Hi there!
I believe that we're on the same page about the grammar of emigration and immigration: emigrants are "from" the place they left, and immigrants go "to" the place they're arriving in. This is borne out in article space by titles I've searched. Unfortuately the categories are uniformly backwards:
Here's a catch: "O" appears to be an adjectival demonym, which seems less than desirable, but may pertain to some conflicting desire for consistency in the category tree.
So our entire category tree - all the way back up to Category:Emigrants has, in my view, a problem of grammar. If we reach consensus about correcting the format, we can, and should, apply it uniformly across hundreds and hundreds of categories. Rather than nominate them all en masse at CFD, I've come here for an informal check first.
Therefore, I propose to rename all affected categories from O emigrants to D to the format Emigrants from OO to D.
"OO" represents a conversion from the demonym to the origin country's name in noun form.
It has 3 cats that use British India emigrants to x, and 4 that use British India emigrants or migrants. Non use British Indian. British modifies India, not the people. This is another matter we have not teased out well, how to handle changing entities that use the same name. We have some interesting sub-cats under say Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:34, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
I think this using the from OO to D form would make things a lot better and a lot more clear. There may be a few edge cases where we may need to come up with a way to better that the mess.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:51, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
We may need to come up with a clear and maybe new name for what people were leaving between the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:54, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Greetings. Cats are really not an area of expertise for me, so I tend to follow along with what other editors suggest on cats on pages. My feeble understanding of cats is that cats are redundant when the cat is a sub-cat of another. For example, you wouldn't put both Category:Silent American comedy films and Category:American comedy films, since the former is a subcat of the latter. You would only put the former, since it's more specific. I've been creating a bunch of articles on old political figures in Arizona, and I was tagging them with the Category:Arizona state senators. Another editor began adding Category:Arizona politicians. Since neither is a subcat of the other, I began to do it to save other editors' time. However, recently another editor deleted the politician cat from one of my articles, stating it's redundant. I really don't care one way or the other, just seeking some guidance so I don't cause work for other editors. Thanks. Onel5969TT me21:30, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Hello, I am not a new editor and have created four categories before now, but I have a question on this one and I wanted to ask to make sure that this one would be correct to make before publishing. I was trying to find examples of artwork that has its own Wikipedia article that depicts the Rosary in it (such as this, this, and this), while trying to improve the page for the Rosary. I had a hard time finding these articles though and it made me think, would a category make this easier? As far as I am aware, categories starting with "Paintings depicting..." do not exist, which is why I wanted to ask here first as to not have the category be nominated for deletion if created. Categories such as "Paintings of..." do exist, but I am hesitant to name the category that, as these paintings do not have the Rosary as the primary focus in them, but they do "depict" them. Any feedback is very much appreciated, thanks! Johnson524 (Talk!) 03:20, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Well, the more I think about it, the more confused I get, because here in ENWP we have both Category:Images of paintings and Category:Paintings which has a subcategory Category:Paintings by subject. Oh. Maybe I should think more carefully about whom to ask, before complaining that it's confusing. My friend @Pharos: works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and might be able to handle it easily. Until he answers the ping, I can provide the general guidance that the main reason for making a new category is that the parental categories are overstuffed, for example getting near the point that they start overflowing to a second page. There are also many other reasons; in Commons I often make a category when at least one of its parents has a dozen pictures or fewer. This includes structural adjustments for making a complex tree structure more uniform, thus less tangled. As for whether our fellow editors will find these pictures more readily with your proposed category. I guess my only answer is what I said, move the images to Commons. Umm, but as for the articles about the paintings, are there really enough such articles that putting them together will more help the searchers than hinder? One of the powers of a category is that, once an editor finds one picture that's approximately right, the category might lead quickly to a bunch including one that suits the purpose precisely. This function is less effectively served by categories that are either too small or too large. Yes, cat wrangling is a complex skill, and now Wikidata is getting into the action of finding the right pictures, which may bring great efficiency but for the moment is bringing more complexity. Oof, I didn't intend to write so much. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Why just paintings? A category like this is usually called Category:Foo in art, and rightly so. In general such a category is only worth establishing if you are prepared to do a reasonable amount of work filling it. I'd think you shouldn't bother, on the whole. Johnbod (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Not done Okay @Jim.henderson: after clicking on every result (with a name) from the Wikidata search @Pharos: suggested, plus the three articles I found before, I am left with six total articles that could be placed into this category, being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I feel like there is enough paintings to warrant the creation of the category and would be helpful for those people who have a very similar search of mine and don't want to search through the Wikidata items, plus it has room for expansion.
With all of that being said though, this would be a very specific category to create, and would not be useful to 99% of readers, and reading over every comment up until this point, none have really supported the creation of the category either, so I don't think I will make it. Thank you truly for all of your help, I definitely learned a lot about categories regardless. Wishing you all the best 🙂 Johnson524 (Talk!) 01:41, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Overpopulation in football positions categories
It's come to my attention that the footballers' positions categories are quite overpopulated, they range from 15,000+ to 45,000+. Should they be sub-categorised by players' nationalities or clubs? I thought that I would ask here instead of beginning to do sub-categorising and making mistakes. Or are these categories not overpopulated enough - as in, is there a specific limit in which a category is listed as overpopulated? SarahTHunter (talk) 18:44, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
Since many people will have several clubs over their careers, & not infrequently multiple nationalities, this would be a life's work. And what would be the point? You will never get them small enough to be "perusable" (say a max of 200). Splitting by century might be easier, still with lots of overlaps, but when categories get this big, it is best imo to just leave them, and most importantly, make sub-cats non-diffusing. Attempts to break up huge categories tend to be abandoned half way through, leaving a proper mess, like Rathfelder's attempts to break down a mere 4,000 Old Etonians. Johnbod (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
I wondered this too. When I sieved through working with female freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and medley swimmers it took almost an entire week to get through them three years ago (they all originally had a few sub-cats, the strokes all had American and Canadian swimmers but no other sub-cat for the Dutch - which the freestyle swimmers had a lot of - the swimmers' categories contained 2,000+ that weren't sub-categorised if I can remember). I felt like I had a slight OCD problem when I saw the large numbers of football positions' categories and I thought "wow, this looks so big!". But anyway, clarifying everyone's comments I think I will leave it as I don't want to make it into a big mess and annoy other users into why it's been fiddled about with. Thank you very much for your advice. SarahTHunter (talk) 17:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
Alumni of “School” or “School alumni”
Hi, I had noticed that there seems to be tons of categories that are “school” alumni, but some are Alumni of “school”. Is there a proper or perferred manner?
On the community portal page, under the "Fix Wikilinks" heading, there is a list of articles with various problems with links: too many, too few, orphaned pages, etc. But the "more" link below the brief list goes to Category:All_articles_with_too_few_wikilinks only. Is there a way to link to a broader category of articles with wikilink problems instead? 184.67.135.194 (talk) 21:03, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
Duplication - categories about people killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I was working on Killing of Mykhailo Korenovsky and thought that Category Civilian casualties was a bit broad, noting that within that category most people killed in wars were in subcategories about that war. So I created Category:Civilians killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and added him to it.
Then I went to see who else should be in the category, and found that Category:People killed in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine exists. But not as a sub category of Civilian categories.
So I see some duplication, and I decided to stop doing anything and get some input from people who have more experience of this.... CT55555(talk) 16:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Biathletes
A small question to ask for anyone who is a fan of winter sports: is biathlon a skiing event or something completely different? I've added a sub cat for skiers from Ljubljana in the city's sportspeople category and there is a handful of biathletes who come from the Slovenian capital city. Should biathletes come under the skiers' sub cat or left out? SarahTHunter (talk) 11:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
Hi all! The Uncategorized Pages category has been absolutely full of templates for a couple of months now, and it's only getting worse. I'd like to bring this to the group to see if we can come up with a solution. Templates are way harder to categorize since you can't use hotcat, and uncategorized templates are a relatively minor issue compared to uncategorized pages (imo). Is there a way to either remove the uncategorized tag from templates (perhaps creating a separate tag for uncategorized template?) or restructure the category page to exclude templates? Niftysquirrel (talk) 23:10, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that is my ugly handiwork, and there are 8,000 more template pages that lack categories. I have been slowly working my way through this neglected database report, categorizing some templates, moving some to better locations, tagging others, and nominating still others for deletion. If having template pages in the category is a problem, I suggest that {{Uncategorized}} be modified to place them automatically into a new category called something like Category:All uncategorized templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:30, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
Sounds sensible - but really half of these should just be deleted, & I'm dubious categorizing them has any point. Johnbod (talk) 21:54, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
I've been working on categozing templates using Wikipedia:Database reports/Uncategorized templates this month and the number is getting trimmed down a little. I agree many of these should be deleted, but sometimes I find that hard to judge. Sometimes when in doubt I categorize, and sometimes I let it be. Johnbod, do you really think half should be deleted? Is there an effort to do that, because it would help out the cause if that many truly need to be deleted? --DB1729talk06:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Just a guess, but yes. There's no effort I'm aware of (other than above) - I think the task has no got out of control. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
HowTo:Return deleted category
Hello. The instructions say to ask the editor who deleted the category after a deletion nomination has passed. There is a 2007 category a few editors would like to return, and I've pinged the editor who deleted it in 2007 but they only seem to edit Wikipedia every couple of months. Is there a procedure for returning a long-ago deletion aside from requesting guidance from the original 2007 deleter? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
I asked Jim on his talk page about this, his response was that The Deaths by x cats are for bios. This is an article about a killing, so it should be on the redirect & is. and that it is common practice for Deaths by cats to be for bios & redirects of people's names. When I asked him for the the policy, guideline, or consensus for where that practice was established he was unable to do so.
It's my understanding that articles should be placed into the most specific categories which logically apply based on the article content, in line with WP:CATSPECIFIC. To me that would be the "deaths by stabbing" category, as this is an article about a death by stabbing. Is Jim correct here, that only the Brianna Ghey redirect should be in "deaths by stabbing", and the main article should be in "stabbing attacks"? If so, could someone please point out the relevant policy, guideline, or consensus where that practice was established? Thanks. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
It's been that way for over a decade. How would I know where it's written? Why do you think that a cat should be on its redirect as well as the article? Death cats are for bios & redirects of people's names. If we put them on articles about incidents, they'd be on earthquakes, bombings etc. They'd be on Bhopal disaster. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
It helps immeasurably when referring to an existing consensus if you can link to it, so that editors who are not familiar with it can become acquainted. There's nothing wrong with not knowing where the existing consensus for this is, but if you're going to strongly assert that there is a consensus on this then being able to direct others to it is a good thing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
I haven't asserted a consensus. I'm saying that's how it's always been done & it's common sense. There's no case for a cat to be on an article & it's redirect & no-one's saying why one cat & only that one should be on both. There's no case for making an exception for one cat only. No-one wants 2023 deaths on the article. No-one's adding death cats to 2008 Christmas massacres. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 21:42, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm saying that's how it's always been done If this is how things have always been done, then that is a consensus. Because that is a consensus, there must be somewhere where that consensus was agreed upon and established.
Now you've already said you can't refer to it, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. Hopefully one of the regulars here can point to that consensus so that I can become familiar with it, and so that the next time someone asks you or I "where was the consensus for this practice established" then we can refer them to that discussion. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
Many things (on WP & elsewhere) are done by common sense, standard practice etc. without a written consensus. Death cats are for bios. No cat should be on an article & a redirect. No-one wants the 2023 deaths cat on the killing article. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 22:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
For the record, Jim Michael 2 received a WP:TBAN just five days ago for similar behaviors. According to the discussion here, There is a clear and overwhelming consensus that Jim Michael 2 has been disruptive and bludgeoning in discussions concerning articles about years and that a topic ban is appropriate. Therefore Jim Michael 2 is indefinitely topic banned from articles about years, broadly construed.Kire1975 (talk) 01:09, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
It's important to make the distinction between a convention and a consensus. Jim Michael's assertion is that there is a convention - a history of (fairly) consistently doing something a certain away - as opposed to a specific discussion where it was agreed to do that thing. Pointing out a convention is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
On this specific example though, if Category:Deaths by stabbing in England is only intended to contain biographies, it is misnamed and should be "stabbing victims" or "people who have died by stabbing" to make that clearer. WaggersTALK11:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
Many articles are wrongly categorised. It's irrelevant & unreasonable to mention an unconnected topic ban, or to falsely claim that I've said there's a consensus. Death cats, whether by year, location or cause, are for bios. No-one wants 2023 deaths on the article as well as the redirect. There's no case for a cat to be on an article & a redirect to it. We don't put deaths by IED cats on articles such as 14 October 2017 Mogadishu bombings or deaths by poisoning cats on articles such as Chernobyl disaster; there's no reason to do so for stabbings. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 12:28, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
I guess maybe. But even conventions usually get discussed or documented somewhere, especially when there are edge cases that come up which need to be discussed in relation to the convention. Otherwise how do new editors know what convention applies to a given situation? Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
I would support the sole categorization of "Deaths by stabbing", since "stabbing attacks" already has "Deaths by stabbing" as a subcategory, and Ghey has most certainly died, either directly through or as of a result of Ghey's stabbing. I think that this is kind of a stupid argument to get in though; we're edit-warring about categories. Really guys? InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 03:54, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
The first time it was changed, I figured it was a good faith mistake as there was no edit summary explaining why it was changed. I restored it citing CATSPECIFIC. A day later Jim restored it for the second time, I asked on Jim's talk page why he'd restored it, he asserted what I read as a pre-existing consensus, I asked him to link it to me so that I could learn why we catted articles in the manner he was asserting, he was unable to provide that link, so I asked here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 04:04, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
I didn't make a mistake; death cats are routinely for bio articles. I've made it clear that it's a long-standing convention that's in line with our categorisation; I don't know whether or not there was a discussion & consensus. I haven't edit-warred over it; I changed it twice. No-one is saying why a cat should be in an article & a redirect to it, nor why no-one wants the 2023 deaths cat on the article as well as the redirect, nor is anyone saying why Deaths by cats aren't on the vast majority of articles about bombings, stabbings, explosions, earthquakes, floods etc. It can't be that such cats should be on all of them but no-one has added them. A small minority of articles being miscategorised is commonplace. As with some other discussions, the size & duration of this one is baffling. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 10:24, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
Possible new categories
I am in the process of doing a GAR for Thomas Johnston (engraver). That article has a See also section that gave me some ideas for (I think) new Categories that Wikipedia doesn't have and that I think would prove useful. I'd like to know from this WikiProject how to go about establishing the new categories of American Colonial organ builders, American Colonial engravers, and American Colonial printers. Shearonink (talk) 18:07, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
I just wanted to notify people here of an RFC I started. Quoting the question here: can we categorize an organization as an "organization opposed to LGBT/transgender rights" in an instance where the organization is known for opposing a particular LGBT right, but the sources mentioning that don't say it's a right? For the simplest example: if an organization is known for campaigning against same-sex marriage, are our criteria for categorizing them as "an organization that opposes LGBT rights" based on 1) whether the WP:RS commenting on their opposition to same-sex marriage explicitly call same-sex marriage an LGBT right or 2) whether WP:RS generally consider same-sex marriage an LGBT right?TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:31, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Category:2020s Mexican television series by genre
I created this category Category:2020s Mexican television series by genre back on March 4 and it shows the error message "Invalid page name. Template:Decade nationality television series category is for use only on category pages whose title is of the form "YYY0s Fooish television series", where YYY0s is a 4-digit decade and "Fooish" is a nationality (e.g. "South African" or "Japanese")." Can someone figure this out? Did I do something wrong or does the header templates not recognize 2020s series by genre? WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
There are around 200 recategorisations here that should be reverted ASAP. I am assuming WP:GOODFAITH here and surmise that Dancing Dollar just got a bit carried away with AWB and made a mass change that seemed like a good idea at the time. A gentle warning should suffice. Cnbrb (talk) 20:01, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Update: it looks like the user is now self-reverting in response to the discussion. No major damage done, we can all move on. Cnbrb (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
I hope so. Just for future reference, if you don't like a category for some reason, put it up at WP:CFD for deletion, merging, renaming or just discussion. We are actually very poor at dealing with out of process emptying, which circumvents all our processes, & should be strongly resisted. Using AWB as an excuse isn't adequate imo. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
People categorized by nationalities that didn't exist during their lifetime
Olaudah Equiano is in Nigerian people categories, but Nigeria didn't exist until long after his death. Is this permitted? I assume it is permitted for names which were in use before the modern state existed, like "China" or "Germany", but I don't know what is preferred in a situation like this. (Did the name "Nigeria" exist in the 18th century?) —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 03:25, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Conside Barum woman from about 7,000 BCE: I think it's reasonable to include her in Category:Swedish women. I think we can allow "Category:Fooian people" to include "People from the area which is currently Foo" - though I don't know quite how we handle the many Europeans who have lived in several different countries without moving house, as borders have changed around them. PamD06:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, we normally accept, or we should, that Germany and Italy existed as well-understood geographical & linguistic entities long before politics caught up, and in Eastern Europe etc generally allow for more than one option. I don't think "Nigeria" was a concept in the 18th century, but that's still ok. Johnbod (talk) 02:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
It's not ideal, but in the absence of a category that would actually encompass whatever else he was, categorizing him as "Nigerian" on the basis that he was from an area that constitutes part of Nigeria now is certainly better than not categorizing him as anything at all. Bearcat (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I've been coming across a recurring issue of late which I wanted to bring to the WikiProject's attention. I've previously posted about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France, but got no response there,
For the past several months, there have been at least two or three cases per week of Category:WikiProject Europe articles and Category:WikiProject France articles showing up (virtually always together) on mainspace, draft or user sandbox articles instead of on the talk pages. Now, obviously, established Wikipedians know how those categories work and would never do that at all — but by and large, these articles are created by new users, and it's rarely if ever the same new user twice.
But it's incredibly unlikely that genuinely new users would even know about the existence of WikiProject categories in the first place, and even more unlikely that so many different new users would repeat the same error over and over again all by themselves unless they were somehow being told that they were supposed to do that. No other WikiProject category ever sees this happen anywhere near as often; Belgium occasionally shows up in the polluted category reports but usually does not (and if it does, it's inevitably also paired with WikiProject Europe on the same page), and it's exceedigly rare for any other "WikiProject [projectname] articles" category to ever show up there at all, but Europe and France have become categories I have to check daily for misfiled articles. (There isn't always a page there every time, but it happens frequently enough that I can never just let it slide a day without checking.) The French Wikipedia does not, as far as I can tell, place WikiProject categories on articles, so this isn't simply a carry-over from established French-Wikipedia practice either. So really the only thing I can think of is that some kind of documentation somewhere is somehow giving new editors the mistaken impression that those categories belong on the articles.
The most recent one is Draft:Ziak (rapper), right? That user looks like they've been around for almost a year, but the categories they added aren't from the French article they say they translated from. Does French Wikipedia have a policy of putting project categories on drafts? Or is WP:CXT somehow doing that?
The other possibility that springs to mind (which is why I haven't tagged the user here) is that it's a sock adding categories to articles that are promotional or have had spam links added to them, to make those pages more likely to be found. Not that adding project categories would help that, but spammers often also do ineffective things first to test if they'll be detected. - car chasm (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
There are several categorisation tools, such as HotCat, and I think that AWB can also add cats. Perhaps one of these works from an incorrect list, or is not correctly detecting whether a cat is appropriate for mainspace or not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Both HotCat and AWB could still really only add categories that the user of HotCat or AWB knows about — they don't add categories all by themselves, they add categories that a user manually programs them to add. So that wouldn't really account for the problem at all, because the categories are still only there if a human user actively put them there. Bearcat (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
I didn't say that HotCat and AWB were the culprits, I said that it could be a categorisation tool, and gave HotCat and AWB as ecamples of tools that exist. There are others, and as noted below, ContentTranslation is high on the list of suspects.
As a parallel, there are tools that add WikiProject banners to talk pages, and at least two of these (I think that one of them is called Rater) works from a predefined list, and if that list gets out of date (such as by a WikiProject template being deleted at TfD), the tool can still add that WikiProject to talk pages, which then gain a redlink instead of a banner. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:39, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
I can't categorically state that it's never been the same editor twice, but it's usually been a different editor each time I've seen it, generally a brand new one with little or no prior edit history (although Ziak obviously proves that that's not always the case either). Socking had occurred to me, but the problem is that since there's generally one or two articles each time I see this, but then I move on and do other things, the incidents become a lot harder to find again in my edit history in order to collect them for an SPI check. (It would be so helpful if there were a way for me to search my contribution history for specific edit summaries I may have used!) Ziak was a draft, yes, but this doesn't only hit drafts, and also hits mainspace articles sometimes as well.
I'm not sure the French Wikipedia even has draftspace, to be honest — certainly if I go to WP:AFC and click on its French interlang, I don't get taken to an "Articles pour création" queue filled with "drafts", but to a page for requesting review of userspace sandbox pages. Bearcat (talk) 12:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
So if the French article has portal links on it that seem to match up with a WikiProject category, then it "translates" the portal into the WikiProject category. That makes perfect sense, and almost certainly explains what's been happening. Seems odd that this would only happen for French translations and virtually never for anything else, but such is life sometimes. Thanks for the catch! Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Please don't post on multiple talk pages with the same question within a day of each other. The answer to your question can be found on WP:CATEGORIZATION, a page that you should consider reading thoroughly. - car chasm (talk) 03:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
@Carchasm: Thinker78 has not posted on multiple talk pages with the same question, so far as I can tell. They posted on one page, and left the above note directing people to that page. This is permitted by WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I noticed that the Category:Assassinated American politicians doesn't get many views. Maybe an average of 5 daily. At first I was thinking it could be that the term is not searched much in engines. According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, there are no valid ngrams to plot. According to Google Trends, there is not enough data to show. One would be inclined to conclude that the search term is at fault.
Hello, is there a tool that, given a category that's well-populated on another language wiki, quickly populate the enwiki version of the category with articles that exist on both language wikis?
E.g. Category A on jawiki contains 100 pages and I just created the same category on enwiki, and I want to add all the pages that exist on both wikis to the enwiki version. toobigtokale (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Various category problems
I've come across many different category problems within tennis-related articles (though similar problems exist in other categories too). Here are some examples:
Each of these examples is a just a representative of many similar occurrences. All of these problems can be fixed manually of course, but there are so many of them, and finding them and fixing them is a very labour-intensive process. Any suggestions on how to simplify or automate or semi-automate the process of identifying such problems and of fixing them?. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm a long-time AWB user, but these sorts of issues don't fit well with AWB's capabilities. For example, detecting which articles have categories which duplicate a parent, or those where the category keys are missing, wrong or inconsistent between articles. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
I wonder how many of the heads of government subcats could probably be renamed (or possibly split) to fit in one of the other trees. - jc3706:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
@Marcocapelle @Jc37 I also favour just calling heads of government who weren't also simultaneously heads of state (like the POTUS or some other president) "prime ministers". Some countries like Germany and Austria prefer calling them "chancellor" etc. but "prime minister" or "premier (ministre)" (or "first minister" in Scotland and Canada, or "chief minister" in Sierra Leone) are by far the most common titles for this office. List of spouses of heads of government provides a handy overview.
Although in some countries the head of state (president or monarch) is largely a ceremonial position and less powerful than the prime minister (e.g. the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria etc.), while in other countries the prime minister is clearly subordinate to the head of state (president or monarch; e.g. France, Thailand, PR of China etc.), we may assume that in countries where the president is both head of state and head of govt, the head of state function is the more important one. (E.g. being commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces arguably falls under the head-of-state Powers of the president of the United States; this is not something that they need to agree on with other ministers in their government, let alone Congress, although he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments.)
I think it was established in an earlier CFD, if I am not mistaken actually the 2010 CFD nominated by BHG, that we shouldn't categorise presidents as "heads of government" if they are also already heads of state, the presumption being that the latter is the more important function. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:12, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
Anyway, as I said on my talk page: I was thinking I could also BOLDly create Category:Lists of spouses of prime ministers (as a child of Category:Spouses of prime ministers) already? Or should I wait with that? Some people may object that not all heads of government are called "prime minister", even though like 95% are. The advantage of calling every head of govt who isn't simultaneously head of state a "prime minister" is that there can be no confusion whether it also includes presidents who are also head of govt. It won't. That clarity is what we should strive for.
I think maybe there is far more than prime ministers in history. No need to circumscribe the category only to modern countries or the history of industrialized nations. Who were the heads of government of the Aztec Empire for example? What about polities in ancient Muslim societies? The Roman and Greek republics? The Persian Empire? Ancient African nations? Regards, Thinker78(talk)23:28, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
@Thinker78: except for Athens and Rome the answer is simple, the monarch was the government. Neither in Athens nor in Rome there was an office "head of government". Marcocapelle (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Disagree. Head of Government is a good general name for heads of government, particularly those who aren't head of state. Depending on the system, a president could be a head of state or a head of government and head of state. I think it is a mistake to rename to "prime minister" heads of government with other titles. Newystats (talk) 05:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
I just realized this is about heads of government and not assassinated heads of government. If you see the actual category it is populated with many pages besides prime ministers and presidents. Therefore, I don't agree with the proposal. Regards, Thinker78(talk)19:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
What is the protocol for categories that only have one page in them? While doing some work for WP:Louisiana I noticed someone create a new category for something that only has one page that could go inside. Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer features the information for former coaches which in turn is in the catevory created today that I am concerned about is "Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer coaches".
I was thinking about creating a category for events mentioned in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire," but I can definitely see how that could be considered trivial. Certainly the election of Harry Truman is not most notable for its inclusion in a Billy Joel song, but there are song events that are arguably best remembered for their inclusion in the song (Syringe Tide comes to mind). I feel that this could be a useful category, but would like others' input. Remainsuncertain (talk) 21:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
The Crimes ones should be about particular events which were of a criminal nature, such as the Hatton Garden job. The Crime ones should be about more general topics, such as changes to the law and the events that precipitated the change. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:13, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
a) Homicide > Infanticide > Child sacrifice > Cronus > Children of Cronus
b) Politicians > Heads of state > Monarchs > Monarchs in Greek mythology > Kings in Greek mythology
Both categories have actually more paths to Zeus than those. I had the same question not long ago (but can't remember where), and I was given the code for a query at quarry:, and I used that to retrieve the above results. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Hello! What's the best way to remove the Cuisine by country category from this archive page: Talk:Cuisine of Luxembourg/Archive 1? It was linked by someone in a discussion thread and I don't want to modify any of the content since archive content generally should not be edited. BaduFerreira (talk) 13:37, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
@BaduFerreira For future reference: When a category is being mentioned, rather than assigned to a page, it needs a ":" before the word "Category". That's what was missing and has now been fixed. PamD13:56, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Oh okay, I was looking for a way to preserve the linked category without removing it outright but I misinterpreted Michael's comment as to just remove it entirely. Thank you for the heads-up! BaduFerreira (talk) 14:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
List of all articles of a category and its subcategories?
Dear Categoryographers,
I know how to use Special:CategoryTree to find the tree of subcategories of a given category. But suppose I just wanted the list of articles that belong to a category or its subcategories? For a high-level category like Category:Mathematics, it's totally infeasible to construct this by hand from the tree; is there a better way?
Beware that some things that look like subcategories aren't. Most Many unexpected categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route. Certes (talk) 19:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Certes, as a person who does not think about categories at all (well, maybe on those occasions when I draft a new article), I'm afraid your comment is a bit obscure -- can you spell your meaning out more for me? (If the wmcloud massviews calculation can be believed (I'm not 100% sure), there are roughly 16,000 articles in Cat:Math and its subcats, so it couldn't really be true that most categories belonged in the Cat:Math tree in that case, right?) --JBL (talk) 19:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
@Certes@JayBeeEll Rather than Most categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route., I think what is shown here is that "Most articles are in subcats of Mathematics by some devious route." Not quite the same. PamD22:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
I started finding example surprising subcategories but then noticed that the original query was about articles. "Most" may be an exaggeration, but there are certainly surprising subcats. Some category examples:
These aren't isolated examples; I think a lot of the category tree can be traced back to Mathematics by at least one route where the individual steps are plausible even if the overall effect can be confusing. Certes (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Ok interesting, thanks. This seems like pretty compelling evidence that the 16,000 or so articles found by https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ are only a small fraction of the total; maybe it has a cutoff for how deep in the tree it looks (though it seems, based on Certes' examples, that even five levels deep is enough to find some stuff pretty distant from the core topic area). --JBL (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I just stumbled across Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories, as you kindly linked it in an edit summary which I found when trying to fix something you'd already fixed. I'd spotted two of the three deliberate self-categorisations and will make a note of Noindexed so I don't try to "mend" it. I've applied a few different solutions such as finding better parents or nominating the category for deletion, but will leave it to the experts in future now I know that someone with a clue is on the case. Certes (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
That one's easy, see these edits. I only added the cat to two articles because those were the only ones transcluding the navbox that weren't categorised properly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Some are clear-cut: A is a subset of B but not vice versa. However, most cases have a Venn diagram with two significant crescents. For example, Animals of Foo and Wildlife of Foo are similar but only the first includes livestock and only the second includes flora. These I have left alone, as neither category link is obviously better than the other, though there is a case for removing both. Certes (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Really? I'd have thought that Animals was almost synonymous with (and hence redundant to) Fauna. Wildliferefers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area, so it could be interpreted as another synonym for Fauna or as a wider class including flora etc. which sounds like a parent category rather than a subcat. Perhaps the problem is that many categories lack precise definitions (or that I'm too thick to find them). Certes (talk) 22:04, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Cirrus search, despite its limitations, has more features than many editors realise. AWB can also produce lists, even if the user has no intention of editing those pages with AWB. For editors familiar with SQL, there are Quarry and {{Database report}}, though both take far longer to code than PetScan. Of course, we have WhatLinksHere. Certes (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
That bug occurs when one copies the "Link to a pre-filled form...", pastes it into a wikitext or HTML page then views that in a browser (details). Certes (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but it also sometimes happens in other scenarios, too, e.g.:
That is surprising. I've not seen that behaviour before, and it doesn't fit the explanation I gave in the details link above. Perhaps there are multiple related bugs. Certes (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Now the situation of Petscan is worse. Can't even access the tool and there is instead some message, "Wikimedia Cloud Services Error. This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project." Regards, Thinker78(talk)18:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Possible template to expand underfilled categories.
{{Import from list}}. Sometimes, a list article has more bluelinked entries than a corresponding category. The idea is that this template would be placed on the category page. Thoughts? Mach61 (talk) 02:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
What we desperately need is a flag to say which categories record a strict is-a relationship and which, although still valuable, record an "is somehow related to" relationship. Then we can have trees limited to is-a links. However, I'm too lazy to spend the rest of my life adding those flags, so I can't really expect anyone else to volunteer either. Certes (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
I would do it for the articles that I work on if it would work reliably, and probably for some others too, but it would indeed be an immense task. · · · Peter Southwood(talk): 18:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
The vagueness of relatedness is a serious shortcoming of the category method. Wikidata handles such questions by separate properties such as "Instance of", "Part of", "Subset of", "Located in", "Author of", "Parent of", "Influenced by", "Employed by", and so forth. I figure supplementing the cat system with a lot of template flags would take forever and a day, whilst cooking up an easier way to look at the tree through WD might take only half the time. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I do not follow WD development closely, but is there a way to do the equivalent of looking a the category listing? On enwiki, we can walk up and down the tree, but last I knew of WD we could walk up from an article ("A is-a B") but not back down ("what else is-a B?"). DMacks (talk) 02:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
the tool it is based on, Wikidata generic tree, which might be a bit less convenient to use because you need to figure out how to tweak the URL for it to do what you need
I have taken the liberty of separating the last few replies into a new section. The big disadvantage of Wikidata SPARQL queries is that they are command lines. If we don't stay in touch with the ancient command traditions of Unix, DOS, and the like, we quickly forget how to do it. A year or two ago, WD had an "Entity Graph" feature. Click on the three dots to the right of the Q number. This created and ran a query to show every directly related WD item, and the Property that relates them, and some of the secondary (related to related) items if there was space enough in the window. The past few months, it has not worked; it always comes back as "Query is malformed". Seems to me the Entity Graph would be a useful feature, but it has been broken a long time. Perhaps a wide gulf has opened up, between WD and WP editors. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but just wondering about something!
Okay, hi! I'm really new to editing Wikipedia, so I'm sorry if this is totally the wrong place for this or if this is a subject that has already been discussed to death.
I've been using the "Go to a random page in Category:All uncategorized pages" link in the Wikipedia:Task Center to add categories to a bunch of pages (I've probably made a couple of mistakes, I'm sorry if so!) and the majority of the pages coming up are uncategorized Template pages. I wanted to put a dent in this issue so I went to look at Category:Wikipedia template categories, and it's... really confusing/overwhelming to look at. The Talk page is pretty dead (no new posts there since early 2022), so I came here to ask about it instead. Might there be some way to make this category less overwhelming to view/understand? It could be as easy as more clearly visually separating the first 5 items ("Wikipedia templates by...") from... the huge list of random templates.
I just wanted to raise it because clearly keeping on top of categorizing Templates is a bigger issue than categorizing Articles, and making it easier/more approachable might lead more people to contribute to this task!
And it looks as if WP:Petscan ignores templates, by default, so searching on "All uncategorized pages" gets 107 hits. (I thought PetScan was something terribly technical until I actually looked at it and found how simple it is to use!) PamD07:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough! I'm certainly happy to give Petscan a shot. I was just asking because I was thinking I'd be down to go categorize a bunch of templates if that would be useful, but if categorizing articles would be more helpful I'll do that instead :) KRKwrites (talk) 08:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Propose: Allow individual category members to be annotated with descriptions or comments
I would like to request an option to allow individual category members to be annotated with descriptions or comments so they give clear context or elaboration for any specific entry. This would not only make it clear for the readers to learn why that page name was assigned to that certain category, but it would also save some categories being considered for deletion. For example, consider Category:Super Bowl MVPs. In this case, it would be better to list the Super Bowls that player's page name ("PAGENAME") received the Super Bowl MVP in parentheses: PAGENAME (#). For example: if PAGENAME was Troy Aikman who was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVII, then it would be like this: Troy Aikman (XXVII). Here, this means that Troy Aikman was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVII.
The category system does not support that. One alternative is to have a stand-alone list article. Because it would be a manually-written article, it could be formatted in any way and include whatever details and links are desired. We have a nice table in Super_Bowl_Most_Valuable_Player_Award#Winners that could be extracted and reformatted (you can already sort it by name if you like). Do we have a category MOS relating to use of a more-detailed/alternately-organized list in the header of a category itself? Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for a comparison of these methods. DMacks (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I couldn't seem to find my answer in what I thought would be the relevant PAGs, so I figured you all would be the best people to ask. I noticed a number of articles in Category:Animation controversies in television that, while I could certainly see their subject being controversial on their face, don't actually mention any sort of controversy or reactions to the subject at any point in the article, neither lead nor body. Would this be an example of overcategorization and thus should be removed from the category? I'm leaning towards removing (just because I think an article should at least mention or allude to the category it's in, not just be plausible that it could be in that category) but wanted to get some guidance here as categorization feels like it can be a contentious topic at times, even without the designation as such. Thanks all! Greenday61892 (talk) 19:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
If there's no mention of the relevant category in the article, I think removing it *should* be fairly non-controversial. In general, WP:DEFINING says
if the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead section of an article (determined without regard to whether it is mentioned in the lead), it is probably not defining.
which at least implies that something that doesn't merit any mention probably shouldn't be categorized that way. And if there's no sourced statement supporting the implicit claim made by the category, categorizing it as such would potentially run afoul of WP:V as well. If someone later adds the controversy to the article, they can always add the category to the page then (and that would be the best time to do so). Psychastes (talk) 20:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Overcategorization by things not mentioned in an article
I just had this note connected with an edit reversion. "Undid revision1231303175byJohnpacklambert(talk) It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry. This is just plain wrong practice. If we cannot be bothered to mention something in the text of an article, it is too trivial to categorize by. Categories are supposed to lead people through somewhat similar articles. A minimum expectation is that the information be mentioned in the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:09, 9 July 2024 (UTC) I recently had 4 articles I had edited get revered. This is the general tone of the edit summaries. "Undid revision1231303175byJohnpacklambert(talk) It is standard practice to include all such categories for professional athletes. Abbott played for 18 professional teams and they can't all be expected to be mentioned in this article. His teams are easily verified via the external links at the bottom of this article." I am sorry, this is just ludicrous. First off, external links are not always reliable sources, so just using them to push categories directly is problematic. Beyond this, categories are supposed to link something that means something. They need to be "defining". If playing for a team was so non-defining to a person that we do not even mention it anywhere in the text of the article, not even in a table, we should not categorize by it. This makes me think that at some level team played for becomes to close to performance by performer categories. I am sorry, but we should not be categorizing anyone by 18 different teams played, especially with the amount of other categories sports people are placed in. At least not when we do not even mention in any way all 18 teams in the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
To be fair the word "professional" above means any level of paid baseball, even in this case A level minors. We have never even agreed that all these levels of playing baseball are notable, even when we were our most generous in granting notability to sportspeople. 18 different teams is just ludicrous. It comes very close to performer by performance level of teams. I am thinking at some point this violates the rule against categorizing performer by performance.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
The Abbott article is 16 paragraphs plus tables and other things long. It still does not mention Winston-Salem Warthogs or several other teams that he is categorized by. I am not sure why all 18 teams cannot be expected to be mentioned in his article, but if we cannot expect them to be mentioned in the article, I am not sure at all why we should categorize by them.~~~~~
I think we should limit categories to things that are mentioned in the article. If it is not defining enough to mention in the article I do not think it is defining enough to categorize by.~~~~
@Johnpacklambert All you need to do is to add a section with the same informative heading "Overcategorization by things not mentioned in an article", and say "There is a discussion at .... which may be of interest to readers of this page / members of this project".
I've just come here to make exactly the same point: please do not open duplicate discussions in two (or more) places at the same time as it doesn't help anyone and just wastes other editors' time (and yours). A single concentrated discussion is going to be more productive. Thanks. PamD15:41, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization § RfC: should templates and template categories roll up into related content categories. —andrybak (talk) 02:47, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Not done Okay @Jim.henderson: after clicking on every result (with a name) from the Wikidata search @Pharos: suggested, plus the three articles I found before, I am left with six total articles that could be placed into this category, being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I feel like there is enough paintings to warrant the creation of the category and would be helpful for those people who have a very similar search of mine and don't want to search through the Wikidata items, plus it has room for expansion.
Courtesy link: Talk:Black market in wartime France § Other countries
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