Wikipedia talk:Categorization

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

Should we make sure a false Category has other entries before removing it

If I come across a person who lived 1712-1798 and find that they are in Category:19th-century French merchants (which oddly enough does not exist) am I justified in removing it even if it is the only article in that category, or do I have to instead leave it there and file a formal petition to delete the category. Either way this illustrates that we need to come up with much better rules against overly narrow intersection categories, because the uncontroversial edit I outline above should not require such an extensive process to accomplish.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:37, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

You should remove it if it is wrong. Someone else can then file for deletion of a category with no members. Bondegezou (talk) 07:14, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

See also link to m:Help:Sorting

The link above appears in §See also, but following it lands you at a soft redirect page pointed at mw:Help:Sortable tables. While I could just update the link to point there, IMHO that target page title seems pretty clearly unrelated to this page — I'm more inclined to just remove the link completely. If anyone objects, speak up... FeRDNYC (talk) 22:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@FeRDNYC: We have a lot of help links that go to Meta, which did have some pretty good help pages. In recent months, Pppery (talk · contribs) has converted many of these pages on meta: into soft redirects to mw: but unfortunately, the pages on mw: are often not as comprehensive as those on meta: were. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Context for that process is mw:Season of Docs/2024/Proposal. The Meta documentation pages were almost always unmaintained for years to a decade. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

And to be fair here even the last Meta version before I soft redirected it was almost entirely about sortable tables and had very little to do with categorization. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:12, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I would replace the link with mw:Help:Categories. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery From a quick skim of mw:Help:Categories, it doesn't seem like there's anything there that isn't already covered better in Wikipedia:Categorization, is there?

I also just noticed that, in addition to the §See also link, there's a second in-body "See also" towards the end of §Sort keys that no longer goes anywhere useful:

• Use other sort keys beginning with a space (or an asterisk or a plus sign) for any "List of ..." and other pages that should appear after the key article and before the main alphabetical listings, including "Outline of" and "Index of" pages. The same technique is sometimes used to bring particular subcategories to the start of the list.

Sort order of characters before numbers and Latin alphabet (0–9, A–Z) is (partial list):

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 9 : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` A Z a z { | } ~ É é —

See also: Meta:Help:Sorting#Sort modes for more information.

There is a §Sort modes at mw:Help:Sortable tables, but it still reads as awfully table-centric. FeRDNYC (talk) 04:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

On the see also to MediaWiki, you're right that it isn't really needed, and there's a local page Help:Category which is already linked earlier so it can just go. The sort modes thing isn't my fault - the Meta content before the move was itself very specific to tables. No opinion on whether than should be bypassed or removed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:59, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery For the record, in my personal view "fault" doesn't come into it. (Blame is boring,anyway.) Your work cleaning up our vast messes of disorganized behind-the-scenes documentation is greatly appreciated! In cases where it causes other documentation to become outdated or in need of revision, then we just do that; it doesn't make your efforts any less useful or valued. This discussion is merely my attempt at pitching in with cleaning up the docs here.

As far as the actual links in question, it may simply be (and it's increasingly starting to appear this way) that there is no good, generalized documentation on the sorting routines that are apparently shared between table and category sorting (...and who knows what other contexts?). If they've only ever been documented in the context of table sorting, then that's the best we've got unless and until someone pitches in further to change things. Even so, it's useful to put our heads together and figure out where things stand. So this was still productive. Thanks! FeRDNYC (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Living people have become people who were born in 569 and died in 570, somehow

Someone has done something to a category affecting some pages I watch - e.g. Sara Walton, Naomi Cogger. These used to be in Living people date of birth unknown. Now they (and some others) are somehow in the categories for people born in 569 and died in 570. There is no change recorded in their page history though. This is clearly a mistake and if someone can figure out what happened and how to stop it continuing to happen (other than just deleting the category from their pages and reapplying living people with date of birth unknown) that would be great. DrThneed (talk) 21:56, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Those were added by User:Dr vulpes (pinging) for some reason: special:diff/1243396802, special:diff/1243406640 2001:14BA:9C0B:AC00:D6A:195F:D996:A791 (talk) 22:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Welp we found a fun bug in AWB! Thanks for pinging me, the issue is mildly amusing. If you look at the infobox you have what appears to be a link to Wikidata for their birthday {{#statements:P569}}. Since the template isn't being picked up by AWB (or something like that) it put their birthday as 569. And the date of death property is P570. I'll go and check some of the other WP:CHECKWIKI edits from others and see if this has accidently spread. Feel free to correct the pages that were affected, I'll try and make some time tonight after work or tomorrow to address this issue on the affected pages. Dr vulpes (Talk) 23:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah! I see. That's quite funny (and also reassuring that its probably only those two odd categories that i need to check). Cheers! DrThneed (talk) 23:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

And at the basis of these lie rather terrible edits like this one. I don't know if only one editor makes these or if more people do the same, but we have a few hundred articles that probably need reverting[1]. Fram (talk) 12:02, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Does that usage fall within the outcome of Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018 Infobox RfC? If yes, the AWB (and other tools) should be updated; if not, perhaps some clarification on appropriate usage is needed at pages such as Wikipedia:Wikidata. older ≠ wiser 12:25, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Tension between WP:NONDEFINING vs. WP:SUBJECTIVECAT and WP:CATDEF

Executive Summary: WP:SUBJECTIVECAT says "Don't have subjective categories!" but WP:CATDEF and WP:NONDEFINING say "An article should include a category for all its defining characteristics!" What if a category is both? What to do?! (And, rare-but-happens, what if the only defining category for an article is (arguably) subjective? Can we have an article with no defining characteristic, even if it meets WP:GNG?)

Drilling down into details/examples/questions, lot of words but very useful if you want to engage on the subject in much depth IMO

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WP:SUBJECTIVECAT says

Adjectives which imply a subjective, vague, or inherently non-neutral inclusion criterion should not be used in naming/defining a category. Examples include subjective descriptions (famous, popular, notable, great, important), any reference to relative size (large, small, tall, short), relative distance (near, far), or personal trait (beautiful, evil, friendly, greedy, honest, intelligent, old, ugly, young).

And fine, but then WP:CATDEF has

Be sure to include categories for all defining characteristics

and WP:NONDEFINING has

One of the central goals of the categorization system is to categorize articles by their defining characteristics

And for further elucidation has "A defining characteristic is one that reliable, secondary sources commonly and consistently define, in prose, the subject as having. For example: 'Subject is an adjective noun ...' or 'Subject, an adjective noun'. If such examples are common, each of adjective and noun may be deemed to be "defining" for subject" and also "If the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead section of an article (regardless of whether it is currently mentioned in the lead), it is probably not defining"

The last being a negative, but obviously flippable to a positive I would say. (FWIW note that it doesn't define "defining characteristic" as important or notable or necessary, but rather something that sources "commonly and consistently" mention. Could be the person's diastema, while her having been a Corn Goddess being the reason she killed all those people isn't. That's what it says, athho that's silly, and an actual definition might be "Something that the reader would find important in understanding, finding, or sorting the entity properly" or something. Mostly a defining category would be both, so I'll use that.)

OK. But what if an article has both? Maybe you don't see it a lot, but I have some articles about people who only have an article because they did something(s) heroic, which certainly could be considered subjecive usually, and it's a bone of contention. So I made a category something like Category:Individual Heroes. For instance Thomas Beloat's lede is "Thomas Beloat ... was an American sheriff of Gibson County, Indiana at the turn of the 20th century noted for stopping a lynching". The rest is like "In 1919, he was named as deputy fish and game warden...". Stopping the lynching (clearly heroic) is his defining characteristic.

But there's no ref with "Beloat, a hero, did such-and-so". But then, one ref is characterized as "Beloat was one of two law enforcement officials whose bravery in preventing lynchings in early 20th-century America was noted by Mark Twain..." (emphasis added). "Bravery", not "heroism", and the particular word "hero" is not used in any the refs (AFAIK), altho "bravery" may just be the editors choice of word.

Beloat's in Category:Indiana sheriffs etc. but that is not why he has an article. The closest to anything defining Category:Lynching in the United States, which is broad and throws him in with victims, perpetrators, towns, gangs (KKK), laws, museums, and more. Beloat should absolutely be in that category, but Gabriele von Lutzau was also notable only for being heroic but had nothing to do with lynchings, and there are others. When there's some people who only have an article because of one characteristic, it'd be quite useful for navigation to have a category for that characteristic, yes? I'd think so. This's the crux of the matter.

So, wanting to think about this tension between WP:NONDEFINING vs. WP:SUBJECTIVECAT and WP:CATDEF I am thinking of these questions:

• Should categories like Category:Individual heroes exist? (such as "Imposters", "Misers", "Rebels", "Hoaxers", "Individualists", "Heroes" (for mythic/fictional persons), "Skeptics", etc)?
• If not, then if the subject of an article doesn't have a defining category (it being deleted) should the article continue to exist? (Cos why would it?)
• If so, should an article be in, for instance, the (somewhat-subjective) Category:Misers only if two or more sources use that exact word (with pinchpenny, tightwad, stingy, etc. not counting)? Or should editors have some leeway here?
• If so, should an article be in, for instance, the (somewhat-subjective) Category:Misers only if it's mentioned in the lede, even if there are other reasons for the article to exist? Or only if it's the only reason the article exists?
• Or only in the articles where it the only important defining characteristic, cos otherwise you have an article with no defining characteristic?

(FWIW, all of these are in Category:People by behavior which is a cesspool of this stuff, because that is where I looked; there are probably other places.)

If this class of category is not (all) deleted, in theory we'd want go thru all these articles and decategorize the ones that don't have two+ references specifically saying the person's a "Bibliophile" OR that don't obviously belong in the category "Bibliophile" (if we're allowing editor leeway) OR if "Bibliophile" is not a defining characteristic and not in the lede, whichever people want. More than half are like this it seems. This'd be a huge effort and don't advocate it, but I mean in theory, and I'm thinking about in the future.

The reason I'm thinking about this is, I hate to see stuff like this picked off at random (somebody comes across "Skeptics" and has it deleted, while "Miser" etc happens to remain, luck of the draw). This leaves a gap-toothed smile, and that is not excellent, and we should strive for excellence. Have an RfC to decide if we want to this class of categories (that is, categories where many or most articles in it are because of a subjective editor opinion) or something, I'm thinking. Yeah decisions on which categories should fit in the "Not that subjective, keep this cat" and "Too subjective, dump this cat" (e.g. keep "Hoaxers", delete "Heroes" and whatever.) Oh well that is Wikipedia.

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Herostratus (talk) 18:53, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I honestly don't disagree that there are people defined by their heroism. The challenge for a neutral encyclopedia is what one person sees as a hero, the other side might see as a villain. The best way around that is to categorize people by the objective actions that made them heroic: being a civil rights activistis, or soldier, etc. And, even though I think most awards reflect the pre-existing fame, the very top national award for heroism can work too.

Balancing what's defining with what's objective can indeed be a narrow path. I'm not sure what, if any, improvements could be made here but if there are specific proposals for rewording, I'm open minded. RevelationDirect (talk) 20:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

This is an attempt of forumshopping. The actual discussion is taking place here: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2024_November_17#Category:Individual_heroes_and_heroines. Everyone is very welcome to contribute to that discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:58, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

C'mon, there's no reason to be insulting. This is a general question that rose in my mind because of that thread, yes. But as you saw, over there I wrote

It's a big global question. I posted just where people might be interested, WP:Categorization, I have no idea what [editors] there would think either way, and I deliberately avoided mentioning this thread or even the exact category name just so that people would have to dig to find us here, so it's as non-forumshopping as I could possibly do

I deliberately worked to keep those threads -- which are about different things, one specific and one general -- separated to avoid confusing the two issues. I know that that other thread will close soon, and fine. You decided to give a pointer to that different thread. Why. I really wish you hadn't done that. Herostratus (talk) 08:05, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't question your good faith here but, in order for this global conversation to be productive we'd really need specific changes proposed to the wording of WP:SUBJECTIVECAT. If you don't have that right now that's okay, but it would bring this conversation to an end, at least for me. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:49, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

List “hierarchy”(?) of categories

Hello, could you please tell me how to sort categories in the correct order at the footer of a page, if there is such a thing? Or is there a guide page I can consult? Many thanks. ChrisAdair (talk) 10:48, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

@ChrisAdair: MOS:CATORDER says Eponymous categories should appear first. Beyond that, the order in which categories are placed on a page is not governed by any single rule (for example, it does not need to be alphabetical, although partially alphabetical ordering can sometimes be helpful). Normally the most essential, significant categories appear first.

You don't say which page this concerns, so I can't make suggestions. But an article that I created fairly recently is Cambrian Railways 4-4-0 locomotives. From the article title, we have three key elements: (i) Cambrian Railways; (ii) 4-4-0; and (iii) locomotives. There is no category covering all three of these at once, so I looked for categories for the overlap of any two of the three elements: Category:Cambrian Railways locomotives exists, as does Category:4-4-0 locomotives, so I put those first. There is no category covering the other combination (Cambrian Railways 4-4-0), so I skipped that. Next, I looked for other things mentioned in the article for which a category exists, and found those for the year of introduction (which I added chronologically) and also the manufacturers (which I also added chronologically), so put those in next. Lastly came what might be called "miscellaneous" categories - Category:Scrapped locomotives and Category:Standard gauge steam locomotives of Great Britain, which I added alphabetically.

Anyway, some people try to sort the whole list alphabetically: but there is no consensus for this, see: Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 61#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories/Archive 4#re alphabetizing categories on the article pages; and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

This is great. Thank you so much! ChrisAdair (talk) 17:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Preventing unintended hierarchization

Is there an established way to prevent/reverse incorrect categorization of subcategories of categories named after people? E.g. a way to prevent Category:Actresses from Dayton, Ohio from being a subcategory of Category:State legislators of the United States via Category:Jonathan Dayton? Star Garnet (talk) 21:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Star Garnet: I don't see any of these three categories inside either of the other two. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Of course it's not directly categorized as such; the tree here is Actresses from Dayton, Ohio → Actors from Dayton, Ohio → People from Dayton, Ohio, by occupation → People from Dayton, Ohio → Dayton, Ohio → Jonathan Dayton → Members of the New Jersey Legislative Council → Members of the New Jersey Legislature → State legislators of the United States Star Garnet (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Category:Jonathan Dayton should only be categorized as Category:Wikipedia categories named after speakers of the United States House of Representatives (and possibly other eponymous category holders). Dayton's personal categories belong to his article; none apply to his category. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:51, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

The problem was that Category:Dayton, Ohio had been put into Category:Jonathan Dayton instead of the otger way round, and same with the "History of ..." category. I've reverted both. PamD 08:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

The problem still is that Category:Jonathan Dayton is in 5 categories that don't apply to 18 out of 19 members of that category. To illustrate: Jonathan Dayton High School doesn't belong in Category:Continental Congressmen from New Jersey. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:13, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

You are correct Michael. See WP:EPONYMOUS. DB1729^talk 13:33, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

New Jersey's at-large congressional district
Obsolete district
Created	1789 1801 1815
Eliminated	1799 1813 1843
Years active	1789-1799 1801-1813 1815-1843

Taking a step back, does Category:Jonathan Dayton need to exist at all? It feels sort of borderline to have a category that collects:

1. Articles about places named after him
2. Articles about his relatives
3. The majority of the category's pages, articles about elections in which he ran (sidenote: Do we really have separate articles for 1794 United States House of Representatives election in New Jersey and 1794–95 United States House of Representatives elections?)
4. Burr conspiracy (in which he was implicated)
5. New Jersey's at-large congressional district (to which he was elected)

That last page also contains this masterpiece of an infobox → , presumably constructed by the Wikipedia Cabal of Wikipedia Redundancy Cabal. FeRDNYC (talk) 03:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Removal of "First-run syndicated television programs in the United States" category

Recently I have noticed several edits of articles about television shows that removed "First-run syndicated television programs in the United States" and replaced it with "First-run syndicated game shows" (as in Juvenile Jury) or "First-run syndicated dramas" (where appropriate). Shouldn't the original category be left in place, since the new category does not mention "United States"? Eddie Blick (talk) 14:49, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes - this looks to be a very new editor who perhaps does not have that understanding, so would suggest addressing that directly with them. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:40, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, @Nikkimaria. Eddie Blick (talk) 19:48, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Excessive ancestry categories for royals

Royals, especially Medieval royals, will almost always have a mother from elsewhere, sometimes a different place each generation. This leads to lots of categories. On top of this sometimes the statement of their nationality is questionable. We have many pre-1479 royals from the Crown of Castile in 4 or more Spanish people of y descent categories. Calling anyone Spanish that early is open to question, and that many categories bring defining is questionable. Especially when their ancestry is really part of a tran-western Europe royals order, not clearly belonging to any specific "ethnic" group. This seems like a set of categories that is imposing a later understand on people in a way that dies not make sense. These categories might make sense for some post-1700 or so royals, but I think we should exclude all royals from about that year and back from descent categories. They make progressively less sense as we go further back. I think descent categories are in some cases justified, but we have placed them on way too many articles where the information is not defining. In a number of articles it is not based on any text in the article itself.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:07, 14 December 2024 (UTC)