phrase "interested in" rather than the word "fans".

The discussion will consider how this proposal fits with Wikipedia's categorisation guidelines. Please add your comments at the Categories for discussion page. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007

Scope of Category:World War II armoured cars and similar

A description of this category (added later) says, that this category is for articles about armoured cars introduced during World War II. Earlier cars should go to Category:Armoured cars of the interwar period. However, the name obviously suggests to most readers, that it covers armoured cars USED during World War II, what causes confusion. If anybody tries to search earlier armoured cars fighting in WW2, using this category, or to check what are other WW2-era armoured cars, he would be mistaken, that they don't exist on Wikipedia. As a matter of a fact, many authors of articles apparently treat this category as covering all armoured cars used during WW2, because it includes many of interwar armoured car articles, contrary to description. Therefore I suggest to delete descriptions of these two categories, so that they would cover armoured cars used in these periods. Otherwise it would be more logical to rename it as "armoured cars introduced during WW2". The same for Category:Armoured cars of the Cold War, although it could contain several surplus WW2-era car models used in Middle East then. Pibwl ←« 18:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

A bit of background: Some years ago weapons (and other military equipment) were being categorized by conflicts in which they had been used which caused rather a mess (incomplete non-defining categories) (consider how many conflicts things like CH-47 and AK-47 have been used in). Many of these categories were deleted (e.g. see this CFD).

We retained categories for periods (e.g. interwar, cold war, post cold war) in which weapons were introduced. The WW2 categories would fit into that scheme. A rename of the WW2 categories etc to clarify this (rather than making them be about usage) would be useful. Note: there are also categories based on century/decade of introduction (which have the advantage of fitting with categories for vehicles etc) so maybe the period categories are themselves unnecessary. I'm sure there's more improvements that can be made in this categorization.

Categorization by usage could be messy. E.g. consider a French tank introduced in the 1920s - if the Germans captured a few in 1940 then would it belong in a used-in-WW2 category? (what if the Germans only used it for internal security, used the turret as part of static defences ...?). That sort of thing is much better handled as a list (e.g. articles such as List of German military equipment of World War II) which can contain notes and can also, unlike a category, contain redlinks where we don't yet have an article.

Note: We also deleted weapons-by-user categories (example CFD) (instead categorizing only by country of origin); that sort of information is better stored as a list. DexDor^(talk) 06:48, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Church buildings by region and province in Italy

In Italy we have categorized church buildings in Italy by province (unfortunately a top category Category:Churches in Italy by province is lacking) combining a broader churches scope with a narrower geographical level (province), and we have also categorized church buildings in Category:Roman Catholic churches in Italy by region with a narrower churches scope (Roman Catholic) with a broader geographical level (region).

Just by itself there is nothing wrong with it, however in this particular case it leads to extreme duplication because 99% of church buildings in Italy belongs to the Catholic Church. It could potentially be simplified to:

renaming all churches in Italy by province categories to Category:Roman Catholic churches in Italy by province categories; and replacing the churches region parent category by a Roman Catholic churches region parent category; and moving out the very rare non-Catholic church buildings
containerizing all subcats of Category:Roman Catholic churches in Italy by region just containing the provinces categories, instead of individual church buildings

With this solution every church building article in Italy will be categorized only once in a churches x geography category, instead of twice. Any comments? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Good. I think we have a similar view about the duplication of categories with no differing content. Rathfelder (talk) 09:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Partial I agree with the first proposal but not the second. Civil regions in Italy are not synonymous with ecclesiastical provinces. See for example Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Region of Triveneto which covers multiple civil regions. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:30, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

I've added a table to List of Catholic dioceses in Italy which explains this point. Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:51, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Category:Underpopulated categories

Do underpopulated categories actually require maintenance? Does it matter if a category has 5 entries but there should be more that someone needs to put a {{Underpopulated category}} tag on it (which are then placed in Category:Underpopulated categories? For example, what's the big deal if categories within Category:Underpopulated paintings by year categories have fewer than 10 entries? A number of problems I'm finding are:

Categories get tagged but the tag rarely gets removed when the category gets populated (although there is Category:Categories with incorrect underpopulated category template, which will automatically move categories with the tag to this category once there are 25 entries in such categories, but it's run by a bot and such categories are not moved in a timely manner when the threshhold is met).
Tagging is often inappropriate. Even if an article count for a category doesn't exceed 25, it's quite possible that no other candidates exist to populate it.
Sometimes, a category may have few articles directly placed in it but it has diffused subcategories which easily give the parent category enough articles.
The current count is over 12,000 categories and it seems to be just a few enthusiastic category creators who add the tag to every category they create with the expectation that other editors will populate it. Many of these tags go back years, so if they haven't been populated it is likely additional candidates don't exist (or if they do exist, the tag does not aid in getting them populated)
Sometimes, parts of a scheme get created (say a "by year" or "by country") to diffuse a parent category and the tag is added to request the creation of potential sister categories, which is not the point of the tag. For example, someone creates a category for "Foo in 2018" and parent "Foo by year" adding the underpopulated tag to the parent even though the only possible member is "Foo in 2018" since no others have been created. While there may be candidates to fill a "Foo in 2017" category and other years, it's not what the underpopulated tag is for. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 18:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I asked similar questions 2 years ago at Category_talk:Underpopulated_categories#What_is_the_point_of_this? and no-one has replied. Time to kill the whole thing? DexDor^(talk) 21:24, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree its pointless. I'm as obsessive about categorisation as most people but I have never done anything in response to such a tag, and often they are completely inappropriate. I've removed quite a few. Rathfelder (talk) 09:21, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one to think this way. I've removed over 1000 tags within the last month, either because the category was well populated or because there was little else to populate it with. Some of the tags had been added as far back as 2011. Is it the {{Underpopulated category}} template that needs to be nominated for deletion though, since the category is just a tracking category? Thanks. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 18:31, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Non-Gregorian observances by Gregorian month

The discussion about Category:Non-Gregorian observances by Gregorian month has been closed as manually disperse. After the closure I have created and populated Category:Jewish_observances_by_month and subcats, which was explicitly addressed in the discussion. However, there are still a huge amount of South Asian and East Asian observances left, scheduled according to a variety of calendars, which I am not capable of dispersing and so far nobody else is working on it. What is the best next step, should we re-nominate the category? Marcocapelle (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Commune Sub-categories of Category:Articles needing translation from French Wikipedia

It seems French communes are a large part of the nine thousand article of this category while sub-categories exist for communes of specific French regions and departements needing translation from French Wikipedia, while a lot of them may assurely not fit in the already existing commune categories, there is the example of Castifao not being put in the same category as Cagnano all the while both are communes of Haute-Corse needing translation from French Wikipedia, an example among many others.

What appears to be as problematic is the fact a number of these sub-categories are not hidden, all the while being just as the main category maintenance categories that should be hidden on the pages they are added too.

As such, I would like to establish consensus about the need of a large migration of articles before moving them in the appropriate geo sub-categories, but also the need of creating new categories for those that do not fit in the ones already present. I seek approval for this as it would be a large migration of articles that could prove to be disruptive. Some of these region categories also need to be renamed, merged or deleted to fit the French regional reform. Sadenar40000 (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

@Sadenar40000: All subcategories should be converted to a hidden category as well, and the region categories should be nominated for merger at WP:CFD in order to have them comply with the 2016 reform of French regions. Other than that, it is not very clear what the migration is about. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:39, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Arabs in Morocco

Greetings all. I've just noted the following categories, which all seem to refer to roughly the same thing:

I can sort of see how some distinction between these concepts might be possible in theory, but in practice, all seem to contain roughly the same articles and all contain each other as sub-categories, so I was going to take them to CfD for merging, but couldn't work out a) which title is the preferred one that the others should be merged to, or b) how to use the template for a multiple merge. Any advice greatly appreciated! Furius (talk) 14:59, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I am also uncertain here, but please note that most of Morocco's current population are of mixed Arab-Berber descent. 14 centuries of intermarriage between the previously distinct groups (since the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Maghreb) have had quite an effect. Dimadick (talk) 16:20, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

In cases like this, I look at the parent categories, to see what the naming convention is for the sibling categories. Here, one thing that sticks out straight away is that these three categories have each other as both parents and children. That is to say,

where "→" denotes "is a parent of". Each of these three has certain other parent categories in common: Category:Ethnic groups in Morocco; Category:Moroccan people by ethnic or national origin; Category:Moroccan people of Middle Eastern descent. Judging by the subcategories of Category:Moroccan people by ethnic or national origin and Category:Moroccan people of Middle Eastern descent, the overwhelming trend is for names like "Moroccan people of Fooian descent", hence Category:Moroccan people of Arab descent is the one to keep, and the other two should be sent to WP:CFD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:53, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@Furius and Redrose64: Feel free to participate in this CfD nomination. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:34, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Categorizing schools of cities in multiple counties, but in which one county has the lions share of the schools

One interesting thing I've wondered is how to deal with categorizing schools within a city that is in multiple counties, but in which one county has the majority of the land.

Houston is the county seat of Harris County, and almost all of Houston is in Harris County. However I did not wish to make Category:Schools in Houston a daughter category of Category:Schools in Harris County, Texas because there is a section of Houston in Fort Bend County, and Willowridge High School is in the Houston city limits, but is in Fort Bend County, not Harris County. However to my knowledge no other Wikipedia-notable schools are in Fort Bend sections of Houston. There is a portion of Houston in Montgomery County, but no K-12 schools, to my knowledge, are in operation there (There is a Lone Star College campus there).

Atlanta has a similar issue: most of Atlanta is in Fulton County, but there is a section in DeKalb County. Crim High School is in Atlanta and in DeKalb County, but every other Wikipedia-notable school in the Atlanta city limits is in Fulton County. You can see a map of Dekalb County and a map of Fulton County to compare them.

So, should the Atlanta and Houston school cats be made daughters of their majority county-equivalents, or should they remain separate? WhisperToMe (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: If it really is a matter of lions share you'd better make them daughters of the county. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:43, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Marcocapelle: Indeed the case with Houston as the only Wikipedia-notable school not in the Harris County that is in the Houston city limits is Willowridge High School of the Fort Bend School district (in addition there is McAuliffe Middle School and a few elementary schools in Fort Bend Houston). In Atlanta's case the high schools that are in DeKalb County Atlanta are Crim High School and The Paideia School. In the case of the Texas schools I created "XX high schools in the YY independent school district" to avoid having to categorize them by county (in most cases), as most of the school districts are entirely within a particular county. BTW, do you think ~~Category:Schools in the Houston Independent School District~~ Category:Houston Independent School District schools be made a daughter category of "Schools in Houston"? The district operates a few schools outside the Houston city limits (in Bellaire and West University Place with articles about Bellaire High School (Texas) and Pin Oak Middle School in Bellaire) but the vast majority are in Houston. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:54, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
  - Yes, I think that would definitely be helpful. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:02, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
    - Ok! I went ahead and did that! I also plan to connect Category:Private schools in Houston with the county category (I don't know any private schools in parts of Houston in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties).
    - I wonder whether I should make Category:Spring Branch Independent School District schools a subcategory of Houston schools: Of the four zoned high schools (there is also a magnet high school) one is not in the Houston city limits: Memorial High School has a Houston postal address but is in Hedwig Village, Texas.
    - I decided not to make Category:Alief Independent School District schools and Category:Aldine Independent School District schools daughter categories of schools in Houston because the percentages of schools in Houston are lower. Two of five Alief ISD high schools (Taylor and Kerr) are outside of the Houston city limits (they have Houston postal addresses but are in unincorporated areas). Three of the six Aldine ISD zoned high schools (Macarthur, Nimitz, and Benjamin O. Davis), along with their associated 9th grade centers, are also outside the city limits in unincorporated areas, while having Houston postal addresses.
    - WhisperToMe (talk) 13:01, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Relevant navbox at TfD

Template:Wikipedia categorization navbox has been nominated for deletion. Anyone interested in seeing if this navbox could be used? – Uanfala (talk) 00:13, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Discussion meanwhile closed as withdrawn. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:53, 13 March 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) 21:04, 29 March 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) 20:08, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Deaths from heart attack?

Is there a category for people who died of a heart attack please? This comes up a lot in obituaries. I know it is not a technical term...I just can't find the category for it. (Perhaps there should be a redirect?). Please ping me when you reply. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 09:51, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@Zigzig20s: If you follow the Category:Deaths hierarchy down through the disease path you'll end up at Category:Deaths from heart-related cause. But have a good think about whether the heart attack is WP:DEFINING for the person concerned as deaths from illness tend not to be. Yes there are exceptions such as the effect on AIDS awareness that resulted from Freddie Mercury's Category:Deaths from AIDS-related illness or John Diamond (journalist) who wrote a bestselling book about his cancer. But in general a heart attack is not one of the top 3-5 most WP:DEFINING things about why we're interested in a person which is what categories should be about, they're not simple metatags (and yes, biographies are prone to WP:OVERCATEGORIZATION!).Le Deluge (talk) 12:18, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I would say it is non-defining.Zigzig20s (talk) 12:34, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

New categories about the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Hello. I'd like to reach consensus before I create categories about the Bay of Pigs Invasion. I feel we need at least Category:Bay of Pigs Invasion for Bay of Pigs Monument, Bay of Pigs Museum and more (for example, books about the invasion), and a subcategory for Category:Bay of Pigs Invasion veterans. Thoughts please? (Please ping me when you reply. Thank you.) Zigzig20s (talk) 17:59, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Zigzig20s, Why do you feel such a category might be needed? For example, the article about the monument links to the article about the (attempted) invasion and is in categories such as Category:Outdoor sculptures in Florida (which groups it with articles about similar things). Have you considered a navbox instead? DexDor^(talk) 05:25, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

How many articles do we need to create those categories please? I do feel it would be useful for veterans especially, but also for other aspects like monuments/books...It would make it easier to find them. We have many categories about veterans of all kinds of wars and conflicts already...one question I have is that there were Cubans on both sides of the conflicts, those trained by U.S. forces and the Communist/Castro-trained ones, so how would we differentiate them?Zigzig20s (talk) 06:46, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

For those on the Cuban (i.e. Castro) side I'd look in Category:20th-century Cuban military personnel. That currently contains just 9 articles so doesn't need (further) subcategorization. DexDor^(talk) 08:03, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I am more interested in the US-trained Cuban exiles.Zigzig20s (talk) 08:52, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

We generally don't categorize people by which military operations they took part in (as it would often be non-defining, some people have taken part in dozens of ops, it may be unclear etc). There is a list of commanders in the Brigade 2506 article (and the list contains redlinks, which, of course, categories can't). DexDor^(talk) 20:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

@Zigzig20s: Beware WP:OVERCATEGORIZATION - I'd use categories such as Category:Cold War military history of the United States and Category:Cuba–United States military relations for the time being, and then split off a Bay of Pigs category if a significant number of articles start piling up in those. We don't need a separate category hierarchy for each campaign and as noted above, we don't generally categorise people by their involvement in specific campaigns. Le Deluge (talk) 12:26, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

The Bay of Pigs Invasion is kind of a thing. See Bay of Pigs Museum, Bay of Pigs Monument, etc... Not all veterans are notable, but we are missing notable veterans for sure. There would be more sources in Spanish but potentially biased. I will inquire at WP:Military History...Zigzig20s (talk) 12:52, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Finding the category knowing category id (cat_id)

Any clue how to find the category if I know category id (cat_id). For example, in the case of namespace = 0 it is easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=864588 But when I want to find the category? The question emerged from here: https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/35480 --Estopedist1 (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

@Estopedist1: The cur_id in the URL needs to be page.page_id rather than category.cat_id.

SELECT * FROM page WHERE page_namespace=14 AND page_title LIKE "Olympique%Marseille" gives 5329126 for https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=5329126

If you know the cat_id rather than the name then it's a join:

SELECT page_id FROM category JOIN page ON page_namespace=14 AND page_title=cat_title WHERE cat_id=229261

Many rows in the category table don't have pages, because they have been deleted or because pages were added in error to categories which never existed. Certes (talk) 15:57, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

thank you! It is bad then if I am making a category with invalid name (with HotCat), then database creating just empty record. Can be thousands and thousands empty records then :)--Estopedist1 (talk) 16:14, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Multiple cats discussion

Hello. Anyone interested in discussion related to cats, Ethnicity and occupation, may follow it here. Störm (talk) 17:54, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Is city councillor defining?

There is a huge category tree under Category:City councillors while local politicians aren't even notable (at least not as an automatism). Should we then categorize people by local political functions? Marcocapelle (talk) 16:07, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I think it's a useful category to have, as many national politicians previously served in local government. However, I think the name needs changing as not all councillors are from city councils, and the current name also seems to be limiting the scope of some subcategories, such as the UK one, which only contain councillors from local authorities that have "city" in the name (there is no such thing as a "city council" in the UK), creating an unnecessary fork from Category:Councillors in the United Kingdom)). Category:Local councillors might be the least limiting terminology to use. Number 5 7 21:55, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

@Number 57: there is no such thing as a "city council" in the UK How many do you want? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:05, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking about detailing what I meant when I wrote it, but didn't as there were already too many subclauses in my sentence. But to explain, the UK has several types of local authorities – county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, London borough councils, metropolitan borough councils, parish councils etc. However, there is no such thing as a city council – only councils of the types above that are named "Footown City Council". Wolverhampton City Council is a metropolitan borough council; Westminster City Council is a London borough council; Salisbury City Council is a parish council.

That category should really be deleted as city councils aren't a thing in the UK, and this discussion suggests its existence may be confusing people into thinking that they are. Number 5 7 22:15, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that in the UK the term City Councillor is misleading. But to answer Marcocapelle's question - I think for some people being a local councillor is defining, and for others it isnt. I certainly dont think every local councillor should be regarded as notable. But equally I would not like achievements as a local councillor to be discounted. Rathfelder (talk) 22:59, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Rathfelder: I have put the categories up for deletion here. Number 5 7 11:29, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

writers/memoirists

Category:People who wrote slave narratives is a subcategory of Category:African-American writers and Category:African-American memoirists. Isn't Category:African-American writers undue? Aren't all memoirists writers?Zigzig20s (talk) 16:35, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Unicode Roman codes should be avoided.

Hi, I have noticed that there are a number of chemistry categories, like "[Iron(Ⅱ) compounds]", that use precomposed single-character unicode numerals like "Ⅱ" and "Ⅶ" instead of plain letters like "II"and "VII". That is not good since those exotic character make the categories harder to display, type, search for, etc.
It turns out that those precomposed characters were added to Unicode only to allow small Roman numerals to be included in vertical-mode Asian text, like
西西Ⅶ西西 The guys in the Unicode Consortium themselves recommend against using those characters in other contexts.
Could those categories be renamed with plain letters, please?
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:09, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

@Jorge Stolfi: When discussing particular pages it always a good idea to link them; so examples that I've turned up include Category:Iron(Ⅱ) compounds, Category:Iron(Ⅲ) compounds, Category:Iron(Ⅱ,Ⅲ) compounds. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:29, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

20 categories are affected: search, minus the two Platinum redirects. Previous discussion: User talk:Certes#Iron(II) and categories. I support moving them and am happy to do the technical work, but I expect there is a tool that could do the job better. Certes (talk) 08:53, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

These have been sent to CFDS by The Nth User (talk · contribs), see also User talk:The Nth User#weird categories and User talk:The Nth User#Weird categories again. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:07, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

"Works by musician" category scheme

A couple of discussions which may be of interest in the Category:Works by musician category tree:

Thanks. --wooden superman 12:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Category:American freedmen

Category:American freedmen says, "former American slaves, who gained their freedom during the pre-emancipation era". However, in a discussion with User:Parkwells at Talk:William J. Sneed#Freedmen/former slaves, they convinced me that this is wrong, because the Freedmen's Bureau was established after the Civil War. We may need to rephrase the short description at the top of Category:American freedmen to include all American former slaves, recategorize formerly enslaved Americans currently categorized in Category:Former slaves like Elias Polk, and keep non-US formerly enslaved people there. The other thing is, should we really be using the word 'freedmen' as opposed to 'former slaves' for US individuals? What is the difference in the American context? Parkwells makes the very important point that there were free people of color, who were never enslaved, long before the war. Were they freedmen? User:Drmies, who has created articles about non-US former slaves like Ali Eisami, may be interested in this discussion as well. Sorry this is a creepy/difficult discussion, but an important one. Thank you!Zigzig20s (talk) 21:19, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I think "Former slaves" is a kind of mother category, and needs to take in anyone who became freed from slavery. Will "Former American slaves" include those who became free during the colonial years? It would seem to include those who became free before and after the Revolution. In the colonies and US, slaves were individually manumitted by masters before and after the Revolution in the 18th century, as well as through the antebellum period, generally by will or deed. In addition, some slaves bought their own freedom from their masters, if they had saved money from being hired out or other means. After slave rebellions, some Southern states restricted manumissions and required individual legislative acts for each one, which effectively nearly ended formal manumissions. Sometimes, unable to free their mixed-race children in the South, some white fathers arranged for them to go to the North with friends or to attend school, such as in the Healy family of Georgia, but they were not legally freed until general emancipation by constitutional amendment, long after some of the sons were already studying at schools in the North and even in Paris.

After the Revolution, northern states abolished slavery, some by a gradual basis, which kept some persons enslaved into the 1820s. Under some such new gradual laws, children of enslaved mothers were born free (so were free blacks or free people of color in the general sense), but were required to be apprenticed until they came of age - at varying ages usually for young women and young men. Some adults who were enslaved when such laws were passed did not become free until the very end of the process. These cases would be hard to track unless documented.

The term "freedmen," while technically applies to any person who became free, even by purchasing their own freedom, was generally associated in the US with a specific history, namely, the mass emancipation of millions enslaved African Americans in the South via the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. All freedmen were former slaves, but "freedmen" means something specific as a category that is consistent with consensus in the historic community. Yes, four million African Americans were suddenly all "former slaves", but they were referred to as "freedmen", for whom the Freedmen's Bureau was established.

The free people of color are a unique group. Some mixed-race children were born into slavery if their mothers, whether mixed-race or not, were enslaved, and manumitted by their white fathers, who also freed the mother (thus they would both become "former slaves"). Over time, children born within this growing community of mixed-race ancestry were born free because their mothers were already free. Of course, not all white men freed their mixed-race children, but in New Orleans the system of plaçage developed as a kind of institution in which that frequently took place. Mothers of girls who entered into such relationships with white men often negotiated for freedom (if necessary) and a property settlement to benefit the young woman after the relationship ended. In the Upper South, a number of free families of color descended from unions between white women (who were free and whose children were born free) and African or African-American men in colonial Virginia. This term necessarily refers to the status of some individuals before the Civil War and general emancipation. (I changed some of my comments.) As I mentioned before, there were also free families of color formed by descendants of white women who had unions with Africans or African Americans, especially in the colonial period in the Upper South. They were also free people of color. Parkwells (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Should we have three categories then, Category:Former slaves, Category:Former American slaves, Category:American freedmen? Do we need a fourth category, Category:American free people of color? Are there enough notable individuals to populate all these categories?Zigzig20s (talk) 00:10, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Do the "American" categories refer to people in the territory of the future US in both colonial and US times? That should be clarified. I think there are enough notable people for all four categories. A number of free people of color or former slaves were prominent as abolitionists and civil rights activists in the 19th c. and as elected officials in the South during Reconstruction, for instance. Is "Former slaves" international as a mother category? encompassing all those from the US and every other country that had slavery feeding into it?Parkwells (talk) 19:53, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, for example the African one that User:Drmies created a few days ago. He had no connection to America. Or formerly enslaved individuals from Brazil...Zigzig20s (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry--I wish I had the time and the focus right now to read all over these useful remarks and maybe contribute. The category that Zigzig points at how much work still needs to be done here, and how US-centric (and to some extent UK-centric) all this is. The extent to which much available material was incredibly underdeveloped, and the lack of available material in English and online, was really kind of a shocker. That Ali Eisami didn't have an article is indicative. Drmies (talk) 21:50, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

You're so right. I would be particularly interested in finding out about individuals formerly enslaved in the US South who were brought to Brazil by Confederate losers while it was still legal, then became free. Surely there must be memoirs/sources about them, but they may be in Portuguese. Anyway, WP:NODEADLINE.Zigzig20s (talk) 16:50, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

BTW, Parkwells, this is kind of crappy, but I will add a note that should show its relevance even to you; and as for Crowther, the source draws an explicit parallel between the two lives, so this is not irrelevant. Drmies (talk) 21:54, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Template:Navseasoncats listed at Requested moves

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AFD discussion about "defining" in regard to a list article

At WP:Articles for deletion/List of celebrities who have had an abortion just about everyone is discussing whether it is WP:DEFINING and WP:NOTDEFINING for a celebrity to have had an abortion. A couple of people are aware that "defining" relates to categories rather than lists but still go on to use the criterion for the list. Most people using the term seem to think the wikiconcept of "defining" relates to lists. I've commented but I'm no expert on any of this. Can anyone help? Thincat (talk) 20:01, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects to be moved to Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 08:00, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

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Bot to fix double category redirects

I am seeking approval for a bot to bypass double category redirects. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JJMC89 bot 17. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:28, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Principalía

I could do with a little assistance here. Rathfelder (talk) 15:41, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

"Portrayals of" and "Depictions of"

Right now the vast majority of these types of categories used for apperences of figures in art/media use "Category:Depictions of...." and not "Category:Portrayals of...." but Category:Portrayals of Jesus in film, Category:Portrayals of Jesus in music, Category:Portrayals of Jesus on radio, Category:Portrayals of the Virgin Mary in film, Category:Portrayals of Jesus on television, Category:Portrayals of Satan in film, Category:Portrayals of the Devil do not. I think these should all be moved to better names, the Satan/Devil ones also need to have a consistent name with each other.★Trekker (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

@*Treker: I guess you can nominate these categories for speedy renaming per WP:C2C. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:15, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Churches versus church buildings

@PPEMES, Fayenatic london, Oculi, Tahc, and Laurel Lodged: pinging a few editors who were recently involved in discussions about this topic. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:56, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Despite this discussion in 2015 we keep going back and forth about churches and church buildings. Here is an idea for a compromise:

For denominations that explicitly use the word "Church" meaning the broader church organization (e.g. Anglican Church, Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, most Lutheran churches) we use "church buildings" in the category name.
For denominations that do not explicitly use "Church" meaning the broader church organization (e.g. in Pentecostalism, most evangelical denominations, most non-denominational communities) we use "churches" in the category name which may imply both church buildings and communities therein.

This idea makes things perhaps a bit more complex, but it probably addresses arguments from both sides more adequately. What do you think? Marcocapelle (talk) 11:56, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I have no idea why they would not want to sport "church building". So until better arguments, I don't see why not to observe WP:PRECISE in both cases. Shouldn't, we be able to afford that? PPEMES (talk) 12:09, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Strong Oppose For the vast majority of cases the category causes no ambiguity, and very often the articles cover both building and congregation, often with far more on the latter. Plenty of congregations in your second list use "church" - most Baptists for a start. Working out which do and which don't will be very complicated. This won't help at all, and will make many things worse. Johnbod (talk) 12:22, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Baptists do not use Church singular anyway, e.g. American Baptist Churches USA and Southern Baptist Convention, so they would naturally fall in the second category. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:52, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what you're trying to say here, but eg see Category:General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. It might be "natural" to you, but I dobt it will be to many. Johnbod (talk) 17:44, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Support Marco'so suggestion. It's a sensible compromise. Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:57, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
Oppose; any idea is worth considering, but I don't think dividing by denomination would be helpful. – Fayenatic London 16:19, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't think that it's dividing by denomination any more than "Churches with an episcopal polity" is dividing by denomination. Laurel Lodged (talk) 09:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I meant that having two different category naming patterns for buildings, depending on denomination, would IMHO be confusing. – Fayenatic London 22:31, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Oppose -- A Catholic or even a Lutheran "church" article with typically be about the building, and a non-denominational "church" article (if it a notable church) is typically about the congregation -- but we should not assume in advance that it is that way. It may be complicated to categorize congregation articles as congregations AND categorize church building articles as church buildings-- but that is how categories should work. Rarely does an article cover both in any meaningful way, but if it does, then it should be under both categories, if both categories exist. tahc ^chat 20:30, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Or just the one category, as at present. After various nominations in the past the the discussion in 2015 (linked above) gave a clear answer, but has not been enacted. If noone has done the work to enact that, we should not fool ourselves that anyone is going to do the vastly larger amount of work necessary either for this proposal, or for splitting articles by congregation vs building , or categorizing them differently on that basis. We are talking about thousands of articles here. Johnbod (talk) 21:55, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Why do you say that it has not been enacted? All the categories listed in that nomination were renamed where necessary according to Option B (see blue links in the right hand column at 2015 list#Option B).

I grant that the nomination was not comprehensive, and it has not been rolled out consistently into the rest of the hierarchy that was not listed in the nomination, so there remain various inconsistent categories within the hierarchy.

Some are wholly inconsistent, e.g. those currently up for discussion at CFD 2019 June 15.

However, "Church buildings" is used intentionally in the "by century" hierarchy to distinguish buildings from the parallel hierarchy of Category:Christian congregations by century of establishment.

Within the category hierarchy for denominations, "church buildings" is also used to distinguish buildings from organisational divisions (e.g. Category:Eastern Orthodox church buildings cf. Category:Eastern Orthodox Church bodies).

There is at least one category, Category:Roman Catholic church buildings in Australia, which is stated to be "for buildings that are not used as churches", e.g. a seminary. IMHO this is confusing, and that one should at least be renamed to capital C on Church, i.e. buildings owned by the Roman Catholic Church. Its parent Category:Roman Catholic church buildings states that it is for buildings used as churches. – Fayenatic London 20:00, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

You may be right - it's chronically unclear what was actually covered there. Like most voters there, I assumed it covered all churches/church buildings. It's certainly confusing, and once again some seem determined to make it still more so. Johnbod (talk) 15:53, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Category Foo articles vs Category WikiProject Foo articles

In setting up a WikiProject to work with various templates and banners, I ran across some examples where there is a category that list articles for the subject, and then there is a seemingly redundant category that lists articles for a wikiProject dealing with the subject. The two seem identical except for name. Am I missing something ? How do others treat this issue? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:31, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Can you give some examples? DexDor^(talk) 11:56, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

This is more within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Council, if the documentation at {{WPBannerMeta}} does not cover it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:57, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Dexor, RedRose64..... Not knowing which page had greatest "bailiwick" I just guessed by naming this thread the main venue per MULTI, and posted a pointer diff at Talk page for WikiProject Council. Hopefully those folks will join us here. Meanwhile, I'll check out the WPBannerMeta documentation, which is new to me, and if I still have quetions will follow up with examples. Thanks so far! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:10, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposal for an additional C2F speedy category deletion criterion

See this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 04:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The discussion is continuing again, feel free to participate. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Category:Quaker astronauts

Okay, I lied; there is no Category:Quaker astronauts. Nor should there be. (Unless, of course, sufficient RSes mention this so that it becomes a defining characteristic for some individuals.) But now that I've got your attention, I’ve got a very similar issue to discuss. I'm troubled by this good-faith edit at Gayle Rubin, adding Category:Jewish anthropologists to the article. I don’t doubt that this is true, but I strongly doubt it’s a defining characteristic, for her, or for anybody. How did this category even get created?

Now, I admit to not having done my due diligence (I'm mobile, if that’s sufficient excuse) but I have a hard time believing that a large enough number of solid sources would refer to Rubin this way, sufficient to support it as a defining characteristic. It smacks more of the kind of thing that might come up in late 30s Germany. Do we also have (or are we planning to have) Category:Muslim anthropologists, Category:Catholic anthropologists, Category:Mormon anthropologists? (I did click 15 articles on the Category page, one per index letter, and none of them define the individual in question as a "Jewish anthropologist".)

If the existing category is, in fact, proper, can someone please explain? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:22, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Jewishness is (I think) being used in these categories to refer to people's ethnicity (it's in Category:Anthropologists by ethnicity) rather than to their religion. DexDor^(talk) 05:33, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@DexDor: thanks for your response. By ethnicity, really? Then, shouldn't the category be Category:Ashkenazi anthropologists instead? Isn't that Gayle Rubin's actual ethnicity? (Implying another one created for Category:Sefardi anthropologists.) Is "Jewish" sometimes considered as a kind of ethnic superset consisting of two very different actual ethnic groups that aren't actually that closely related to each other? A convenience term? What? I'm sorry if this might upset a few hundred category names, but I can't help that. This just seems wrong. I'd like to hear your (and additional) opinions about this. Mathglot (talk) 02:08, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

This is really a subject-specific question (and one that has been addressed many times), not about categorization in the abstract. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism would be a better place to ask about where to find prior discussions or explanations. postdlf (talk) 02:25, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Postdlf. See User:Good_Olfactory/CFD#Jewish for links to some past duscussions. DexDor^(talk) 07:40, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks to both; I was not aware of those discussions. Mathglot (talk) 08:42, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Transcluded categories

Can anyone figure out why Category:NBC network affiliates and Category:The CW affiliates are being transcluded into Draft:WSVW-LD? They shouldn't be in the draft per WP:DRAFTNOCAT and shouldn't really be transcluded to begin with per WP:TCAT. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:27, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Fixed {{NBC Virginia}} and {{CW Virginia}} weren't following WP:TEMPLATECAT. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:20, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you JJMC89. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:33, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

What's up with this?

I noticed we have Category:American male child actors but not Category:American female child actors. At the same time, we do have both Category:American child actors and Category:American child actresses. This feels wildly asymmetrical. And by the way, how about not obsessively putting children in gender boxes?

Thoughts? CapnZapp (talk) 21:06, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

The English language is (now) asymmetrical in this respect - there's a specific word ("actresses") for female actors and no equivalent for male actors; hence our category names are asymmetric. Categorizing actors by gender doesn't seem unreasonable. What change do you think should be made? DexDor^(talk) 22:09, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Um, but "actor" is now used by many sources for both male and female actors, and is recommended by some style guides (see Actor#The term actress). I think "actress" is best avoided; use "female actor". Peter coxhead (talk) 16:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Biota and wildlife categories

Is there a good reason to have separate categories for biota and wildlife, that is Category:Biota by country and Category:Wildlife by country? Seems to be WP:OVERLAPCAT where either one or the other is the solution. Brandmeister^talk 17:56, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

"biota" would include all forms of life in a particular region (see definition at biome), "wildlife" is typically understood to be just animals. So wildlife is a subset of biota. I think "wildlife" and "fauna" are probably synonyms. postdlf (talk) 18:05, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Example of a previous CFD that deleted a wildlife category. DexDor^(talk) 18:25, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Probably the clearest way to go would be biota as a parent with flora and fauna subcategories, and not to use "wildlife" at all. postdlf (talk) 18:34, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree there is no point in both "biota" and "wildlife" categories. I certainly don't use "wildlife" as a synonym for "fauna", but for all organisms, plants, animals and fungi.

However, there is a different problem with some biota distribution categories, because "Fauna by country" and "Flora by country" do not use the same system. See the maps at e.g. Category:Fauna by continent and Category:Flora by continent. As one example, Category:Biota of North America is treated, wrongly, as a parent of both Category:Fauna of North America and Category:Flora of North America, but the former includes Central America and the latter excludes it. As another example, Category:Fauna of Oceania works because Oceania is (or should be) used consistently for all animal groups, but Oceania is not part of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions used for plants, so is not used consistently, hence Category:Flora of Oceania only approximately covers the same geographical unit as Category:Fauna of Oceania. Hence Category:Biota of Oceania is problematic. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I was also under impression that "wildlife" is for all organisms, being roughly synonymous with "biota". The wildlife article acknowledges it "has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans". If the key thing is "without being introduced by humans", while we don't always know which species were introduced and which aren't, "biota" may look safer. In any case the fauna and flora categories should remain, I think. Brandmeister^talk 10:43, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: that sounds like inconsistency in how the regions are being defined, not a problem with the bio terms. So that’s really a separate discussion. postdlf (talk) 14:38, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it's a separate discussion, but it does question whether "Biota" distribution categories make any sense at all, given that the English Wikipedia uses different geographical units for flora and fauna. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:41, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

In some cases (e.g. Category:Biota of the Arabian Peninsula) the geographical units are the same for the biota/flora/fauna categories. Where they aren't this should be tidied up (or at least explained on the category pages e.g. with a map). DexDor^(talk) 16:23, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@DexDor: have a look at Category:Biota of the Middle East and consider how it could be tidied up. (There's no "Middle East" unit in the WGSRPD.) The category doesn't cover "biota". Peter coxhead (talk) 16:46, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

In small steps like this. DexDor^(talk) 17:30, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

”... but it does question whether ‘Biota’ distribution categories make any sense at all...” No, it doesn’t. What “Oceania” or “North America” includes impacts any categories for those regions whether we’re categorizing biota or buildings. Whatever the answer, it should just be implemented the same for biota and all of its subcategories for each region. postdlf (talk) 16:49, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Postdlf: if you mean by it should just be implemented the same for biota and all of its subcategories for each region that the same geographical units should be used for all kinds of biota (plants, animals, fungi, etc.) then it's simply not going to happen, because categories need a reliable source, and reliable sources use different systems for different groups of organisms. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:20, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I've started writing proposed guidelines for biogeographical categorization and whilst it would be nice to have exactly the same guidelines (including a list of regions) apply to fauna and flora etc, that can only be achieved if editors are prepared to compromise. For example, flora articles are often overcategorized - e.g. the text of Koenigia alpina just says "native to Europe and temperate Asia" (i.e. not sticking to WGSRPD), but it is categorized for Central Asia, Central Europe, Eastern Asia, Eastern Europe, Siberia, Southeastern Europe, Southwestern Europe, Caucasus, Russian Far East. I've been doing CFDs (mainly for fauna) to try to improve the categorization and would welcome involvement from other editors. DexDor^(talk) 21:29, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@DexDor: well, I spent an inordinate amount of time setting up the information at WGSRPD, adding to the guidance at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, and clarifying the instructions at the category pages. Did this make any real difference to what editors did? If it did, it's not obvious to me. Many editors are motivated by nationalism, and add categories for their country regardless of whether it is only a small part of a wider category. If you have any plant articles on your watchlist that should be in Category:Flora of Palestine (region), there will be never ending attempts to change it to "Israel" and back again. Others like to set up "their" categories, regardless of any consensus. See, e.g., all the "bunchgrass" categories in Category:Grasses. So while I'd love to see a more rational distribution category system, I'm not hopeful. But do alert me if I miss one of your efforts, which I applaud. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Categorising Romans by gender

Greetings all! We've got a discussion going in the classical Greece and Rome Wikiproject about the existence of categories for Roman men. It would be helpful to have some comments from people who have a more wiki-wide view of categorisation practices. If you have time, please pop over to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_Greece_and_Rome#Question_about_new_categories:_ancient_Roman_men? and help us out :) . Furius (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

What does the "|+" notation mean in categories

While I thought I understood categories, there is always more to learn. What does [[Category:Galaxies|+Morphological types]] mean as a category assignment in an article, and what does it do? StarryGrandma (talk) 22:40, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@StarryGrandma: The first part, before the pipe character, puts the page into Category:Galaxies. The second (optional) part is the sort key, that is, the position within the list at Category:Galaxies where the page is to be placed. The lists on category pages are organised so that subcategories come first, A-Z; then normal pages like articles, again A-Z; finally images, A-Z. Sort keys beginning with punctuation - in this case the plus sign - sort before those sort keys that begin with letters. So at Category:Galaxies there is a list of subcategories, with headings like A, B, D through to R and S (headings for absent letters are omitted). Before these are headings for punctuation characters - space is first, then minus, asterisk and plus in that order. The sort key here is +Morphological types so if you look under the heading of a plus sign, there are two entries - Lists of galaxies and Galaxy morphological types. These appear in apparently-backwards order because their sort keys begin with +L and +M respectively, and L is alphabetically before M. It's also covered at Help:Category. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:12, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64. So it's sort keys and what comes after the + is invisible, only used for sorting. I made the mistake of searching Wikipedia:Categorization, etc. for "+" rather than "plus sign". The only subject I have ever studied that has more esoteric ways of doing things than Wikipedia is quantum mechanics. (I may yet reverse the sort order with more experience.) I also see that the Greek alphabet can be used and sorts after the English alphabet. In Category:Galaxies the category for galaxy stubs ends up under Σ because the stub category template creates the category with a sort key beginning with Σ. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, Greek (and Cyrillic) letters sort after Latin letters. There is a defined collating sequence, but it's difficult to describe except in very general terms since it has several thousand entries. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:06, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Tracking categories for errors in Template usage

I have a question concerning the use of tracking categories for errors in Template usage; namely, whether there should be one category per Template, or whether they could, or should, be combined. As an example: I noticed this category: Category:Pages using an undefined year in Template:To USD for Template:To USD. Is this typical? I've created a new template called {{To USD round}} based on the first, that likewise categorizes pages that transclude it erroneously into its own category. I feel like just using the existing category of the first template, which is very sparsely populated, rather than create a new one just for this template. Or, is there some reason under the hood that each template needs its own error category?

As a secondary issue (which perhaps deserves its own section title, so I waive WP:TPO if someone would like to add one), I notice that Category:Pages using an undefined year in Template:To USD is a member of Category:Tracking categories; however, if it's a normal thing for Templates to have error-tracking categories, then surely there should be an intermediate category Category:Pages with template errors which contains it, and which in turn could be a member of Category:Tracking categories. Mathglot (talk) 06:52, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I was once a fan of tracking categories but have gone off them upon realizing that they are not monitored. That's an exaggeration (and I monitor a few), but the essential point is valid. For blatant errors, I now think that throwing an error is often best—such pages appear in Category:Pages with script errors. At any rate, I agree that it would be much better to re-use the existing category rather than add a new one in your use case. A purist would argue that the category title would have to be changed but I've learned to live with less than perfection. You are probably right that dividing the categories up would be best but that's a lot of work with not much apparent benefit. Johnuniq (talk) 10:03, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

A minor point, but not all tracking categories that are placed by templates relate to actual errors; some flag deprecated parameters or uses, others missing information that's not actually an error. But I agree that if they aren't monitored, they aren't useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:20, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your perspectives on this. The purist issue did occur to me, and made me hesitate; but that issue, and the other considerations persuade me that just reusing the existing one is best for starters. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:04, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

How much categorization guidance does a city need?

When editors document the way categorization is (or should be) used for particular types of pages that's generally a good thing (e.g. it may help other editors to categorize pages consistently). However, this can go too far -

Chicago has this, this and this. The only editor to have worked on these pages (apart from wikignoming) left wp in 2009. The lack of other edits to these pages (even where they are incorrect, contradictory or incomplete) suggests that they are not in use. In fact, Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago#Categories doesn't even refer to the this guidance.

I'm probably more familiar with wp categorization than most editors but much of the guidance (e.g. "the list function of a Category page") is unclear to me and the jargon (e.g. "PSP000L") appears to not be used anywhere else.

The way in which we categorize pages about Chicago should generally be the same as the way we categorize pages about any city so there's no need for such detailed guidance for one city.

Note: One of the categories referred to in the guidance has recently been deleted.

I propose taking a scalpel to these pages (possibly reducing some of them to a single paragraph or to a redirect) - or userfying them. Is there anything worth salvaging into more general guidance about categorization of articles about a city?

Pinging User:Funandtrvl who was involved in some discussions with the author of these pages. DexDor^(talk) 06:29, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me! I have not looked at the subpages for ages! Yes, to simplify the system should be our goal, and to match (mostly) the city guidelines that other major cities use. I've usually gone to this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities/US_Guideline when organizing an article about a city. Maybe it can apply to categorization also. Let me know how we can help you sort this out. Funandtrvl (talk) 18:31, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I've now moved the 3 pages (and the corresponding talk pages) to subpages of the user that created them - e.g. User:Pknkly/WikiProject Chicago/Categories/Categorization scheme. DexDor^(talk) 17:44, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 January 17#Template:Uncategorized

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 January 17#Template:Uncategorized. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Which century to use when breaking down by century

The cat Category:New_Zealand_people_by_occupation_and_century has many subcats that need sorting. Before I get started, I'm looking for the rules around which century to put biographies into when the subject's work spanned multiple centuries. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I've never seen any guidelines. I just try to work out when they were actually active at the relevant occupation, assuming generally that they would stop before they reached the age of 80 and probably didnt start much before 18. So I'd like to know if there are actually any better ideas. Rathfelder (talk) 22:56, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Just to note that some biologists are active into their 90s. For example, Richard Eric Holttum published an accepted new genus of ferns, Megalastrum, at the age of 91, although this is doubtless unusual. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:28, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. I try to look at the dates when they were actually doing it, whatever it was. Scientists and doctors often carry on until they fall over. Jerry Morris published just before his 99th birthday. But I think these dates should relate to the activity, not just the lifetime. Rathfelder (talk) 13:25, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Request for new script

Hi. I'm interested in a new Wikipedia script that helps co-ordinate creation of new categories - that is, what categories are too big and what categories should exist due to parent category being too big but don't. ミラ P 22:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

@Miraclepine: would you care to define "too big"? Opinions on the acceptable size of categories, whether "too big" or "too small", appear to differ greatly. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

FYI

Just a heads up to the members of this project. The recent decision here Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 January 22#American television series by network was correct IMO but it has created errors in various articles. The two that I've found so far are Dead Head (TV series) which was not original to A&E and The Red Green Show which was not original to PBS. I've no way of knowing how many articles are affected by this but I'm guessing it is more than a handful. In the past an edit-a-thon might have been a solution but I don't see those happen anymore. I guess our best bet is just to be aware of it and remove the incorrect categories when we come across them. MarnetteD|Talk 18:12, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Fascism and anti-Capitalism

Some time ago I added categories related to Fascism as subcategories to categories related to anti-Capitalism, the reason I did so was because Fascism was also an anti-Capitalist ideology, they viewed Capitalism and Communism as two sides of the same coin, and presented themselves as an alternative to both, however, User Doug Weller reverted my edits, his objection was that by adding these categories, I was also be including in it people who were not Fascists (such as Communists and Socialists), I don't see this as being the case, I view it as simply adding another group of anti-Capitalists, I restored the edits later, but I was reverted by another user who used his rationale, I would like to see what other Wikipedians think about this.

Here are the edits that got reverted: [2] [3] [4] [5] -- 186.213.52.100 (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

It was a fair revert because fascism is not clearly a form of anti-capitalism. Many fascist movements have had state capitalism aspects. The category hierarchy should only link concepts that clearly stem from one another. A clear relationship between fascism and anti-capitalism does not exist, so the trees are best kept separate. SFB 13:15, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Have to disagree, there is clearly a relation between Fascism and anti-Capitalism, they viewed Capitalism as materialist, individualist, internationalist, etc, perhaps in practice many Fascist regimes and movements might have had state capitalist elements, but even if that was actually the case, I think in this case theory should be more important than practice, and Fascist theory is very clearly opposed to Capitalism. -- 177.19.68.97 (talk) 20:42, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Fascism is authoritarian and nationalist, which is unrelated to capitalism, i.e. fascism is neither a form of capitalism nor a form of anti-capitalism. The reverts were justified. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:57, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Fascism is not merely authoritarian nationalism, it is an ideology which has it's own theory, core tenets, etc, and a core tenet of Fascism happens to be anti-Capitalism, so Fascism technically is a form of anti-Capitalism. -- 177.206.208.75 (talk) 05:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/QEDKbot

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/QEDKbot, which is a proposal for an admin bot to tag and delete empty categories in accordance with WP:C1. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Locality categorization by historical subdivisions

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Your input about the categorization of settlements is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Locality categorization by historical subdivisions. Thank you, Renata (talk) 22:30, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Category loops for countries by language spoken

Hello!

Short examples will speak better than long explanations:

The issue here seems to be the custom of adding entire country-level category trees to a Foo-speaking countries and territories category, when adding only the eponymous article into the category should be sufficient.

Then again, the interest of categorizing countries by language spoken or official language can be questioned, as has been argued in discussions which resulted in the deletion of e.g. Ukrainian-speaking, Irish-speaking or Polish-speaking categories.

What would be the best way to solve these circular inclusions? Place Clichy (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Why does it need solving? The important thing is that each appropriate connection is made between each category or category and article that would help readers navigate and see relationships. Whether one can then click through several categories to get back where they started doesn't seem like an issue. postdlf (talk) 18:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

See WP:SUBCAT, in particular Category chains formed by parent–child relationships should never form closed loops. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Connections between things is what hyperlinks (between articles) are for. Categories should be for categorizing and as we move down the category tree the number of pages in each category (including subcats) should decrease - thus, category loops shouldn't exist. I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to specify what the inclusion criteria of such categories would be.

I agree with the OP that country categories should not be in Foo-speaking categories. DexDor^(talk) 20:10, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Right, the country articles should be in the in Foo-speaking categories, not the country categories. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:25, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Introducing Template:Clubplayerscat for players categories

At Special:WantedCategories we get a lot of categories of the form Category:(club) players etc needing creating but it's a bit time-consuming as you have to work out the various weird formats used by the parent categories (I'm looking at you, Category:Soccer players in Canada by team <g>), and check that the category matches the parent article and isn't just someone using an old sponsorship name etc. I've created a template to make that process easier, {{Clubplayerscat}} just needs a parameter to tell it what country the club is from - see eg Category:AS Aïn M'lila players. At the moment it just works for (association) football players where the category name ends in a single word like "footballers" or "players", the long-term plan is to make it work with other sports too, and to do equivalent templates for managers, seasons etc. It needs a bit of polishing but for now it needs beta-testing on real categories, if anyone wants to play with it. Cheers. Le Deluge (talk) 12:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines

I'm trying to figure the following two things:

whether this category can be added to Wikipedia:Notability (software), and
how to best do that if it can.

There's also Wikipedia:Notability (periodicals) which I'd also know about as well.

Even though both pages are "essays" per se, there seems to be some value to including them with the other pages listed at WP:SNG. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:38, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I would not add the essays to the Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines; one who naviagets to that category would expect to see only guidelines, not essays. Best, UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I thought that might be the case, and can understand the reason for keeping essays separate from guidelines; from a practical standpoint, however, it seems like it might be a good idea if there was a category page where all of these types of pages could be found, if such a suitable page doesn't already exist. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Just add them to the parent Category:Wikipedia notability - or if there's say 6+ then create a notability essay category. Le Deluge (talk) 19:21, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

People from categories?

Do we have a clear definition of how we define where a person is from when adding a People from ... category? Can a person be from more than one place? -- GhostInTheMachine (talk) 18:43, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

The definition is broadly inclusive, and yes. You should search the talk page archives, there have been many discussions on this over the years. postdlf (talk) 19:55, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Any summary or overall conclusions? — GhostInTheMachine (talk) 20:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

My understanding, which I think is generally accepted, is that "from" is ambiguous. It might mean a person was born there, grew up there, lived there or did whatever they were notable for there. So they can indeed be from more than one place. But it's not necessary, or in my view desirable, to include, for example, the place where they were born if they emigrated as a small child and never returned, nor all the places they ever lived. It's a matter of judgement. So where Barack Obama was born is clearly significant. And I think there are rules about international sportspeople. Rathfelder (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Batman characters Clean up

I've being looking at the Batman Characters category and it's very poorly done. Many characters that do not meet the notability guideline is kept there and there is also cases likr Ned Creegan which links to another page. I recommend we prune it by removing all pages that fail to meet the notability guideline. --169.0.216.37 (talk) 13:35, 30 April 2020 (UTC)John Smith

If they fail the notability guideline they should be nominated for WP:AFD, instead of removed from the categories. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:57, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Actors from Saskatoon

Category:Actors from Saskatoon is a container category. The sub-categories include Category:Actresses from Saskatoon and Category:Male actors from Saskatoon. Having an "actress" category makes having "male actor" category redundant.. It is commonplace to use "actor" for males and "actress" for females. If you are going to say "male actors," why not have a "female actors" category? Thoughts? Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 19:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Fishhead2100: this is probably more a question for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:01, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to restrict WP:C2D slightly

See discussion at: Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#Proposal_to_restrict_WP:C2D_slightly. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:38, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

For the record, this was implemented, and the discussion was archived at Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Archive_18#Proposal_to_restrict_WP:C2D_slightly. – Fayenatic London 08:44, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to abolish WP:C2E

See discussion at: Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#WP:C2E. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:49, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

For the record, no action was taken. The discussion was archived at Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Archive_18#WP:C2E. – Fayenatic London 08:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Template:Cfdnotice listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Template:Cfdnotice to be moved. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 17:15, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

See an RfC on exceptions to WP:OCAWARD

The RFC is at WT:Overcategorization#RfC_on_exceptions_to_WP:OCAWARD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:58, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Setting up category

Is there a way to set up a category that duplicates Category:All Wikipedia level-4 vital articles but goes to the page itself instead? This is for this conversation, which led to this one. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:04, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I guess it makes sense to ping the participants in the other discussions so that they can give input to this discussion as well. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:00, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
@Marcocapelle: it's basically a technical question — how do I set up a category based on another? — and I don't want to annoy others with excessive pings, but if you think it's needed for transparency or something then go ahead. Is anyone here able to help with the question itself? (my somewhat similar question above has also gone unanswered for over two months now) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I don't expect that this is possible. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:17, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Not possible? How did all the existing "all" categories get created, then? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 12:36, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Follow-up on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_April_18#Category:Norfolk_County_treasurers

@Bearcat, Grutness, Peterkingiron, Fayenatic london, and Namiba: pinging contributors to previous discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:08, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

In this discussion I suggested to nominate the entire tree of Category:County treasurers in the United States for deletion, as a WP:NPOL-passing and generally not defining political office. Before immediately carrying on at CfD, do you have any further input to this suggestion? Marcocapelle (talk) 08:08, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to leave it now, unless you are tackling more of Category:County officers in the United States as non-notable. – Fayenatic London 08:41, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Nothing from me - IIRC my only comments in the discussion were about Norfolk being ambiguous, with the county in England being the best known. Grutness...wha? 10:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I would not support such a nomination. I think we underestimate the impact of county government in many circumstances and generally overestimate the impact of legislators. Moreover, while being a county officeholder does not guarantee inherent notability, there are many circumstances in which those office holders are notable through WP:GNG.--User:Namiba 15:13, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

It is perhaps worth noting that this appears to be the only "County treasurer by county" category in the entire US, and, indeed, that there are only two "County treasurer by state" categories - neither of which have as many as 20 articles. I think that until there are at least a few more "by state" categories, "by county" is a bit premature. Grutness...wha? 03:42, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Disclosure: I built the County treasurers hierarchy during the CfD discussion, because the Category:County treasurers in Massachusetts parent was not even in Category:American treasurers, and when I put it there, I found that most of the pages directly in that one were County treasurers from Wisconsin. That's how we ended up with two categories by state. I did not look into how notable the Wisconsin people are; the pages may have been mostly created by user:Packerfansam. – Fayenatic London 22:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Unproved descent and categories

Hello,

A discussion is open whether a footballer who claims having had a great-grandmother from Guinea (or is it Guinea, the wider region?) but having been unable to prove it deserves having his article placed in Category:Martiniquais people of Guinean descent, seen guidelines WP:BLPCAT and WP:EGRS. On a side note, this debatable inclusion alone justifies the existence of this thin intersection category, which would otherwise be empty. Additional input would be welcome! Place Clichy (talk) 09:33, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Follow-up to CfD notice templates merge and more generic wording

Hello,

Following the discussion , the several templates CfD notification templates were merged. In this process, the template wording was made "more generically worded so it's not exclusive for the creator of the category" by Steel1943.

In this spirit, the text and presentation of the former Cfdnotice2 template are even more generic and concise. Would it be appropriate to use this text in the new unified notification template?

Also, Template:Cfdnotice was not merged. Its documentation indicates that it is intended to be placed on the main article's talk page to notify users of the category's nomination, however I wonder if it is used much. Should it be redirected to the new template, or kept as is?

Lastly, the documentation at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion § Notifying interested projects and editors should probably be updated, as it currently instructs users to use 3 different templates for the following cases: WikiProjects, substantial contributors to the category and other interested editors (incl. main article talk page). If I remember correctly, there is also copy-paste code in several template documentations which may need to be amended.

What do you think? Place Clichy (talk) 09:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Conversation including Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats

Please be aware of this conversation: Help talk:Citation Style 1#Inconsistent citation, Articles with inconsistent citation formats, and a historical function of Citation Bot —¿philoserf? (talk) 00:13, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Category help needed for WP:Task Center

Hi category experts! I'll try to keep this concise, but for context: I recently introduced a feature at the WP:Task Center (which is being considered for inclusion on a streamlined standard welcome template) that allows editors to go to a random page needing help within a large maintenance category like Category:Articles to be expanded. I ran into a bit of a stumbling block since most of those categories are sorted by month but the random article tool can no longer handle subcategories. Luckily, most of them have an associated category like Category:All articles to be expanded that I can use instead, but for three of them, I had to use an awkward workaround to link to the most recent month's pages instead (ctrl+F for "February 2020" at the Task Center page to find these). I'm not enough of a category expert to create "all"-style tracking categories for these; could one of you help do that? Thanks! Sdkb (talk) 20:00, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Can any of you help with this? The Task Center is slated to become a major centralized destination for new editors, so it's important to get it up to speed, and we need help from category experts to do so. Sdkb (talk) 18:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Bumping thread. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:03, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Very large sportspeople categories

Certain sportspeople by city categories have grown very large over the years. Category:Sportspeople from Chicago, for example, contains almost 2,000 articles. Normally these would be broken up by sport but I seem to recall that being discouraged previously. To make them useful, it might be time to split the very large ones (say over 400 articles?) by sport. In the US, this would include only the following cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, New York City, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle. Thoughts?--User:Namiba 14:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

There have multiple CFDs where the consensus is not to break them down by sport. Here[6], here[7], here[8], and here[9] are just a few....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 15:45, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

None of those have occurred since 2014 and obviously the categories are much larger now.--User:Namiba 15:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Its been discussed and the consensus is pretty damn clear. Chicago had hundreds of baseball players then. The CFD was 6 to 1 merge. A recreation of the page was deleted. There have been other discussion, rowers, ice hockey, tennis players and I know a few of those, Ice hockey and rowers, were more recent....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 15:59, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Despite size, I don't see how a breakdown by sport is WP:DEFINING. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:24, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:DIFFUSE comes to mind, not WP:DEFINING.--User:Namiba 16:30, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Diffusion by non-defining intersections doesn't help navigation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:08, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

That a sportsperson played basketball is more defining (also more verifiable and thus more objective) than that they are "from Chicago". The latter is subjective and open to a variety of interpretations - were they born there, raised there, did they live there while playing sports, did they play for a team based in that city (many sportspeople play for more than one team at one time or another), do they live there now? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

For what use are they too large? They are sorted alphabetically. I’ve always thought dividing them by specific sport could wrongly imply they played that sport in that place, when there may not have been that connection for many of them. postdlf (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
There are actually large numbers of categories for particular sportspeople, mostly footballers, by city. Why should some be allowed but not others?Rathfelder (talk) 17:31, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Mass creation of blank categories

Hello,

I noticed that User:TheImaCow is creating a large number of blank categories, i.e. categories without any parent or description, in fact exactly 0 bytes. Out of 453 categories created between 29 April and today 2 June, 288 were created with 0 bytes, and 164 have not been edited since then.

Please kindly note that as mentioned in Wikipedia:Categorization § Category tree organization, every category apart from the top one (Category:Contents) must be a subcategory of at least one other category. Indeed blank categories are not very useful, and are even disruptive.

@TheImaCow: is it too much to ask you to come back to you orphan creations and place at least one parent category in them, usually two or three? When they are part of an existing structure (such as Category:Healthcare in Kiribati in Category:Health care by country), it is generally easy to find similar sibling categories and copy them, adapting only a few words. If you have issues, you may ask for help here. Place Clichy (talk) 17:27, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

On that matter, I already sent them a note, which was ignored; it was bot-archived four days later. Not only did they create parentless categories, they also removed all parents from some cats, leaving those parentless also. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:02, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for the note! I will try to sort all the categories I created correctly. Redrose64, I read that, but somehow I didn't really get it. Sorry, my mistake. But that I have removed all top categories from categories, I don't know an example, can I get one? --TheImaCow (talk) 05:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Category:Slave owners

Due to current events in the US, the categories Category:Slave owners and Category:Slave traders are getting increased attention. More eyes on these would be good. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: a bot to place eponymous categories as the first category on articles

Per MOS:CATORDER, when an article is categorised

Eponymous categories should appear first

This is a very helpful form of sorting, because it makes it easy to find the eponymous category at the bottom of the page, which allows further exploration of the topic of the article.

However, it is a long way from being universally applied. When I encounter it, I often fix it, as in this edit[10] today to TAP Air Portugal.

But that's a bit tedious and slow, and the task could be easily done by a bot, which I will set up if there is consensus to do so. I envisage an initial pass through all the subcats of Category:Eponymous categories, and a re-run every month or so to catch new eponymous categories and any existing ones where the order has been broken.

The methodology is simple:

Get a list of all the categories which are subcats of Category:Eponymous categories
Convert those titles to a list of articles
Trawl through those articles, and in each case if the articles is categorised in a category whose title exactly matches the article name, then
- Make that category the first in the list
- Change that category's sort key to a single space, per WP:Categorization#Guidelines_for_articles_with_eponymous_categories
- Apply WP:GENFIXes

Any thoughts? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

PS The bot would of course be subject to approval at WP:BRFA. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Sounds useful, can't see any problems (but I'm sure something will emerge!) PamD 17:06, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks, PamD. With anything like this, there is often some minor anomaly somewhere, but it is usually minor and resolvable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes please. Rathfelder (talk) 22:35, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Good idea from BHG. Hmains (talk) 00:36, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Support, preferably as part of a more substantial task to avoid WP:COSMETIC. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Michael Bednarek, I don't see any other task with which to combine this one, apart from genfixes. So I think it will have to be run either as a standalone job or not at all.
  In any case, I think is just significant enough not to count as cosmetic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Support, thank you. – Fayenatic London 06:36, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Support, clearly an improvement. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:10, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
BRFA filed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 6. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:48, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
BOT trial complete, in these 25 edits[11]. If editors want to make any comments on these trial edits, please make them at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 6. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
BrownHairedGirl, The BRFA is closed so I provided my observation below. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Support - does it add the eponymous article to its category if missing? Oculi (talk) 18:19, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Oculi, no. This task does not add a category if missing. However, I could use the list-making tools for this task to generate such a list, which would allow editors to fix that manually.
  Alternatively, if other editors support adding missing eponymous categories, then I will ask for the task to be expanded to include that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:10, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Support — One observation: There are articles that have eponymous categories and near eponymous categories. For example in this diff of the bot at work has [[Category:Professor Challenger| ]] and [[Category:Professor Challenger characters|Challenger, Professor]]. After the bot fixes the order these are no longer together. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
- @—¿philoserf?: I can't see any way in which the bot could identify such cases. But feel free to make a further edit to move the other category. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:47, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Bot progress

WP:BHGbot 6 has now completed its first run. 2176 edits so far: see these edits and newer.

That set was built on subcats Category:Wikipedia categories named after people to a depth of 3. I will do another run to a greater depth, and move on to other subcats of Category:Eponymous categories.

So far the only problems have been:

an edit which blanked[12] the page. User:LuK3 was kind enough to alert me, but I couldn't replicate the bug, and have no idea what caused it. I have added some safety checks to the AWB module[13], and will keep an eye open for any further glitches.
a bug in WP:GENFIXES which I have encountered before, which sometimes moves {{short description}} out of its MOS:ORDER-defined position at the top of the page. This is a trivial issue which doesn't change the way the page is displayed, so I haven't disabled GENFIXES. But I have filed a bug report: see phab:T254071, which turns out to be a duplicate of phab:T247694 (filed in mid-March).

The bot is coded to skip any article which is not categorised in a category whose title exactly matches the article name. Because of this, I can feed it any list of articles, and it will just do more skipping. Since eponymous categories are not consistently categorised as such, I have widened the scope by recursing the search to depths which give me list of tens of thousands of pages. I will feed that into the bot to see what it picks up, but the result is that the bot's work may continue for a week or more. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Second run completed yesterday: 1644 edits, between 13:24 and 23:00. See this set of edits and newer. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:11, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Third run ~~nearly~~ complete. The 32,675 articles listed at User:BHGbot/6/List 3 are now over 90% complete. I have been running this job very slowly (about 3 edits per minute), so it will probably be another day or so before it s complete. I am making more lists, and don't yet know how many pages they will involve. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:23, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
Fourth run complete. See User:BHGbot/6/List 4: 2,522 pages. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:42, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Fifth run underway. See User:BHGbot/6/List 5: 35,312 pages.
This will be the final run, since I adopted the methodology I which in hindsight should have used from the outset: take a list of all category pages and all non-redirected-non-dab article pages; compare the two lists, and keep the articles which have a category of the same name. Then work through that list, checking which pages need the fixes. This has all been much simpler than my previous approaches. Thanks to those who helped at WP:VPT#Want_a_list_of_all_categories,_and_a_list_of_all_articles (permalink), esp @Cryptic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Fifth run complete. The last edit was on 30 June 2020.[14] That's a total of about 80,000 articles fixed, which I am pleased with. That's the end of the first pass of the complete set of articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:51, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Future plans: Now that I have the methodology sorted, I plan to do a re-run every few months. The first re-run will be in a few weeks when the current rounds of various spin-off tasks of category and article disambiguation are complete. I will then download new versions of all the lists of pages from these various worklists are built, and build new reports on each of them.
When I started this task, I thought that fixing the category order and sort keys would be the scope. But the analysis has since led on to other task, such as missing eponymous categories and eponymous categories for disambiguation pages, which I think are much more important for the health of the category system .. but which have also involved a lot more manual work than I envisaged. I think that as the obvious errors in those other worklists are fixed, we will find some issues of article and category naming which need decisions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:59, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Eponymous categories which don't include their eponymous article

@Oculi raised above the issue of eponymous categories which don't include their eponymous article. I set about investigating this by creating a modified version of the bot code, which examines the same lists as the bot does, but looks for articles without the eponcat.

So far, I have found over 300 such cases, and the results tell me that this issue can't be handled by a bot. The list includes several types of case, including:

Articles which have not been categorised in an identically-named category which clearly is the eponymous category for that article. I have fixed some of these cases (see e.g. these 32 edits), but it's slow work, because it needs careful checking.
Categories which have an eponymous page in article space, but where that page is actually a disambiguation page. I have been nominating some such categories for speedy renaming (see the 13 nominations by me which are currently listed at WP:CFDS), but again this is slow, manual work ... so I have only scratched the surface.
Categories where the head article is correctly categorised using a template, but show up on the list 'cos the bot can't expand the template.

As I trawl though more lists of articles, I expect to find hundreds more such cases. It would be great if one or more other editors were willing to help work through this mess. If anyone is prepared to put some time into it, I will upload the lists I am generating ... and I can separate out the cases where the eponymous category is a dab page. If you want to do some of this, please ping me. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:09, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: I'm willing. Some cases can be best dealt with by moving articles (e.g. Indiana Jones) or adding them back into the category if they have been moved out unnecessarily (e.g. Mario); I don't mind looking at the merits case by case. – Fayenatic London 11:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Fayenatic, I can now provide better data.

Having got hold of a list of all categories and a list of all articles, and excluded redirects and dabs from both lists, I was left with a list of 178,717 titles which exist in both category space and article space.

I have processed that list in two ways:

Articles which include the eponcat, but with an incorrect sort key, or not as the first category. That is the final run of WP:BHGbot 6, which is underway: see 35,312 pages at User:BHGbot/6/List 5.
as a separate job, to find articles which don't include an existing eponymous category, i.e. Item #1 from above. That list is just complete, at 7,716 pages. This will includes articles with header templates, so I will have some processing to do. I think I will work though this various ways, but that it can mostly be done by AWB with some care.

That leaves item #2 from above: Categories which have an eponymous page in article space, but where that page is actually a disambiguation page. I think that I can generate a complete list of such categories by comparing some of the comprehensive lists I have. My brain is slightly mushy today, so I may leave it until tomorrow to create that list, but I think I can make a definitive, complete list. I will ping you when I have done it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Fayenatic: List made. See new section below: #Non-disambiguation categories with eponymous disambiguation page in article space. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:19, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Category:Works adapted for other media

I've had part in making several child categories in this tree, but I'm starting to seriously question if we should even categories these things at all. Being adapted into another media is not remotely defining of the original work. These categories also get heavily overused in franchise articles I've noticed.★Trekker (talk) 19:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

That may be true for some, but when I look at Category:Novels adapted into operas or Category:Works adapted into films, there are many works for which the adaptation is notable and significant. Once a tree like "Category:Works adapted for other media" has been established, it better be complete. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:28, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Tons of adaptations are notable and significant, that doesn't make it defining for the original work. I honestly think the whole thing should be gotten ridd off.★Trekker (talk) 13:10, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

It's hard to see who would find such categories useful. The articles will no doubt mention the adaption, at both ends. Rathfelder (talk) 10:35, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
It may not be defining when works are adapted from one audiovisual medium to another audiovisual medium ... but it is very much defining when a written work is adapted to an audiovisual medium. When a stage-play or a novel is adapted into a successful film, attention paid to the original work multiplies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:39, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- How exactly is that defining? And even if was defining for a couple of examples how would that justify having this extensive tree for every single thing? To me it seems pretty POV to claim that its defining for some but not for other cases. How would be conclude that with any consistency?★Trekker (talk) 16:39, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
  - We can argue until the cows come home whether certain works are better known by themselves or by their adaptation. Compare du Maurier's "The Birds" with Hitchcock's The Birds; or Murger's Scenes of Bohemian Life with Puccini's La bohème; and many more. Some works are better known by their adaptations – that makes it a defining characteristic. If you disagree, I suggest you nominate "Category:Works adapted for other media" at WP:CFD. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:19, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
    - I will. I was just making this discussion to see if anyone had any strong arguments against it beforehand.★Trekker (talk) 12:07, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Non-disambiguation categories with eponymous disambiguation page in article space

Following a discussion above with @Fayenatic london, I have played with various tools and created a list of non-disambiguation categories with have an eponymous disambiguation page in article space: User:BrownHairedGirl/Non-disambiguation categories with eponymous disambiguation page in article space

The list is up-to-date as of this morning, and contains 2,094 pages.

Many of these are obvious errors of a category name which needs to be disambiguated: e.g. Category:Wugang // dab page Wugang. In that example, the category should be renamed to Category:Wugang, Hunan.

I think that most such examples could be speedily renamed per WP:C2D, if the article title meets the stability criteria.

Some other cases are less straightforward, e.g.

Category:Yeşiltepe // Dab page: Yeşiltepe is a category by shared name, which should be deleted
Category:Yorkshire Cup // Dab page: Yorkshire Cup is a {{category redirect}} from an ambiguous title. I think that the category redirect should be deleted.
Category:1300s // Dab page: 1300s. I really hope we don't disambiguate Category:1300s to Category:1300s (decade) per the article 1300s (decade), because it will seriously mess up category header templates.

If editors want to work on cleaning up this list, I will make a fresh list periodically. After a lot of faffing, I found a relatively simple methodology which should be repeatable with about 30 minutes.. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I speedily closed Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_June_21#Category:Yeşiltepe as delete, thanks to Rathfelder acknowledging that he created the page in error, but in practice it required upmerging as the contents had been removed from its parent.

If it was me minding CFDS when Category:Yorkshire Cupwas rightly moved to Category:RFL Yorkshire Cup, I probably intentionally left the category redirect, as only one of the Yorkshire Cups currently has a category or multiple articles, and those do not have disambiguated page names, but are simply e.g. 2019 Yorkshire Cup. It is therefore quite likely that future articles might be put in Category:Yorkshire Cup, and this would helpfully be automatically corrected. I acknowledge that other editors may disagree about leaving the redirect, in case it was added to one of the other (shared name) Yorkshire Cup articles.

So IMHO all these cases call for careful examination. – Fayenatic London 16:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I would also edit the list to remove redirected categories (Category:Faculty and Category:Reunion are two that jumped out immediately, but there are many more). UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:47, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
Per UnitedStatesian's suggestion, I have added two sub-pages: one without the 327 redirected categories, and one with only the 327 redirected categories:
Selection: All pages • No redirected categories • Only redirected categories
Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:35, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
I have made a trial nomination for Category:A Clockwork Orange. – Fayenatic London 14:30, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: I found Category:Motifs and nominated it for renaming to Category:Motifs (music). Set categories with plural names seem to have been overlooked, except where the main article has a plural name e.g. Neglected tropical diseases. Do you want to do a bot run to find such singular/plural cases? – Fayenatic London 08:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
- @Fayenatic, good work with the motifs. A lot of such cases are being thrown up my my current AWB exercise of adding missing eponcats, though I see that one is not on the list. Good catch.
  This isn't a bot job; it is a list comparison job followed by a lot of scrutinised edits. I can see how a list like you suggest would be very useful, but creating it would be a much more complicated task. The list above is created by a direct comparison of existing page titles, where the complexity is formatting the lists (some with several million entries) into an identical format from the multiple formats they come it. That format-standardisation was a less trivial task than I thought it would be, but once I had all the lists identically formatted and perfectly sorted and had removed all dab and redir pages (whose own lists had been similarly processed), I had the relatively easy task of comparing a few lists applying a bit of boolean logic through multiple passes of comm.
  However, the task which you suggest starts with the standardised lists created for that analysis, then adds a further layer of deriving the plural form from the singular, before doing the comparisons. That's bad enough in English due to the irregularity of plurals (carrot/carrots, but child/children, potato/potatoes, aircraft/aircraft, goose/geese, crisis/crises, sheep/sheep, police/police) ... but when we add in parenthetical disambiguators it gets fiendish complex. Descriptive titles are tough too, because the plural is usually added to only one word, often not the last one: e.g. the plural of "Child of FooWoman"/"Children of FooWoman" (not "Child of FooWomans" or "Childs of FooWoman). Sometimes it is the last word which is pluralised: e.g. "Green-skinned engineer"/"Green-skinned engineers". So my head spins a bit.
  I will have a think about it and see if there is some way I can generate some sort of a list which tackles a subset of cases without being overwhelmed by grammatical nonsense or false positives. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:22, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Progress on non-disambiguation categories with eponymous disambiguation page

I have spent most of this week going through the list of unredirected categories with an eponymous dab page in article space, and have made about 500 speedy renaming nominations (nearly all WP:C2D), and opened a few dozen full CFDs. 1857a has also made 100 or more CFD nominations from the list.

My plan at this stage is to let those nominations get processed (whatever the outcome), and then do another round of list-making to see what's left. That will probably be some time around 5 July.

Having gone through the list twice, it seems to me that there are a significant number of dab pages which aren't really dismabiguating. A few examples:

1982 college football season (and many other years) looks more like a list of sub-topics than a dab page
Baseball Hall of Fame balloting looks even less like a dab page
Cycling clothing is a list of sub-topics, not disambiguation
Georgia Southern Eagles basketball (and many similar pages) are a binary choice between the men's team and the women's team. Should the corresponding Category:Georgia Southern Eagles basketball be a disambiguation category?

I don't have answers on this. I just think these points deserve examination. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:13, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Some of those you mention dont seem worth keeping. Disambiguation should be measured by What links here, shouldn't it?Rathfelder (talk) 10:32, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- @Rathfelder, I view What links here is a measure of how successfully editors have disambiguated incoming links, rather than of the ambiguity of the topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:35, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Regrading Category:Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, I'm not sure if the name changed somewhere in its history, but the image used in National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the lead in 2020 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting has the title as "National Baseball Hall of Fame", making the yearly articles and category incorrect and may solve the dab issue. --Gonnym (talk) 08:51, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Template:Category disambiguation

{{Category disambiguation}} no longer requires all its parameters to be on one line.

For years, this template has been a minor frustration to me, because it didn't handle whitespace elegantly, and required all its parameters to be one line. This made the code hard to read, especially on dab cats with many items.

It turned out to be easy to fix.[15] (I tested it on a pointless huge catdab page: Category:YYYY in Ireland).

So a catdab page which used to be written as

{{Category disambiguation|the [[Foo (hamster)]] endemic to Atlantis|Foo (hamster)|the 1607 [[Foo (novel)]] by John Doe|Foo (novel)|the 1715 [[Foo (film)]] based on the novel by John Doe|Foo (film)|the 1839 [[Foo (TV series)]] based on the novel by John Doe|Foo (TV series)|the Swiss [[Foo (ship)]] launched in 1127|Foo (ship)|the village of [[Foo, County Mayo]]|Foo, County Mayo|the anti-twerping [[Foo (law)]] in Ruritania|Foo (law)|the [[Foo (planet)]] discovered in 2023|Foo (planet)|the [[Foo (hat)]] worn by crew of the Apollo XXXII lunar mission|Foo (hat)|the prototype [[Foo (car)]] built on Rockall for Finn McCool|Foo (car)}}

... can now be written in a more readable form, such as

{{Category disambiguation
  | the [[Foo (hamster)]] endemic to Atlantis | Foo (hamster)
  | the 1607 [[Foo (novel)]] by John Doe | Foo (novel)
  | the 1715 [[Foo (film)]] based on the novel by John Doe| Foo (film)
  | the 1839 [[Foo (TV series)]] based on the novel by John Doe| Foo (TV series)
  | the Swiss [[Foo (ship)]] launched in 1127 | Foo (ship)
  | the village of [[Foo, County Mayo]] | Foo, County Mayo
  | the anti-twerping [[Foo (law)]] in Ruritania | Foo (law)
  | the [[Foo (planet)]] discovered in 2023 | Foo (planet)
  | the [[Foo (hat)]] worn by crew of the Apollo XXXII lunar mission | Foo (hat)
  | the prototype [[Foo (car)]] built on Rockall for Finn McCool | Foo (car)
}}

Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:22, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

"emigrants" cats and refugees

This is a question coming from Nyadol Nyuon, who was born to Sudanese parents living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. As part of new pages patrol, I added Category:South Sudanese emigrants to Australia which was questioned by the article creator User:Laterthanyouthink on the talk page. I'm now unsure what the cats should be here, Category:Emigrants_by_nationality refers to 'nationality' but nationality is unclear here. Nationality turns out the be a non-trivial concept. Is there any guidance? Could a note be added to Category:Emigrants_by_nationality and maybe some of the cats for nationals with large numbers of displaced people? Stuartyeates (talk) 20:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Nationality is a complicated question and it's used all over Wikipedia in a very loose and sometimes misleading way, usually to mean country of origin. Very few biographical articles say anything explicit about nationality. But I dont think its a problem that can be fixed. Its one of the ambiguities we have to live with. Rathfelder (talk) 07:43, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Maybe we need systematic cross-referencing with Category:Sudanese refugees and Category:Refugees_in_Australia?

Uncategorised cats updated, introducing title country template

Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized categories is struggling to update at the moment - it hasn't run successfully for 4 months, if my Quarry clone is anything to go by, it's probably bumping into timeout limits as the servers are getting busier. However I have managed to get my Quarry version to run and I've updated the DBR page accordingly if anyone wants something to work on?!
Whilst I'm here, I've added {{title country}} to BHG's useful series of title templates (which now includes {{title monthname}}. The lookup table is based on a football template so it's not comprehensive, but it's usable enough for now. Amd you can use it with {{country2nationality}} to generate a demonym off a country in the title, which is quite useful. Le Deluge (talk) 08:18, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Family categories

My work on eponymous categories has thrown up several family categories, such as:

From my encounters, it seems to me that most family categories share one or more of the following flaws:

An ambiguous title. The format "<FooSurname> family" is highly ambiguous in most cases, because everyone named "FooSurname" is part of a "FooSurname family". See e.g. Reed (surname)#Notable_persons_with_the_surname_Reed: there are dozens of them, and in nearly case they shared that surname with spouses, children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents, cousins etc ... some of whom may also be notable. The bare title "Reed family" gives readers and editors no way of knowing which set of family relationships is being captured in a Category:Reed family.
Lack of citations. To be included in a family category, then per WP:CATVER there should be a citation in the article for the family relationship. That is not always the case.
Lack of a WP:DEFINING test. Even if we have a citation that Séamus MacFoo is the grandson of Pádraig MacFoo and another that he is the nephew of Colm MacFoo, is that actually a WP:DEFINING characteristic?
Lack of a head article, which seems to breach WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Unless the family is itself a notable topic, the family relationship looks like trivia.
WP:EGRS#Special_subcategories sets a requirement for dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as Category:LGBT writers, that the category should be created only where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created.

So I throw out for discussion the following tentative suggestions for some guidance on family categories:

Precise naming. Family categories should be named in accordance with WP:PRECISE, i.e. a title
unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that.
For example:
- Y Category:Family of Peter Sellers
- Y Category:Fox family (English aristocracy)
- Y Category:Family of Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet — renamed from Category:Norman family per WP:CFD/2020 June 29#Category:Norman_family
- N Category:Crowe family — the list at Crowe (surname) shows this to be massively ambiguous
Explicit citations that the person is a member of notable family. To be included in a family category, a biographical article should have a citation to a reliable source explicitly describing the family relationship. It should not be enough to have one source noting that Séamus MacFoo is the grandson of Pádraig MacFoo and another source noting that he is the nephew of Colm MacFoo; that is WP:SYNTHESIS, a breach of WP:No original research.
To avoid synthesis, we need reliable sources which explicitly describe a notable family relationship with other notable people:
- Y "The MacFoo family from Ballyporeen have been prominent in Irish business and politics for over a century.[ref1] Séamus MacFoo is the founder of MacFoo Construction Ltd.[ref1] He is the grandson of Home Rule MP Pádraig MacFoo, and nephew of wholesaler Anne MacFoo. His cousin Colm MacFoo (son of Pádraig) is a leading novelist.[ref1]"
- N "Séamus MacFoo is the grandson of Pádraig MacFoo.[ref1] He is the nephew of Colm MacFoo.[ref2]"
Requirement for definingness. Even if reliable sources note that a person is a member of a notable family, then per WP:COPDEF, they should be included in the family category only if membership of the family meets the tests set out in WP:DEFINING.
Requirement for notability of the family (or, alternatively, a stronger condition: that a head article already exists).
To avoid breaches of WP:NOTGENEALOGY, we should not categorise people by family unless the family is itself WP:Notable in its own right, and not just as a list of X begat Y who begat Z. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such the family, then a category for the family should not be created.

These are just some initial ideas of how we might try to systematically cleanup the current mess. I haven't mulled over these ideas for long enough to form a settled view on their merits, and I am sure that other editors will add insights, and maybe find fatal flaws in my idea. But I hope this is a useful start. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Every of these four suggestions is very reasonable and in line with existing policy. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:42, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Generally agree, but I think point 2 needs clarifying. IMO most/all family categories should be deleted; if, for example, one article is about an artist and another about a politician and they are closely related (e.g. siblings) then that should be covered in article text (where it can be referenced) and doesn't need to also be a category - categories are mainly for connecting similar articles (e.g. artists, politicians) where there might not otherwise be a direct link between the articles. DexDor^(talk) 17:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
- @DexDor, per WP:CAT, categories are for shared defining characteristics. Those may be related to a person's occupation, or their nationality, or the era in which they lived. In some cases family may also be WP:DEFINING; I just think we need to test that in each case, rather than the current practice of assuming that it's defining. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
  - Being a defining characteristic is a necessary condition for a category to exist, but it doesn't mean a category has to exist (e.g. where the articles are already directly linked and it's not a comprehensive categorization scheme). DexDor^(talk) 19:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
    - I think we basically agree. I'd be OK with an assumption that family is non-def without v good evidence. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:39, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
This seems like a little bit of a waste of time to me. The only clear point is the first one, which is already covered by policy. One seems to fail basic logic, one requires us to use the very means you argue against in another section, and another requires an arbitrary subjective decision. The four points in brief:

Precise naming - goes without saying and is standard practice for categories overall, so no special condition is needed for it, other than maybe to make some uniformity in the category naming.
"Explicit citations that the person is a member of notable family. To be included in a family category, a biographical article should have a citation to a reliable source explicitly describing the family relationship. It should not be enough to have one source noting that Séamus MacFoo is the grandson of Pádraig MacFoo and another source noting that he is the nephew of Colm MacFoo; that is WP:SYNTHESIS, a breach of WP:No original research." You're directly contradicting yourself here. You say we need a citation to a reliable source about a relationship, but if a citation in a reliable source says people are related it won't do. As for the suggestion that it's synthesis (rather than simple logic that if A and B are related as closely as your examples they are by definition in the same family), that's ridiculous. And if you want to go around removing references to family links that are cited in articles, you might as well scrub all biographical information in Wikipedia, because that's how biographical articles are written. If sources tell you that A is closely related to B and C, then they are by definition members of the same family.
Requirement for definingness. If a person who is notable in their own right is closely related to other people who are closely related in their own right, that is almost always defining. If anything, this rule is most likely to exclude members of noble families, who are often only notable because they are members of noble families, rather than having any independent notability of their own.
Requirement for notability of the family (or, alternatively, a stronger condition: that a head article already exists). Very strongly against this one, for the reasons I gave when this came up at CfD. A family with many notable members might not have an overall article, ironically for the very crime you pointed out above, WP:SYNTHESIS - the individual members are notable in their own right and need categorising together, but the family as a whole does not need an article, and would require editors to assemlbe pieces for the articles of individual family members. We have no articles, for example, on the Category:Fonda family, the Category:Wahlberg family, the Category:Cumberbatch family, the Category:Phoenix family, the Category:DeMille family, the Category:Marley family, the Category:Attenborough family, the Category:Matisse family, the Category:Hugo family, the Category:Baden-Powell family, the Category:MacArthur family, the Category:Gretzky family, the Category:Hadlee family, the Category:Escobar family, or the Category:Bachop-Mauger family, all of which are clearly notable.

It seems to me that the majority of problems relating to family categories are related to the first of your points, which should already be covered elsewhere and are fixable through CfD, so don't need dealing with here. The other points ether don't stand up to scrutiny or are self-contradictory, so really shouldn't be dealt with here. Grutness...wha? 18:10, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

If an article about the family would be an issue of WP:SYNTHESIS, then so would the category. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:49, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Not at all. Simply saying a person is a member of a family is not synthesis - writing an article cobbled together from bits of other articles is. Grutness...wha? 03:38, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Though I sympathise with the ambition I cant see how it can be achieved. Are we proposing to delete thousands of these categories? The best defined families are probably the noble ones where often the only notability for many members is their family membership. We say that notability is not inherited, but actually it often seems to be if you are associated with someone sufficiently famous. Rathfelder (talk) 19:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Noble families are usually notable and usually have an article. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

...and the members of the families are usually only notable because they are part of the family. Notability is not inherited. Grutness...wha? 03:38, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Grutness - but the test for categorisation is not notability but WP:DEFINING-ness, so NINI does not apply. If it was a question of notability then my test would be "What does the average reader expect?" - articles about "minor" members of noble families and the great commercial dynasties (Cadbury, Sainsbury etc) are staples of paper encyclopedias so I see no reason to exclude them here. But we're talking about categorisation here. We see a lot of family categories at Special:WantedCategories - particularly Danish ones of late as Ramblersen2 tends to throw family categories around regardless of whether they exist or not (in breach of WP:REDNOT. I've found that the "no category without a corresponding article" [on the family as a whole] is a pretty useful rule of thumb in these cases. Generally I'm not a huge fan of "descent" categories as they tend to be so poorly sourced and are a tempting avenue for WP:OVERCATEGORISATION - eg Category:Guatemalan people of Lebanese-Jewish descent, Category:Guatemalan people of Syrian-Jewish descent etc.Le Deluge (talk) 08:50, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Reply: I have generally only created family categories in cases where the families are notable, well-defined (with plenty of references) and have articles and associated categories on Danish wikipedia. I generally create them in connection with my work on covering manor houses and other estates. These are often passed down through families for generations and historically they have often been owned jointly by several family members (in a way that is not always documented). Members of these families have often also constructed a great number of notable buildings and other structures. I see the categories as a useful way of creating an overview of property (country estates, churches, city homes and other structures) that are somehow connected in a way that it is not always relevant to highlight in individual articles. I also think it is worth noting that these family related categories are sometimes mire better (imo) and more general alternatives to creating several individual person-based categories.Ramblersen2 (talk) 10:07, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I've usually found it a useful rule of thumb as well, but in the opposite way. If there's a family article, there's less need for a category because everyone's already linked in through the article. If there is no article, then a category becomes more useful to the average reader, especially in those cases where being a member of the family is defining (which it almost always is. After all, a person's upbringing is of vital important to the life they end up leading, whether via nature or via nurtute, each of which ultimately reflect on their family. I will also note that the page you referred me to isnt even at the level of being a guideline, and definitely isn't policy). I'm not too sure what you mean by the categories being poorly sourced, given that when a person is related to someone else famous it's almost always a central part of any information available on them and usually easily sourced (unlike the Guatemalan categories, which seem unconnected to any argument about specific family categories). Grutness...wha? 09:00, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Avoid family categories; listify if necessary -- We have a list article for every UK peerage and baronetcy (except where there was only one holder of the title, where it is a redirect). We also have list-articles for surnames, which may be classified as to family. I do not think that having categories for people being related is useful, rather than being another case of category-clutter. Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian engineer, has three descendants with articles in 4th and 5th generation. Would that really constitute a family worth of a category? I worked on the Foley family, twice raised to peerage and with a lot of 18th and 19th century politicians, but if I created Category:Foley (political family), we might start getting unrelated American politicians added to it. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:50, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Where does it actually say you should not just empty a category you don't like?

There is a discussion on this, intended to lead to proposed additions on the main category policy pages, at Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#Where_does_it_actually_say_you_should_not_just_empty_a_category_you_don't_like?. Please contribute there. Btw, it's good to see this page seems busier than it has been in the past. Johnbod (talk) 15:50, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to those who commented. After a deal of discussion, voting is underway on a revised draft, the idea being to take it to the policy pages with "local" approval. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Arts portal has been nominated for discussion

Category:Arts portal, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:00, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Template:Resolve category redirect

One of the side-effects of WP:BHGbot 7's creation of {{Category redirect}}s to resolve the organisations/organizations ENGVAR issue was that it screwed up any category header templates looking to categorise a page in whichever variant exists. That technique no longer works when one variant is a redirect to the other.

The first case where identified was Template:Category header anarchist organizations by country, kindly spotted by @Timrollpickering.

I fixed that one by using {{Resolve category redirect}}, which I created today using code copied from Tom.Reding's excellent work on Module:Navseasoncats.

I suspect that there will be many other cases where this template could be useful. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Template:Cfdnotice listed at Requested moves

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RFC Name of prayers

What name should this category be?

(a) No change
(b) Catholic prayers
(c) Latin Catholic prayers
(d) Other - please specify

Manabimasu (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Survey

(a) Elizium23 (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Catholic prayers I am on the fence on whether it means the Catholic church or other churches considered catholic but these prayers can be said by Eastern Catholics. Latin Catholic prayers term is closely related to the origin which is the Latin Catholic Church unless I am mistaken that there is a Eastern Catholic prayer. I wanted to know what other editors thought. It is to note that this category is under Category:Latin Church and Category:Catholic devotions. Manabimasu (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Manabimasu, wtf is this RFC doing here? Elizium23 (talk) 19:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. See WP:RFCNOT - if you want to rename a category (and you don't state which one, but presumably this is Category:Roman Catholic prayers, judging by your recent edits), you must use the WP:CFR process. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:12, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Is there a limit to number of CFDs I can open at a time? Template:cfr can only take one proposed name, but I have more. So multiple templates?Manabimasu (talk) 01:24, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

There is no limit, but you shouldn't open several if they would all be covered by the same reasoning. Tag all of the category pages, but open a single CFD nomination, known as a bundled nomination, as described at WP:CFR#Manual nominations, --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:16, 5 September 2020 (UTC)