Wikipedia talk:Categorization

Everyone else seems very excited about this categorization. I, however, oppose it. I think it is overkill to try to categorize articles when we should try to categorize in the articles' contexts or material(s). Are we still using "List of topics in whatever" lists? And whatever happened to the MediaWiki boxes? I don't know, maybe there is some good justification for this system. --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 17:35, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

Mediawiki boxes were *never* supposed to be used as a substitute for categorization (which has been in the works for quite a while now)- people went a bit overboard with them. That's why the first thing I did was start this page, so we can control the phenomenon. →Raul654 17:55, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks Raul, that puts a whole new light on things. I will now want look into contributing (i.e., starting a new category). --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 18:20, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

~~I have another question. I looked at Category:Monarchs. I want to start my own subcategory. How does the subcategory appear in Category:Monarchs? --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 18:32, May 30, 2004 (UTC)~~

Forget it. --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 18:36, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

Real world example of categorisation

I don't know if this is a good ide but I thought of categorize fundamental constants of physics, chemistry, biology, matematics, etc. How could such a structure look like or should they just go under dicipline instead of "fundamental constants" ?

Fund. Const. of Phys --
                        \
Fund. Const. of Chem ----+
                         |
Fund. Const. of Math ----+-- Fundamental Constants of Nature -- Mathematics and Nature Science
                         |
                         .
                         .
                         .
                        etc

or should it be

Fundamental Constants of Physics --
                                   \
                  Other category -- + Physics -+
                                               |
                                               |
Fundamental Constants of Chemistry             |
                                  \            |
                Other category -- + Chemistry -+
                                               |
                                               +- Mathematics and Nature Science
                                               | 
                                               . 
                                               . 
                                               . 
                                              etc

or any other ideas ? // Rogper 22:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You can do both at the same time. One subcategory can belong to several categories. Andris 00:32, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

To be more explicit about it (remember to prefer lowercase for titles...

 /--Physics<------Fundamental constants of physics-----\
 |                                                     |
 +--Chemistry<----Fundamental constants of chemistry---+
...                       ...                         ...
 +--Foo<----------Fundamental constants of foo---------+
 |                                                     |
 V                                                     V
Natural sciences                         Fundamental constants
 |
 \---->Science

I enjoy these ASCII diagrams far too much. grendel|khan 00:47, 2004 May 31 (UTC)

Category format options?

Is it possible to format the listing of the sub-categories and the contained articles? E.g. if I add Albert Einstein to the Category:People, could I use [[Category:People|Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)]] not only to sort him by Einstein, but also to display the results with the year? The current list in the categories are a little though to read.

Also, how much introduction text is suggested for a category scheme? One line like e.g. Category:Harry Potter, none like Category:Films, or a lengthy introduction that makes the category more like an article like Category:Japanese culture (made by me for demonstration purposes)? -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

For topmost catagories (such as Category:World War II), it's a good idea to give some discussion. For subcatagories (such as Category:World War II people) you probably don't need as much. →Raul654 07:25, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

That [[Category:People|Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)]] trick is supposed to work, but my own experiment with it says it doesn't work properly. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:32, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, it only affects the sort order, not the display. Bummer. -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:57, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's more or less useless. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:02, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice to specify what the link should look like with the pipe, so that [[Category:Television Shows|Firefly]] in the Firefly (television series) shows Firefly in the Television Shows category, instead of Firefly (television series). - Jeandré, 2004-05-31t20:57z

Categories link and picture placement

I've noticed that the current placement of the "Categories" link at the top-right corner of an article will force a picture in the article into the center of the screen. I'm trying to format the Batman article, for instance, so that the image is on the right side of the screen and not in the center. However, I can't seem to figure out how to place the picture without it being forced into the center by the categories assigned to that article. Please advise. --Modemac 11:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. The picture is a bit lower because the category links are above it, but otherwise it looks just like i think it should -- Chris 73 | Talk 12:31, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Changing category names

How is this done? I feel that Category:Actors and Actresses should not have Actresses capitalised. It would also be good to rename the singular categories like Category:Poet. It seems I'm not allowed to move the category page. Lupin 11:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

User page in category??

I was surprised to see that it seems possible to add a user page to a category. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Harry_Potter for an example: there is a load of HP articles, then an individual's user page. Surely this is not a great idea?? --Nevilley 11:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it for now. It was a link under the section Pages I've made significant contributions to, which was done incorrectly. I changed the link from [[Category:Harry Potter]] to [[:Category:Harry Potter]]. I usually do not touch other peoples user pages, but I hope adding the : is OK in this case. -- Chris 73 | Talk 12:22, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I could see categories of Wikipedians emerging, like the various voluntary pages over on meta (m:Wikipedians categorized by sub-cultural affiliation). But users shouldn't be in the same category with articles. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:05, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

We should also make sure that talk pages do not get added to categories by the same mistake. I made some comments on this talk page about Category:Chess players earlier and forgot : at the beginning. This page was then added to chess player category. Andris 17:36, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

Category redirects

Redirects don't work properly with categories, and I think we will need them to work properly.

Already we have Category:Sport and Category:Sports. What is needed here is:

For Category:Sports to automatically redirect to Category:Sport, so that someone trying to visit Category:Sports gets redirected to Category:Sport, just as with Sport and Sports, and
for all the pages categorized into Catgeory:Sports to be listed on page Category:Sport as if they had been categorized into Category:Sport in the first place.

-- Dominus 11:40, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't it be "Sports"? -- User:Docu

In British English at least, Sport sounds better. Sports might be prefered in American English. Hence we need category equivalence/category redirection. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 12:58, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

People by name

Is there a way to build a list like List of people by name ? -- User:Docu

My guess is add them to the appropriate categories, like The Beatles or Australian Prime Ministers or Canadian hockey players or whatever. Eventually, the parent groups will lead back to People. And then the admins can autogenerate some list from all that data?

Then again, you have (for example) Silverchair in Australian musicians in Australian people in People. Silverchair is a band, not an individual, suitable under Australian musicians, but not under People. So now I am also confused! --Chuq 12:12, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

.. and Category:The Beatles doesn't include only bio articles about each member, e.g. John Lennon. Maybe we could include a category like [[Category:People by name|Lennon, John]] in his article. "People by name" doesn't look that nice on his article though. "Biographies" might do? -- User:Docu

I think definitely that articles that are ultimately included in Category:People should be about individuals only. In terms of bands, how about something like this?

John Lennon---The Beatles members---The Beatles-----Musical groups---------Music
       |                     \                                              /
       |                      British musicians--British people--People   /
       |                              \                          /      /
       -Vocalists----------------------Musicians-----------------     /
       |                  /                 \                       /
       -Guitarists------/                     \-------------------/

(does that look right?) Or is that too much? - Lee (talk) 14:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

You omitted Category:John Lennon ;) -- User:Docu

Naming conventions

Removed from the page:

Non-gendered terms are required. Category:Actors and Actresses is used instead of Category:Actors or Category:Actresses.

I fail to see why we couldn't have gender specific categories, e.g. there is a list of famous women in history, and we could also have a similar category. -- User:Docu

The idea that categories should be plural really should be re-examined. Shakespeare was a playwright, not a playwrights. Elizabeth II is a monarch, not a monarchs, a queen, not a queens, a female, not a females, a woman, not a women. John XIII was a pope, not a popes. - Nunh-huh 20:52, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Non-existent articles

I propose that non-existent articles in a category should always be listed on the category page itself. Example: Category:Documentary films. This ensures that we can completely port over existing lists.--Eloquence * 15:58, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

I agree, this is an excellent idea! Andris 17:44, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

Countries vs. occupations

I just categorized chess players and I am wondering if they should be categorized by country (with players page linking to, say, Category:Latvian chess players and then Category:Latvian chess players linking to Category:Chess players). This page seems to imply so but I do not quite like this idea.

Right now, a person can go to Category:Chess players and use that to look up players. That is very convenient. If players are subdivided by country, he will have to click on each country. And, if a person is looking for a player but does not know from which country that player is, he will have particular difficulty finding the player. So, I think it might be better to have links from players page to both Category:Chess players and to country's category (Category:People of Latvia).

I am fine with dividing politicians into categories by country, since, if you are looking for politicians, you most likely are looking for politicians from a particular country. I am not quite fine with doing that for occupations like chess or mathematics, where national identities are less emphasized. Any thoughts? Andris 16:25, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

Just call them chess players. If you can find some useful subdivison of "chess players", then use that. But I am in full agreement that dividing by country is not a useful way of dividing that category. Hopefully somebody will come up with a tool that makes it easy to perform bulk recategorization so decisions like this can be easily changed. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:36, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

For politicians grouping by countries seems indeed a better idea compared to chess players. Maybe we should update the sample to reflect this. -- User:Docu

Silly question...lists of Categories?

Silly question here...why on the Categorization page are we making lists of categories? I thought that's what the categorization system was for? --ssd 17:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

(Edited the title) -- User:Docu

The idea here is that one can list which categories one is working on, and display a simplified tree structure for the categories. You can't do that with a category page. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:43, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Singular writers

It looks like there is a slight problem over in the writers category where some subcategories have been created in the sigular version. For example:

Category:Children's writer
Category:Playwright
Category:Poet

I've already seen that it is non-trivial to move/rename a category, and Playwrights and Poets already contain quite a few members. Is this a case were category redirects are required? -- Solipsist 18:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

The naming convention indicates it should be singular, I think. Also, there are catagories called writers and catagories called authors, so the singular/plural thing is not the only problem. I was going to move one of these category names and edit all the articles under it, but wiki wouldn't let me, so I've left the names as is. --ssd 20:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at Wikipedia:Categorization you will find that all the examples are given in the plural. We're trying to revamp the system by renaming all singular titles to plurals.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo (Talk)]] 20:53, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

The trouble is that the tags are applied to singular items, suggesting they should be singular. Milton was a poet, not a poets. - Nunh-huh 20:58, 31 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Categories and the Wikipedia namespace

I've noticed people adding Wikipedia: namespace articles to categories. I don't think this is correct. E.g. someone just added Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles to three categories, one of which, Category:Automobiles, is a definite 'encyclopedia space' category. In general, we follow a 'don't link to Wikipedia: from the article namespace' policy, for good reason, and this appears to violate it.

I can see the point of categorising Wikipedia: namespace articles too, but I have my reservations about having these categories in the same namespace as the regular categories.

Thoughts? —Morven 20:04, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

I hesitated to do it. Finally, I added a WikiProject as a see also to the description of the category only. On the other hand, we'd probably avoid some problems, if the category feature would sort articles by namespace or only include pages in article namespace.

BTW If we want to create a category for WikiProjects, can we do it? Should it be Category:WikiProjects or Category:Wikipedia:WikiProject ? -- User:Docu