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Organi[SZ]ations category redirects

Update: A a bot has been authorised to perform this task. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 7 was approved[1] on 6 SAugsust 2020

I think it's time to revive an idea that I floated before: creating {{Category redirect}}s to resolve the WP:ENGVAR variations in category names using the word "organisation(s)" or "organization(s)".

This is an application to category-space of the principle set out at MOS:COMMONALITY:

If one variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect page to accommodate the others, as with artefact and artifact, so that all variants can be used in searches and linking.

The problem

Over 15,000 categories contains the word "[Oo]rgani[SZ]ation(s)". Some are proper names, such as Category:International Labour Organization (more such categories can be found under Category:Wikipedia categories named after organizations.)

However the overwhelmingly majority of these categories are descriptive titles created by Wikipedia editors per WP:NDESC. See e.g. Category:Scientific organizations and its many subcats, or Category:Organizations by date of establishment plus its subcats.

The choice between the Z-spelling and the S-spelling is largely random. In categories which relate to a specific country, then where that country has particular ties to one spelling, the category can be renamed to that country's preferred usage. But this leaves two large sets of categories where the choice is essentially random, defaulting to the choice by the editor who created it:

  1. Categories not tied to a specific country, such as Category:Scientific organizations or Category:Organizations by country or Category:Organizations by year of disestablishment
  2. Categories tied to a non-English-speaking country, such as Brazil, where there is no clear ENGVAR preference.

That leaves the overwhelming majority of such categories with a basically random choice between S- and Z- spellings.

The unpredictability of spelling is a nuisance for both readers and editors, who have no means of determining which spelling to use.

Previous attempts at a solution

Back in 2017, I proposed using BHGbot to create category redirects from one spelling to the other. However, the discussion at WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 3 seemed to run into the sands, so I abandoned the idea.

Then in April 2019, I tried another approach: an RFC to set aside ENGVAR for all Wikipedia categories which use the word "organisation"/"organization" as part of a descriptive name per WP:NDESC, and standardize them to use the "Z" spelling, i.e. "organization" rather than "organisation". See WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 153#RFC:_spelling_of_"organisation"/"organization"_in_descriptive_category_names.

That discussion turned into a huge procedural trainwreck, with votestacking, multiple closes, and at least one close reviewed at WP:AN. It was finally closed as "no consensus" after more than five months ... and although the closer specifically said "no consensus, with no prejudice against speedy renomination", I have no appetite for going there again. There are I many things I could say about conduct in that RFC, but they wouldn't help. The fact is that the community doesn't seem able to discuss that idea in a way which might lead to a consensus. I still think that for metadata such as categories, standardisation of this minor variation of spelling would be good thing, but I accept that it's not gonna happen.

So that brings me back to the idea of category redirects. Having reviewed the 2017 BRFA discussion, it seems to be that I had screwed up by not having a prior discussion before opening a BRFA ... but that at BRFA, all concerns had been satisfied, with one exception: false positives.

False positives

I have looked at this from as many angles as I can find, and I can only think of one type of situation where such a redirect may inappropriate:

  • We have an article called "Foobar Organisation", with an eponymous "Category:Foobar Organisation".
    However, we also have an article called "Foobar Organization".
    If "Foobar Organization" has an eponymous "Category:Foobar Organization", then no problem: the bot won't create overwrite the existing category.
    But if "Category:Foobar Organization" doesn't exist, it would be an ambiguous title which should not be created as a redirect.

This situation seems to me to be so rare that it probably doesn't exist at all. If there is significant concern about this, I could screen for such cases by adding another layer of list-comparison to my checks, but I don't think that it is needed.

UPDATE: I just did check of this, using data dumps from 25 July. The result of my processing is 12,461 entries in my list of redirect-cats-to-create if the bot is run. The number of false positives (cases where the proposed new redirect matches the name of an existing article) is zero. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed new BRFA

If there is consensus here, I propose to open a new BRFA. Using new tools which give me a list of all existing categories, I propose to use BHGbot to create these spelling-variation redirects to all categories which include the whole word "[Oo]rgani[sz]ation(s)". That would include proper names, and project categories as well as content categories.

The methodology is:

  1. Get a list of all categories which do not transclude {{Category redirect}} or {{Category disambiguation}}, and whose title matches the whole word "[Oo]rgani[sz]ation(s)" ... Cryptic's quarry:query/46899
  2. Use the Linux sed tool to convert the titles in list at step 2 from "[Oo]rganisation(s)" to "[Oo]rganization(s)", and vice versa
  3. use the Linux comm tool to compare the list from step 2 with a list of categories from quarry:query/45923, and exclude any category which already exists. That creates the list of category pages to be created as redirects.
  4. Check the creation list for the #False positives described above, by removing any titles which also exist in a list of all article pages. I don't think this step is needed, but it's a simple addition.
  5. Use WP:AWB to take each of the category page titles in the list from step 4, and
    • skip the page if it already exists. (This should happen only if the category page has been created since the lists were made)
    • use an AWB custom module to:
      • if the title of the category page includes the whole word "[Oo]rganisation(s)", create a redirect to the same title, but with the spelling changed to "[Oo]rganization(s)"
        e.g. the page Category:Anti-Foobar organisations would be created with the content {{Category redirect|Anti-Foobar organizations|bot=BHGbot}}
      • if the title of the category page includes the whole word "[Oo]rganization(s)", create a redirect to the same title, but with the spelling changed to "[Oo]rganisation(s)"
      • if the title of the page category includes neither "[Oo]rganisation(s)" nor "[Oo]rganization(s)", then skip it. This should never happen, but it is a safety-check against any corruption of the list.

Yesterday, I did a trial run of list-making, which gave me a list of 12,639 {{category redirect}}s to create. If the bot is approved, I will rebuild the list so that it's up-to-date.

Please give your feedback on either the principle or the methodology, or both.

Discussion of Organi[SZ]ations category redirects

comments, supports/opposes, flames, questions etc here please
  1. The problem is as set out above in the section labelled #The problem ... viz that

    The unpredictability of spelling is a nuisance for both readers and editors, who have no means of determining which spelling to use

    That's why I propose creating category redirects. Sadly, I don't see any sign that you read the proposal before replying. Please will you take the time to read it now?
  2. There is no attempt to circumvent any guideline or policy. Please identify which part of the MOS you think is being circumvented.
  3. Almost an hour before User:Only in death posted here, I have left a notice[2] about this discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Proposal_to_mass-create_category_redirects_to_resolve_ENGVAR_variation_in_the_spelling_of_"organi[sz]ations". This proposal does not attempt to change or any breach any policy or guideline or established practice; it is simply a technical proposal to create redirects to accommodate a WP:ENGVAR issue, so there is no need to hold the discussion there. Even a mention at VPP was arguably excessive, but I prefer to err on the side of over-notification. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:43, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose If the extent of the 'problem' is that editors are briefly unsure if to use S or Z, that can be fixed with a one line addition to the MOS consisting of "Pick whatever, virtually no one cares and of the tiny amount who do, no doubt one will be along shortly to 'correct' it." This appears to be completely a non-issue and I would want to see substantially more actual evidence (not mere assertations) that there is a legitimate issue to solve before creating loads of pointless redirects. Which from the proposals and previous discussions, only appear to be needed to satisfy some editors preference for one spelling to display over another. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • @User:Only in death, it seems that you misunderstand the problem.
    The issue is simply that readers and editors don't know which spelling to use, and in many cases there is no established guidance which will allow a reader or editor to determine which spelling is correct. A redirect resolves the problem, because an editor or reader can use either spelling and achieve the desired result.
    This is not a novel idea: it's actually part of the MOS, at MOS:COMMONALITY:

    If one variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect page to accommodate the others, as with artefact and artifact, so that all variants can be used in searches and linking.

    This proposal just applies that long-established principle consistently to this corner of category space; it's already used in about 3,000 such categories, so this is just using a bot to finish the job.
    There are currently 84869 Category redirect pages. This proposal would add only ~12,500, which is an increase of less than 15%.
Your suggestion of Pick whatever 'cos no doubt one will be along shortly to 'correct' it is flawed in three respects:
  1. It doesn't help readers who are looking for the category title, because no-one will appear to correct their search.
  2. If an article is miscategorised due to the use of a wrong spelling variant, that is nearly always because it has been listed at Special:WantedCategories. That cleanup page is nearly always backlogged (it currently has 472 entries). If redirects can reduce the need for humans to do the work, why not use them?
  3. If a an editor adds an article to Category:Foobar organisations in some country and it turns out to be a redlink, they may not be aware that it exists under a different spelling ... so they may just remove the category per WP:REDNOT.
And no, this is not about satisfy[ing] some editors preference for one spelling to display over another. On the contrary, the whole pint of it is that it will not change the spelling which is displayed on any unredirected page. It's about making the spelling a non-issue by making either variant usable ... and the fact that you make that allegation is evidence that you don't understand what is proposed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
I understand perfectly well. You have yet to provide any evidence or coherant argument as to what actual problem exists that needs to be fixed, or why per rath below spelling needs to be standardised. If you cannot in a couple of short sentences explain succintly what the issue is, then that is your problem. As an aside, special wanted categories is makework. It could be ignored forever and have zero impact on the encyclopedia. I've said my piece, taking this page off my watch list. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:46, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
@User:Only in death, with respect, you clearly do misunderstand: this is not a proposal to standardise spelling. It is a proposal to adopt the usual en.wp workaround to lack of standardised spelling. (That's Rathfelder's point. Standardisation would be one way of fixing the problem. Redirects are the other .. and since standardisation was rejected, I propose creating redirects.).
And the problem is very clearly described: there is no correct spelling for most of these categories, so redirects remove the need for readers and editors to guess which variant is being used.
Exactly the same issue exists in article space, where the MOS supports using redirects. Far from being an attempt to circumvent a widely accepted MOS guideline as you wrongly asserted in your first comment, it's actually an attempt to apply the MOS. Your choice not to read the linked and quoted part of the MOS is not a flaw in my explanation.
However, since you regard Special:WantedCategories as makework, you clearly have no interest in ensuring that articles are accurately categorised as editors intend. That's a choice which you are quite entitled to make ... but it's no basis for opposing the work of those editors who do try make categorisation work. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:04, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I dont think any of the editors involved in categoris(z)ation give a damn about "one spelling to display over another". But whenever we try to standardize the spelling of organisation categories we are defeated by people who get very excited about it. Hours of work are wasted for no purpose. Rathfelder (talk) 16:00, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support; this seems to me to be an entirely harmless proposal that can remove a persistent annoyance. While there are a lot of ise/ize ENGVAR variations, from a category perspective "organi(s/z)ation" is probably the most frequently problematic, and certainly one I'd appreciate because I've been exposed to both spellings for so long that neither ever looks wrong. We'd have no general problem with redirecting any "Foobar Organisation" article to "Foobar Organization", and I'm really not seeing any reason why the same should not apply to categories; this appears to be a fairly systematic and clean implementation of this, and BHG really does seem to have thought through most of the obvious issues. ~ mazca talk 01:11, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • BrownHairedGirl, would this see a respelling of categories on pages? For instance, will pages that display the {{use British English}} template, or are just written in using that spelling convention, have organisation amended to organization? Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 01:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC).
Support, so long as this proposal does not involve changes to main space I see it as a good idea. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 13:05, 26 July 2020 (UTC).
  • Question: Does the proposal solve the #The problem? I understand that category redirects don't function the same way ordinary redirects do. Editors can't use them, they don't change the display for readers. Speaking of readers: when do readers face a spelling problem? They just click on the category as provided, no? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:23, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
    Readers face a spelling problem if they want to browse a category without going via an article in that category - they have to guess whether the category uses s or z spelling. If they guess wrong (e.g. Category:Fair trade organisations) and there is no redirect in place they get either search results (that may or may not include the category they are looking for), an invitation to search or an invitation to start the category (which depends on exactly how they navigated, whether they are logged in (and if so whether they have permission to create pages in category space), whether they are using a desktop or app, and possibly other factors; in a best case scenario they are one click away from what they are looking for, often 2-3 clicks away, in a worst case scenario they have to search again. It is not possible to reliably predict which it will be on average because the data to determine that is not available to editors (if the WMF even collect it, I don't know). If there is a category redirect in place then they are always exactly one click away from the category (and that link is far more prominent).
    Editors can use category redirects in the same way they use normal categories. e.g. if an editor adds a page to Category:Organisations based in Indonesia then all that happens is another editor or a bot will come along later and move the article to Category:Organizations based in Indonesia. Thryduulf (talk) 12:09, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
    Just a small addendum to Thryduulf's very helpful explanation:
    If you use WP:HOTCAT to add or change a category, in most cases HOTCAT will resolve the redirect before saving. So there's nothing for a bot to cleanup.
    (Aside: HotCat is one of those gadgets that every editor should use. It makes the task easier and more accurate, leaves clear edit summaries, and has no downsides.) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • My preferable solution would to abolish this nonsense of a problem and create a consistent naming scheme in category space, but editors be editors. So support this. One comment though, I'd be a bit more happy if when done, you'll change {{Category redirect}} to accept a second parameter so all categories of this nature will be placed in a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia soft redirected categories instead of at the top level. At some point, a 100k size category is pointless. --Gonnym (talk) 11:56, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. This seems like an obviously beneficial thing to do that will help editors and readers. I would have expected to see this discussion advertised at the proposals village pump so I will add a link there using similar wording to that you used at the policy village pump. Thryduulf (talk) 12:09, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support theoretical concept. Having been involved in the 2019 Village Pump discussion I can remember how heated it became. In note to another commentator, the issue doesn't matter until it actually does, and the discussion I referred to above is worth a read to see how much of an issue it became. In an ideal world it shouldn't be an issue, however as humans this is how it is. Just to ask what became of the 2017 Bot? What was it that made it not be progressed further? The proposal sounds like a good theoretically policy solution to the problem. Not having much to do with BRFA I think it will be up to them if the technical solution is good enough to implement the policy solution regards server load etc, or how often the bot needs to run. The "false positive" issue you raised above seems such an edge case that I don't think it matters - do you know how many pages fall into such an issue? I would suspect in the "false positive" case it just needs an interested editor to make a manual edit. I note in the 2019 discussion there was some chat of bringing over an option in Chinese wikipedia to have a similar option for en-US vs en-GB/Aus/Can/etc. - is this an easier technical solution? - Master Of Ninja (talk) 09:20, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  1. The 2017 Bot proposal kinda ran into the sands. The main problem was that the bot discussion got clogged with conceptual issues which I now see in hindsight should have have been resolved before going to BRFA.
    I think all issues had been resolved, but it was unclear who needed to make the next move, and I was a bit bored with it and wasn't giving it any more attention. See WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 3.
  2. I dunno anything about the Chinese option. But since that would require some sort of major change to the mediawiki software used on en.wp, it's way beyond what we can consider here.
  3. I will do some checks on the edge case issue, and get some numbers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:22, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
@Master Of Ninja: I did the check, as I just noted above[4], it found zero "false positives" in a list of 12,461 redirects to create. Thanks for prompting me to do the check. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
@User:BrownHairedGirl - I think this is good evidence to show your proposed bot won't create issues. Good luck with moving the proposal on. - Master Of Ninja (talk) 08:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong support of the principle. Yes, please fix this mess of confusion. (No comment on the technicalities of how) LadyofShalott 23:13, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support principle, with no comment on the technicalities since I'm WP:UNQUALIFIED to opine on that. It's unfortunate that so much effort needs to be spent (wasted) trying to reach consensus on an issue like this — we're not talking about something substantive like renaming the Sea of Japan here, but rather a pretty much entirely arbitrary difference of a single letter (!). Can't we find a way to just fix the issue and get back to building an encyclopedia? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:53, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    @Sdkb: Until a single categorie can have multiple titles (e.g. perhaps as hard redirects, hard links or symbolic links - either option would likely require significant amounts of developer time) this is probably the closest to solving the problem it is possible to get. Even if Wikipedia decided to standardi[sz]e on either S or Z spellings for categories the other would remain a plausible search term so the redirects would be needed anyway. Thryduulf (talk) 02:00, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support this proposal. Thanks for your meticulous work here, BHG. bibliomaniac15 04:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support: Will avoid the risk of unintentional duplicate categories being created at different spelling, has no negative effects, can only improve the encyclopedia. Thank you, BHG, for your work on this, and good luck. PamD 07:57, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong support, per (my essay) Wikipedia:Category redirects that should be kept. Some of us already create these redirects, most recently Category:Non-profit organizations based in Sudan which just came up at CFD/Speedy, but an automated solution is clearly desirable. – Fayenatic London 10:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support Redirects are cheap, and as someone that often types category names into the url bar of my browser rather than searching or clicking, I can see how this would be useful. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 13:37, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • BRFA filed. Since this discussion seems to be overwhelmingly supportive of the proposal, I have gone ahead and created the bot approval request at WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 7. Obviously, this discussion has been open for only 3 days, and the balance of views may change, but BAG will not approve unless they are satisfied that there is a clear consensus to do this.
The BRFA includes a full, detailed description of how the bot would work, and all source code for the bot's components. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Support it is easy to imagine that there can be some landmines but it looks to me like BHG is done a stellar job of thinking through the potential concerns and addressing them.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:18, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support; as noted, there don't seem to be any major down-sides to doing this, it doesn't tread on any of the sensitive ENGVAR concerns, and it should make things a lot smoother for editors trying to categorise articles. Great proposal and really-well worked-out - congratulations. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:22, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

BHGbot 7 trial run completed

The bot authorisation request BHGbot 7 was approved yesterday for a trial run of 50 edits.

That trial run has been completed, and is awaiting review: see WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot_7#Discussion, which includes full details of the trial. Any editors who want to offer feedback on the trial can do so at that page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:24, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

BHGbot 7 approved

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 7 has been approved.[5] Many thanks to those who offered their feedback here.

I am now making the lists for the bot's first run. Some of the 3 quarry jobs taken 5–12 hours, so the list-making may not be complete until tomorrow. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

BHGbot 7 first run

WP:BHGbot 7's first run is underway. 12,420 redirect pages to create: see User:BHGbot/7/List 1.

The edits can be tracked at Special:Contributions/BHGbot. Since this is a non-urgent task, the bot is working slowly, currently at a little over 4 edits per minute. At this rate, the task will take about a week to complete. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Pointer to a discussion

Folks here might be interested in chiming in at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 32#Killing cats. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 14:46, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Category:Roman Catholic prayers has been nominated for discussion

Category:Roman Catholic prayers has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Manabimasu (talk) 01:23, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Mass changes by User:IslamMyLoveMyLife

This user's edits keep showing up in my watchlist; I'm not enough of a subject matter expert to determine whether or not they are appropriate, but I'm concerned by the sweeping changes being made. Would appreciate if someone more involved with categories could review. OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:01, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Breaking categorization cycles

  You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:SDZeroBot/Category cycles. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Tagging set categories

FYI, I have filed a BRFA for a manually-operated bot to add {{set category}} template to categories that are WP:SETCATs. – SD0001 (talk) 14:35, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Template:Autocat

I noticed this recently-created template (I believe it was translated from the Turkish Wikipedia) intended to automatically populate the headers of categories. Is this useful, or does it duplicate pre-existing templates? * Pppery * it has begun... 23:09, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I do wish people wouldn't write templates in Lua. It makes them totally impenetrable, I have absolutely no idea how it works, what parameters it expects or even what it is supposed to do. BTW I don't go by doc pages, anyone can write complete rubbish in there. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:35, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Autocat

Template:Autocat has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:21, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorting of categories will be temporarily broken for a few days in November 2020

This is due to unavoidable consequences of a software update - "The sorting of some category pages will be distorted – all pages which have been updated with the new software version will use the new sorting while untouched pages still use the old sorting. As such, Ops need to run a maintenance script to update the sorting for old entries. The distortions may last [...] a few days on English Wikipedia. The start-time will depend upon when the migration script reaches each wiki."

For the original announcement, a bit more detail and any updates see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Update to ICU Unicode library. Thryduulf (talk) 13:32, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Semantics of Category:Industry

Currently the note at Category:Industry says

The main article for this category is Industry.

pointing to the DAB industry (for the reasons of this being a DAB see Talk:Industry (economics)). This makes it unclear which content/meaning the category should have:

  1. industry (economics)
  2. industry (manufacturing) (closely resembling the meaning of Industrial sector/Secondary sector of the economy)

There was an old proposal to give the category the second meaning: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 June 20#Category:Industry, which was closed as No consensus mainly on technical reasons as far as I understand it.

The current content of the category is more in line with the first meaning. In particular the sub-category Category:Industries clearly has the first meaning (e.g. it includes the Category:Service industries which matches/belongs to the Tertiary sector of the economy). This sub-category relationship would therefore be wrong if the category got the second meaning.

So how to clean this up? --S.K. (talk) 02:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

How can we clean up alumni miscategorized under a university rather than its undergraduate college?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Harvard University § Some substantial category cleanup needed. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:28, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Endemic birds of X, Birds of X, Fauna of X...

I just happened upon the contributions of 169.1.11.199 (ping: @169.1.11.199:) who in the last few days has been busy with what I suspect is redundant categorization of South African taxa. Random examples: Arthroleptella rugosa, Cape platanna, sentinel rock thrush. Going off the first example, it seems to me that there is redundancy in "Endemic amphibians of South Africa", "Category:Fauna of South Africa", and "Endemic fauna of South Africa". Could someone advise as to whether a single one of these would do the job instead? I suspect that previously present "Endemic amphibians of South Africa", as being most specific, is actually all we want?

(I don't look foward to cleaning up 300 articles, so if there is an issue here, I'd apply for a mass rollback.) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:23, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Per WP:SUBCAT the article should only be (directly) in the most specific category. I've reverted/corrected some of the edits. Note: If you've an interest in this area of categorization you may find User:DexDor/BioGeoCat useful. DexDor (talk) 07:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
All right, I went and rolled back the lot, and left them an explanation. Cheers --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Suicides by occupation

After closure of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_November_29#Category:Chefs_who_committed_suicide, what is the best way to proceed? Nominating subcategories of Category:Suicides by occupation one by one will lead to a lot of repetition and hence, probably, low participation in the discussions. While nominating a lot of them simultaneously may end as a trainwreck. Is there some smart middle way? Marcocapelle (talk) 22:29, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Isn't Category:Suicides by occupation just a subcategory of Category:Causes of death by occupation? We get these arbitrary intersection categories because someone at some point decides a category is "too big" (to big to do what with is never made clear). Looks like we also have subcategorizations of suicide by location, method, and sex. And some double intersections like Category:Female models who committed suicide. And from the other side, Category:Artists by cause of death and the like... Anyway, I think it's an even bigger discussion or else you're just poking your own arbitrary holes in something you already think is arbitrary. postdlf (talk) 00:16, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

RfC on categorizing redirects to the same namespace

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Template talk:R to project namespace#RfC: Should we categorize redirects to the same namespace?
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:19, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

"Clean-up categories" that have nothing to be cleaned up

I've noticed that there are a significant number of categories which get tagged with {{Monthly clean up category}} and added to their monthly page in Category:Clean-up categories even though they are not cleanup categories. For example, Category:EngvarB from April 2014. There's no backlog and nothing that needs to be cleaned up here.

These should probably be tagged with a new template such as {{Monthly tracking category}} - and added to a category like Category:Tracking categories from April 2014 - of which Category:Clean-up categories from April 2014 would also be a subcategory in. As-is, the current system makes it look like non-issues are serious backlogs and vastly overestimates the (still large) amount of work that needs to be done. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 10:09, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Note: also posted to the WikiProject Cleanup talkpage. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 10:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Fiction set on the Moon

hi, cat editors recently changed the above cat from "Fiction about the moon" to the above (the discussion is here), i had a quick look at the reason ie. "most appear to be set on the moon/in space" yes most but not all! so now how can articles about, for example, books that are not set on the moon but where the moon is key/substantial to the story be categorized? also ‎JJMC89 bot III has done a mass move to this new/renamed cat(?), who is going to "fix" the articles for which this category is now incorrect? thanks, Coolabahapple (talk) 16:13, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@Coolabahapple: I suggest you recreate Category:Fiction about the Moon as a parent to the new one, if there is sufficient WP:DEFINING content for both to be useful. Link to this discussion in your edit summary on the category page. – Fayenatic London 20:49, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Rename Trecento/Quattrocento/Cinquecento/Seicento/Settecento categories

This is a WP:CFR matter, they have agreed procedures for renaming categories. If the discussion produces consensus to rename, the CFD clerk will move the request to a subpage where a bot will pick it up, rename the categories and amend any affected pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:36, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Discussion link: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 January 18#Category:Trecento composers_etc.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The following categories should, in my opinion, be replaced with their plain English equivalents:

The English titles are way more informative. Someone who doesn't know the Italian art of this period won't have to guess what Seicento means. It's worth noting that not even the Italian Wikipedia uses this rather cryptic convention: it:Categoria:Compositori italiani —capmo (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New category for articles that deal with topics in developing countries?

I am thinking of creating a new category on the English Wikipedia that bundles up all the articles that deal with topics in developing countries. To do that, I searched up articles that have "developing countries" or similar in their title. I searched for an existing category that bundles them together but couldn't find one. Does it already exist? I am aware of the category "international development" but I don't think it quite captures what I am after (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:International_development). I am thinking of a category called "Topics about developing countries" or similar? Here are the articles that I found so far which I would put into that category:

Hi Marcocapelle, thanks for your comment. I am undecided now if I should add all of those listed articles into the Category:International development or create a sub-category. I am not sure what such a sub-category should be called, what would you suggest? "International development" has that connotation for me of donor country and recipient country so I was originally looking for something else (purely focused on developing countries, not the power relationships that come from "international development") but perhaps this is the right category after all. Not sure. EMsmile (talk) 04:20, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Bot management of year of birth/death categories

Your opinions are welcome at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Bot to remove year of birth/death categories when the claim is removed from the article body. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 16:14, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Introducing Template:Copycat

This may be of interest to the Special:WantedCategories crew and anyone who creates a lot of categories with a year in the name. If you put {{Copycat}} into the edit window of a year category and preview it, it will scan for the last three years of sibling categories and if it finds one, copy the contents to the preview window. From where it can easily be copy and pasted into the edit window. And combine that with a preload to make an URL and a link in my vector.js, and creating year categories now takes a single click in my sidebar and a copy-and-paste. The code's a mess, there's not much error-correction and it would be nice to add decades, seasons, centuries etc - it was really just a proof of principle. But it works surprisingly well, and really speeds up making those categories that can use it. It feels like it ought to be possible to get the content into the edit window somehow, using double substitutions or sending the name as a parameter to the preload or something, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Whilst I'm here, another little thing I've made for the SWCers is {{Category User iso-n}} which is a parameterless way to create user language subcategories like Category:User awa-1 etc. Le Deluge (talk) 22:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

@Le Deluge: I've (somewhat painstakingly) made it so {{subst:Copycat}} works directly without relying on copying wikimarkup from one place to another. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:38, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

American Jews

Category:American Jews says articles should be moved down into its sub-categories, but apparently has ~2800 articles in it (directly).

The first article I looked at, Charles L. Aarons, is for a judge, so I looked under Category:American Jews by occupation for Category:Jewish American judges or Category:Jewish American jurists, which don't exist. I'm considering creating the former (maybe as a sub-cat of Category:Jewish American attorneys?) and moving that article and others (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg) to it.

Am I on the right track?

As far as how to do it, I'm thinking using Petscan or the like to find the intersections and then HotCat to move them, if that's possible.

(For those whose hair on the back of their neck just stood up, I feel you – lists like this have been problematic over our history. This is not that. Just trying to diffuse an existing category.) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:30, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@AlanM1: before creating occupational categories for American Jews (or other ethnicities in other countries), I would advise you to read a get a good understanding of guidelines WP:EGRS and WP:OCEGRS. Very often in the past, similar unworthy intersections of Jews by occupation have been created and then deleted at WP:CfD, because they did not represent a field in which Jewishness was defining. In the case of American judges and jurists, at first sight it seems hard to argue that Jewish jurists should be treated or considered differently from other jurists, which would seem in fact very unfair. For living people, even stricter WP:BLPCAT policy is also enforced. Categories are not lists and there is no reason to create ineligible subcategories for the only purpose of diffusion. There are much larger categories, such as Category:Living people with 989,188 pages.
On the topic of diffusion however, the first thing to do may be to check if some articles in the root category are not already in a child category. This PetScan query tells me that there are currently 269 articles in Category:American Jews which are already in a child of Category:American Jews by occupation, and 213 are also in a child of Category:Jewish-American families. Place Clichy (talk) 16:31, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
@Place Clichy: Thanks. I'm having trouble understanding field in which Jewishness was defining in relation to the existing Category:American Jews by occupation sub-cats. Or are some of those OSE? In theory, I don't see how most of the sub-cats of Category:American Jews by occupation exist because the subject article should be treated or considered differently. Perhaps more specifically, what would be the difference in rationale between the existing Category:Jewish American attorneys and my proposed sub-cat of it Category:Jewish American judges (ignoring, I hope, common stereotypes about Jewish lawyers).
I don't really get the concept of WP:GHETTO, having read it a couple of times, since it doesn't explain the metaphor.
As to the BLP policies, I'm not looking to apply categories to subjects that are not already in Category:American Jews – just trying to follow the blue-box "this is a container" instructions at the top.
Is this the right place to do this, or should I be at WP:AFCRC? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 23:12, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the leads (important, defining characteristics, right?) of some of the articles, other potential missing categories (with examples):

Again, as I write this, the hair on the back of my neck ... but these articles already exist and are identified and categorized – just trying to be consistent with the apparent intent of the existing categories. I added a pointer at WT:WikiProject Judaism#Sub-categorization of American Jews. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:08, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Clearly I do not see any suggested category here that would be acceptable. I would advise you to search the archives at WP:Categories for discussion, as many similar categories have been deleted in the past as trivial intersections, while others have been judged acceptable and kept. Notably, categories for Jewish mathematicians have been consistently judges not to pass the criteria of WP:OCEGRS, for instance in this discussion. Businesspeople, film producers, pornographers categories etc. were also deleted, so there is a pretty strong consensus that not every category is worth creating just because there exists someone who is or was, at the same time, an American, a mathematician and a Jew. A contrario, an example of an eligible and useful category is Category:Jewish comedians, because the field of Jewish humor and it's links with Jewish identity and culture have been the topic of much coverage, in academic research and otherwise.
To illustrate your question about WP:GHETTO: if someone is in a category for female prime ministers (which is a legitimate category because the feminization of political personnel is a topic without any doubt), then this person should not be removed from the parent category with all the other prime ministers just because she is female. It would be unfair, discriminatory and counter-productive in terms of navigation. This is an exception to the more general practice at WP:SUBCAT that articles should in principle be in the more precise category only and not there parents Replace female by Jewish (or any ethnic label) and prime minister by any occupation and you get the idea. Place Clichy (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
@Place Clichy: Thanks again for helping me understand. So, if I understand correctly, to exist, the intersection category should be the subject of (or possible subject of) its own article because the concept is notable in Wikipedia terms, and that GHETTO is about "fragmentation" into too many small branches/leaves that have only one or two member articles (though I think this could be solved with a better UI than having to manually expand and follow all the branches)? I'll read some of the CFDs.
Do I understand correctly that you agree with removing the ~500 articles you mentioned above from Category:American Jews that are also in one of the occupation and other subcats? Thanks. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:54, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Other ethnicity/occupation intersections

...of Indochinese descent?

Guy Van Sam has been described in a 1960 Lebanese newspaper as having a Lebanese mother and an "Indochinese" (Indochinois) father. Now, not only is there no category for French people of Indochinese descent, there are no categories at all of people of "Indochinese" descent, despite French Indochina having been a territorial entity. Is the term "Indochinese" too ambiguous to add a descent category to Van Sam? Nehme1499 02:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Described once in a 1960 newspaper does not seem to be a defining characteristic that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having, per guideline WP:CATDEF. There is therefore no need to add this non-defining characteristic to a category on Van Sam's article, especially since WP:BLPCAT policy applies. Place Clichy (talk) 17:11, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

XX people of YY descent

Any general guidance on who belongs in the type of category which lists "XX people of YY descent", such as for example, these:

and when to use them? The use case here is Augusto Pinochet, which includes all three categories but says only this about origins:

He was the son and namesake of Augusto Pinochet Vera (1891–1944), a descendant of an 18th-century French Breton immigrant from Lamballe,[30] and Avelina Ugarte Martínez (1895–1986), a woman whose family had been in Chile since the 17th century.[31][32]

Is an immigrant from the 1700s enough to include Pinochet in the Breton category? What determines if someone is "of YY descent"; do we go back centuries? And what about the fact that both "Breton" and "French" are included, is this an ethnicity/geographic area distinction, so they are both allowed? Otherwise, Brittany is located in France, so maybe only the more specific one should be included?

But besides the specific Pinochet case, I'm interested in what the general guidelines are for specifying a "descent" category; someone born in, say, 1950, with one immigrant ancestor from 1700, is between 8 and 10 generations removed, so possibly only 1/1000 th of the blood of their ancestor. Or is some other factor at play? Mathglot (talk) 21:32, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

My understanding is that there are no general guidelines. They are frequently created and frequently nominated for deletion with varying results.--User:Namiba 21:55, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

The obvious consideration is whether in the article its suggested that the descent is significant in some way which affects the notability of the person - which it usually isnt. Rathfelder (talk) 00:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Naming inconsistency for alumni/faculty/people

There is some inconsistency with how lists and categories are named for alumni/faculty/people associated to educational institutions. See this discussion. — MarkH21talk 06:24, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

  • I remember going through this discussion before, but not where or when - perhaps someone here can provide a link to prior discussion? The "lists" project page is not really the best place for a discussion of category names, especially one which has been gone over thoroughly not too long ago (as far as I can remember!) PamD 16:16, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Prior affiliations

I have a question regarding a few categories such as Category:Politicians from Cluj-Napoca. The city of Cluj-Napoca has been part of Romania for the past century, but belonged to Austria-Hungary before that.

Some of the people in this category were born in Romania and participated in politics in Romania. Others were born in Austria-Hungary, served as politicians in Hungary and never knew the city would one day join Romania.

Anyway, my question pertains to a user who keeps adding Category:Hungarian politicians. I understand the logic, but I also seem to recall that such situations demand only the present nationality of a place, and cannot account for all past border changes. It’d be like placing Category:Politicians from Galway (city) under Category:British politicians, or Category:Politicians from Kyiv under Category:Soviet politicians.

What do others think? Is this spelled out by any policy? @Rathfelder: @Oculi: @Marcocapelle: — Biruitorul Talk 15:04, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @Biruitorul: there is no policy that I know of but parenting the entire Cluj-Napoca category into a Hungarian tree does not make sense. The individual articles of the category may well be added to a Hungarian politicians category if applicable, but not the category as a whole. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:16, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
It does not make sense to place all politicians from Cluj-Napoca in Category:Hungarian politicians by default. It does make sense however to place them in a Romanian politicians category, because whatever the era they lived in, people from Cluj-Napoca (or its former incarnations of Kolozsvár/Klausenburg) belong to the history of the extant state of Romania. Also note that technically Cluj has been in Romania for 103 years (starting in 1918), more than twice the time it belonged to Austria-Hungary (1867-1918), although it was part of Hungary before that, among other masters in its rich history (the Ottoman Empire, Transylvania, Roman Dacia, the Austrian Empire etc.). To solve the issue at hand, people from Cluj that were active in a former Hungarian state may be placed individually in an appropriate category such as Category:People from the Kingdom of Hungary or Category:Austro-Hungarian politicians. Place Clichy (talk) 17:13, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I would just like to add my point of view on this, whether the current state is added to the categories of the politicians-from-x categories is probably best decided on a case by case basis. I would have problems with people like Giuseppe Garibaldi, an individual born in Nice who supported the unification of Nice with Italy, being included in the category "Politicians from Nice" and then being linked to "French Politicians", for example. Former states, however, should definitely not be linked to the "politicians from x" articles. It leads to all kinds of absurdities. Boynamedsue (talk) 10:09, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Finally I came to know this discussion exist, but @Biruitorul: accused of acting contrary consensus, despite the discussion started not long ago and not even closed...nice and fine...Zoltán Illés, and Kinga Gál are not past century, but present-day politicians, e.g. similar instances may be elsewhere, I have to add, that was my point.(KIENGIR (talk) 10:32, 10 March 2021 (UTC))
  • Having conpletely reviewed the discussion I agree mostly with @Place Clichy:'s outline, though not necesarily on the whole - althouth that date is correcly 1920, the Ottoman Empire did not held the city, etc. and despite it belongs over a century to Romania, have been part of Hungarian states/Lands of the Hungarian Crown for 920 years -, if we have a category for politicans from a city, then it should not be attached to any nationality, hence as well the category of Romanian/Serbian/Slovak etc. politicians should be removed from there, and individual tagging by other categories could present national affiliation, shall be in any time period. This would solve the confusion, since my examples also show, people with different (or later acquired nationality) could born in that city.(KIENGIR (talk) 15:45, 10 March 2021 (UTC))
People from... is ambiguous, as it does not explicitly or only refer to people born in a city. If someone is born in a city but has no defining link to it, I believe that the current consensus is not to add them to the category for people from this city. Garibaldi was involved in French politics too actually. Of course a category for Politicians from Foo City should be added to the nearest national category for the country where Foo City is located, there is a defining link between a city and the country it is in. In most cases the best solution is not to create many intersection categories for politicians by city, or for other occupations, unless there is a very strong and specific reason for this intersection. Place Clichy (talk) 16:11, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I propose the creation of categories like Category:Romanian politicians from Cluj-Napoca and Category:Hungarian politicians from Cluj-Napoca. Btw, the same issue exists at Category:Musicians from Cluj-Napoca. 77wonders (talk) 21:56, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that even thinner intersections of city plus occupation plus ethnicity and/or historical era are a solution to this issue. In fact, placing someone in Category:People from Cluj-Napoca and Category:Hungarian politicians is really sufficient if both categories are applicable. Plus this whole Romanian vs. Hungarian thing is really ambiguous: would we have to understand such a category name as applying to people from the Hungarian national minority, or people linked to the city at a time when it was part of Hungary regardless of their national identification? Place Clichy (talk) 17:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Categories for Indigenous Peoples in Canada

Hello! I am new here and so expect that this is likely *not* a new discussion, but I couldn't easily find where the existing discussion thread was.

I am participating in the UBC Honouring Indigenous Writers Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon and noticing that there are significant gaps in categories for writing about Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Of course, there are hundreds of Indigenous Nations within Canada, each with their own specific names (and often variant spellings). At minimum, though, it would be fantastic to have categories for the commonly used collective terms "Indigenous Peoples in Canada," "Métis,"and "Inuit." The category "First Nations" already exists and is used in conjunction with a number of other kinds of category descriptors (such as First Nations writer). However, this is inconsistent. For example, there is no category for First Nations author or literary critic.

Please help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliawrites (talk • contribs) 21:28, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

@Juliawrites: The main category is at Category:Indigenous peoples in Canada, which seems to have lots of content. If you have specific suggestions on how to improve the way things are organized there, you may either start the changes yourself (see WP:Be bold) or suggest in this discussions what to improve. For instance, if you see some inconsistency or mistakes on how the terms Indigenous peoples and First Nations are used, you are welcome to report it, or fix it.
However the categorization of articles can sometimes be tricky. I would suggest to consider 2 frequent issues for which editing guidelines are helpful:
  1. Per guideline WP:SEPARATE, categories for individual people (i.e. biographical articles) should be kept separate from topic categories. They can often be a sub-category of the topic category though. This can be tricky when the name of the main topic includes the word people(s). For instance, among Category:First Nations, all biographical articles should be somewhere in child Category:First Nations people, and this category and its children should only have biographical articles in them.
  2. Per guideline WP:OCEGRS about non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, not every category of people by occupation should be balanced by equivalent categories for every ethnic identification in the world. When these intersections are notable in their own right, which is undoubtedly the case for Fist Nations writers, then the category may be created. However, I am far from sure that literary critics stemming from First Nations are recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right.
Feel free to ask any question in this discussion, or start editing. Place Clichy (talk) 18:17, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Category:Anti-Catholicism and Category:Anti-Protestantism

See this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Christianity/Noticeboard#Category:Anti-Catholicism_and_Category:Anti-Protestantism. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:26, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Lists of mammals by location

I'm relatively inexperienced with categories. Looking at Category:Lists of mammals, there are a number of lists about specific locations. For example List of mammals of Newfoundland. Should that be kept here, moved to Category:Lists of mammals by location, or moved to Category:Lists of mammals of North America? Note that the last option is three levels down. In Category:Lists of mammals by location there are a mix of country lists and more specific lists. Additionally, I don't know if all the lists by countries should be categorized into both Category:Lists of mammals by continent and Category:Lists of mammals by location? And then there are also the similar category trees for other groups of animals in Category:Lists of animals by location, so I suppose the organization should be similar. It all seems wrong but I don't know the best practice. —Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 02:04, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment on the naming of Category:Faculty by university or college and its subcategories

Please see Category talk:Faculty by university or college#Request for comment on naming. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:32, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

"Articles by quality" categories

Hi all. Not sure whether this is the right place to bring this up, but hopefully someone here can guide me to the right place if it's not. The talk page templates which are used by WikiProjects for assessing article quality dump pages into thousands of different categories, such as Category:B-Class Foo articles, Category:Start-Class Foo articles etc etc etc. Among this impressive tree are things like Category:Category-Class Foo articles and Category:Template-Class Foo articles. Problem is, these categories aren't for articles. Pages, yes - articles, no. And the same holds true for assessment categories for Book, Redirect, Portal, etc., "articles". I realise that it's an enormous job, but shouldn't all those categories reflect that they are for pages rather than articles? Is some sort of global re-naming required? Grutness...wha? 14:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Can you give examples of Category:Category-Class Foo articles and Category:Template-Class Foo articles? Johnbod (talk) 17:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Check the contents of Category:Category-Class articles and Category:Template-Class articles for a few thousand examples... Grutness...wha? 00:02, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
It's set by the |ASSESSMENT_CAT= parameter in the individual WikiProject banner templates. So, if a banner has |ASSESSMENT_CAT=Foo articles, category talk pages bearing that banner will be placed in Category-Class Foo articles; but if it has |ASSESSMENT_CAT=Foo pages, you'll get Category-Class Foo pages. I don't think that it's worth worrying about. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
OK - thanks. Grutness...wha? 14:16, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal for change to categorization of drag performers

There is a discussion about the categorization of drag performers going on at the LGBT WikiProject. It could really benefit from the participation of editors from this project who have a good command of categories. Please add your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies#Categorization of drag performers. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:42, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Can you help? Could use some feedback at the discussion. Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Heirs apparent

The subcategories of Category:Heirs apparent are mainly populated with people who have become a monarch after they were a heir apparent, i.e. there is a large amount of overlap with the monarchs categories. Only the articles in the top Category:Heirs apparent about people who are current heirs apparent and the subcat Category:Heirs apparent who never acceded‎ are not part of the overlap. Should we add a header in every subcategory "this is meant for heirs apparent who never acceded" or should we rename every subcategory to "... who never acceded"? Marcocapelle (talk) 10:01, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Changing it in this way makes a lot of sense in general, but perhaps an exception is in order for cases where being heir apparent is associated with a specific title (e.g. Prince of Wales and Dauphin). Furius (talk) 16:21, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Category:People from Foo City

I would be grateful for input from other users at User talk:Rathfelder#People from Foo. Thanks. —Brigade Piron (talk) 17:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Prioritizing search results

Screenshot demonstrating the issue.

I propose we add {{Maintenance category}}, {{Hidden category}}, {{Tracking category}}, {{Category class}} and {{Template category}} to MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates with something like 25% priority. This would cause categories with these templates to display significantly lower, likely below all relevant reader facing categories. It will still be easy to search for the categories, they just won't be the things that are shown to our readers when typing something like "Category:W", "Category:A", "Category:T", "Category:S" or "Category:C" in the search bar. If no one objects I plan on making an edit request for this change in a week or so. --Trialpears (talk) 20:43, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: looking at this briefly I don't see a problem with it. Also, interesting that we do this type of thing at all, I had no idea there was such a feature. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
Elli It's quite an obscure feature, but it can be useful. I've added a picture showing the issue. As you can see a lot of the search results are maintenance categories that aren't of interest to our readers. This issue also occur if you search for something more sensible, I tested "Tennis", "Train" and "Sweden" and all of them gave various internal maintenance categories of different types very high in the result. I don't think something not being a big issue should stand in the way of improvements. It will still be easy to search for internal categories, but you may have to write a few more letters. --Trialpears (talk) 12:51, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
@Trialpears: I should clarify - I support the changes you/re proposing, the "I don't see a problem" was referring to your changes, not the status quo. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:34, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
A week has passed and I've made MediaWiki talk:Cirrussearch-boost-templates#Protected edit request on 20 May 2021. --Trialpears (talk) 19:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Duplicate categories

Recently I ran into the situation where, on a page with an unsorted category declaration, an editor added a duplicate category declaration, also adding the correct sorting key. It had no effect. I then needed to remove the unsorted declaration to fix the problem.

Obviously we don't want duplicate categories, but it can and does happen. In such a case, wouldn't it be better if the new sortkey was honored, rather than ignored?

Part of the reason I bring this up, it was recently confirmed to me, for some specific types of sorting problems, it is indeed necessary to add a duplicate category to fix it. --DB1729 (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

If a page has code to place it into the same category twice (whether that be directly, as in [[Category:Foo]] or indirectly, such as by the use of a template) and they have different sort keys (either explicitly, or by using a default), the sortkey of whichever category declaration occurs last overrides all of the others. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:21, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Understood — usually new categories are placed below the existing ones — it makes sense. Thank you! --DB1729 (talk) 22:15, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

What is a tracking category?

I've been doing some work on categorizing and templating categories. Most of the labels I get, but I can't seem to find a clear explanation of when a category should be considered a tracking category. What are the criteria for tracking category status? Tamwin (talk) 22:50, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Does Template:Tracking category help? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:00, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
Not really? "This is a tracking category. It is used to build and maintain lists of pages—primarily for the sake of the lists themselves and their use in article and category maintenance. It is not part of the encyclopedia's categorization scheme." That's all well and good, but... Every category is used to build and maintain lists of pages. That's the whole point of having a category. Every maintenance category (in the sense of {{Maintenance category}}) is not part of the encyclopedia's categorization scheme. When is a maintenance category also a tracking category? When isn't a maintenance category a tracking category? I'm very confused. Tamwin (talk) 20:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
@Tamwin: Hello.
A maintenance category is simply a grouping of maintenance-type pages. It functions like most categories. See Category:Wikipedia policies for example. Use of this category is primarily to help editors find some particular policy they need to refer to, or perhaps to help when categorizing some policy to the correct subcategory. And, as I believe you may already suspect, a tracking category is a type of maintenance category.
My understanding of tracking categories are those created for the purpose of identifying pages that contains some specific problem: lack of sourcing, deprecated parameters, etc. See example Category:Pages using BLP sources with unknown parameters. An editor who is interested in fixing this error, wherever it may occur, could work off this list and fix them.
A possible grey area is the parent categories of tracking categories. For example, Category:Infoboxes with unknown parameters contains subcategories which are all tracking categories, but the Category:Infoboxes with unknown parameters itself is not a tracking category.
I think maybe the key phrase in the description "primarily for the sake of the lists themselves and their use in article and category maintenance" is not very clear if one doesn't already have some understanding of the distinction.
Is there some particular category you are aware that seems to be an edge case or somehow not clear if it's a tracking category or not? --DB1729 (talk) 15:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
I've actually came here for a similar thing. Currently we are placing a lot (most? all?) of the sub-categories in Category:Maintenance categories also in Category:Tracking categories, which leads to the latter having 19,288 categories. There is really no reason to lump everything into the tracking category tree. If a category is a maintenance category, it should only be in that category and if a category is a non-maintenance category which tracks something, then it should be placed in the tracking category, but a category shouldn't be in both. Gonnym (talk) 18:05, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Chart creating companies in chart categories

Hi, need some third-party opinions about a very minor disagreement between me and User:Eurohunter. They have removed a few chart producting companies from the national chart categories, which seems prima facie incorrect (or highly unhelpful), and is made worse because e.g. Ultratop is by this edit completely removed from all charts- or even music-related categories. The same happened with e.g. Dutch Charts[6], the Italian versionand the Official Charts Company [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Official_Charts_Company&type=revision&diff=1021427230&oldid=1012843425 (perhaps others as well).

It seems to me that including the company that creates the national charts, in a category for national charts, is a logical, helpful thing, and that the "but it isn't actually a chart" reason is a too literal interpretation of the category: no one will be confused by seeing the chart creating company in the category, but people will be seriously hampered in finding the article if it isn't included in the category. (On an unrelated note, an additional category named something like "record chart creating companies" would probably be a good idea, we now have nothing grouping these clearly related articles across countries). Fram (talk) 09:01, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

  • You forgot to mention that I have told you to create redirects from chart names then categorise them. It's really transparent. It's the same like in case of studio album and songs from this album. So you will not categorise albums in categries for songs. It's obvious same as in case of charts and companies. Eurohunter (talk) 09:43, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
    • No, it's hardly transparent, it's fooling the readers in the hope that they will click on the redirect on the category page to find the chart company (and of course, if someone changes the redirect into an article, it again removes the link). No, you will indeed normally not categorise albums as songs, but all "song" categories at least start with a "see also" for the albums categories. Plus, they are also otherwise in the same category tree, via the artist. Here, you have simply removed them from the category tree. Categories in general are filled with stuff which aren't a subset, an example of the category title, but closely related to it, and not better off in a nearby other category (like in your album vs. songs example, where the choice is obvious and logical). I see no benefit in your change for these companies. Fram (talk) 10:20, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Highwaymen by nation

At present Category:Highwaymen has several sub-categories (Category:French highwaymen, Category:Irish highwaymen, etc). Individual highwayman articles are assigned to the sub-categories based on the country in which the subject was active, rather than their nationality - for example, Claude Duval, born in France but active in England, is in "English highwaymen" rather than "French highwaymen". I believe that this is potentially confusing, and would suggest one of two possible changes:

  1. Categorize highwaymen by their nationality. In this case, Duval would move to "French highwaymen", James MacLaine to "Irish highwaymen", etc. This is my preferred option.
  2. Rename the categories to Category:Highwaymen in England, Category:Highwaymen in Ireland, etc. This will preserve the current categorization while removing the confusion.

Any opinions would be welcome. Tevildo (talk) 12:13, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

As there have been no objections, I've recategorized the relevant articles by the nationality of the subject. Tevildo (talk) 14:42, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment on adding a search function on category pages

IP user 50.201.195.170 recently edited Category:Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to add the ability to easily search within the category by keyword. While I initially reverted the edit as not necessary for a category page, I think I may have been too hasty. After some discussion with the editor on my talk page, I think the functionality they are trying to add could be useful, especially on a heavily-populated category, and have self-reverted my edit pending further discussion. Is this a tool that should be added on category pages, and if so is there an existing template to add this search functionality? This is the editor's comment from my talk page explaining their reasoning:

Re https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitors&oldid=1029813923 do you think I'm right about something like that being a good idea to be included/transcluded onto category pages? Much like the "External tools" links are included on page history pages? The syntax is little documented - e.g. no mention of it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Category#Searching_for_pages_in_categories. (Feel free to move this comment to a WT: page for further discussion.)

— 50.201.195.170

PohranicniStraze (talk) 18:33, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

The search qualifier deepcat: is mentioned at H:DEEPCAT. Yes, I think such a search facility should be present as a search box in every category. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:24, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
:-) (Yes, eventually found that, which led me to edit ...3923.) I guess one of the Template:Other_category-header_templates would need to be edited. If so, which one?--50.201.195.170 (talk) 22:57, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Category:American barrel racers

It seems that this category contains the subcat Barrel racers when it would seem logical to me for it to be the other way round; otherwise non-American racers would be 'automatically' placed in the parent cat. The barrel racers cat. also seems to have barrel racing as a subcat which again does not look correct to me. Thought best to raise here. Thanks. Eagleash (talk) 02:34, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

A mess: Category:Barrel racers has 40 members, including at least a couple of Canadians (Isabella Miller (barrel racer) and Gina McDougall), while Category:American barrel racers has 33 members, all of whom seem (incorrectly) also to be in the parent category. Category:Canadian barrel racers probably needs to be created. I see that "Though both sexes compete at amateur and youth levels, in collegiate and professional ranks, it is usually a rodeo event for women.", which leaves a question whether or not these categories are subsets of "Sportswomen" categories. (Category:American barrel racers has only one parent category, Category:American sportswomen, while the other one has several.) PamD 07:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
Both categories were created by @Dawnleelynn:, Category:Barrel racers in 2017 and Category:American barrel racers in 2019: they might like to comment. PamD 07:24, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
@PamD: and @Eagleash: Hi, Yes, I did let this get out of date a little bit, but it's hardly a mess. There are six Canadian articles now which were created by a Women in Red editor during a sports edit-a-thon. Jerri Duce, Gina McDougall, Isabella Miller (barrel racer), Rayel Robinson, Viola Thomas, and Elaine Watt (barrel racer). So in the category American Barrel Racers there are the proper number of articles, which is 33 (which also counts that the Barrel racing article is not there like it is in the other category 40-7=33). The Barrel racers category should be removed, since it lists racers who are not American. That would fix that issue for that category. As far as the other category in Rodeo performers, no fixes need to be made, other than potentially removing it from the American barrel racers category as discussed just prior. Barrel racers belongs as part of all the other rodeo performers, there are eight events in rodeo; that's one of them. I like the idea of possibly creating a category for Canadian barrel racers but not sure where it would go yet. Thoughts? dawnleelynn(talk) 03:37, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dawnleelynn: Sorry, but it really is a mess. "American barrel racers" should be a subcategory of "Barrel racers" and not the other way round, and someone categorised as "American barrel racer" should not also be categorised as "barrel racer". The category "barrel racers" should contain the subcategories "American barrel racers", "Canadian barrel racers" etc, and then only any individuals or topics not listed in those categories. PamD 05:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@PamD: Thanks for picking this up; I'm not used to editing category pages. Can we 'just' re-order the cats by amending the parent cats at the foot of the cat pages and then working back through the cats to change each individual article, where needed, or does it require some more involved process? Eagleash (talk) 08:55, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
No I created the American category on purpose to be part of the category American sportswomen. As I said, the barrel racers category should be removed from there. The barrel racers category is under the Rodeo category. Each of the rodeo events are there, including barrel racing and there’s no need to break them down further. My mentor and I completely revamped and maintain the rodeo categories. I work mostly on rodeo articles. Cheyenne Frontier Days is happening here in a couple weeks. Rodeo is my main thing. The two categories should be separate. None of the other rodeo events are broken down further either. dawnleelynn(talk) 18:56, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
I cannot see that 'American Barrel racers' should be a subcat of 'American sportswomen' this would imply that all barrell racers are women when that is seemingly not the case. My original question was about the order of 'Barrel racing', 'Barrel racers' and 'American barrel racers' but we seem to have moved slightly away from that now. I agree with PamD it *is* at best a 'muddle' and needs someone experienced in categorisation to sort it out. Eagleash (talk) 19:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, all we need to do is remove "Barrel racers" from the category "American barrel racers" and add "American barrel racers" to the category "Barrel racers". As for "American barrel racers", given that it seems not all barrel racers are women, it would probably fit better in Category:American sportspeople by sport (which it can, of course, be a part of in addition to being part of "Barrel racers"). Aerin17 (talk) 20:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Aerin17: Thanks for joining the disc. In addition to what you say, 'Barrel racing' should be the parent cat (or grandparent cat) of both of those? Eagleash (talk) 20:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Eagleash: If there was a "Barrel racing" category, then yes, it would definitely be the parent cat of "Barrel racers". However, it doesn't appear that there currently is a barrel racing category? You mentioned earlier that it appeared to be a subcategory of Barrel racers, but all I see there is the article Barrel racing, which doesn't belong in the Barrel racers category but probably doesn't need a category of its own. Aerin17 (talk) 22:17, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Aerin17: Ah... could have sworn there was a category 'barrel racing'; must have misread it! Anyway, PamD seems to have sorted things out to the extent that I can conclude an article review at AfC. Thanks all. Eagleash (talk) 03:47, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
montanabw Pinging my mentor for thoughts. She definitely has much category experience. dawnleelynn(talk) 20:15, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Most of the people in Category:Barrel racers should not be in that category as they are in its subcategory (or "child" category) Category:American barrel racers. I've also removed the inappropriate categories from the main article Barrel racing, and have created Category:Barrel racing, modelled on Category:Bull riding.
Someone now needs to remove the American riders from Category:Barrel racers, and perhaps create Canadian and any other necessary new national categories. PamD 23:17, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Eagleash: @PamD: What was this discussion for? You are doing whatever you want to do even though I have said other editors have a stake in this and are more familiar with rodeo. What happened to Wikipedia's core principles of collaboration and consensus? Oh yes, that's right you don't need them because you know better than us. dawnleelynn(talk) 23:24, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Dawnleelynn: It is apparent that some of us know a lot more about categories than you do: I am trying to help clear up the muddle you have created. I am sorry that you do not appreciate my efforts. I do not know anything much about rodeo, but I do understand categories, and the basic rules such as "an article is not listed in a category and also in its parent category except in some carefully defined circumstances known as non-diffusing categories". PamD 23:29, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
@Dawnleelynn: OK, you decide: either (a) we create a new Category:Female American barrel racers, which would be a subcategory of Category:American sportswomen, and move each female member of Category:American barrel racers into that category, or (b) we leave them in Category:American barrel racers and put them as individuals into Category:American female equestrians, which is already a subcategory of Category:American sportswomen. Either way, they all need to be removed from Category:Barrel racers because they are members of a subcategory of that category. We cannot have a category which could include male barrel riders being put as a subcategory of an exclusively female category. The article barrel racing states that men sometimes participate, so a man could be in Category:Barrel racers or any national subcategory of it. I hope I've explained the rules of how categories work. PamD 23:39, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
And as it's now gone midnight I won't be editing any more for some hours. PamD 23:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Did I not say my mentor oversees here? And you could not give her some time to chime in? I guarantee you she knows as much about categories as you do, if not more. She has created California Chrome FA and Secretariat (horse) among many other FAs and has been editing Wikipedia for at least 15 years. We have both been doing the rodeo categories since 2015 and have actual real world experience. Plus, Ser Amantio di Nicolao has been over them many times. If you don't know who he is, then you haven't been around categories as much as you think. If you have issues, we can ask him to take a look, he would be a neutral party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao dawnleelynn(talk) 23:43, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Another thought. The American barrel racers category was created long after the rodeo categories. I think you are assuming it’s part of rodeo but it was specifically created for American sportswomen and to get exposure for the sport outside of the rodeo categories. I don’t even remember who added it to the rodeo category. I’d rather see it deleted than the rodeo event categories chang d. dawnleelynn(talk) 00:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
@Dawnleelynn: California Chrome was created by Greensodagal (talk · contribs) who hasn't edited in over five years; and Secretariat (horse) was created by 209.105.200.72 (talk) (back in the days when you didn't need to register in order to create an article) and they haven't edited in nearly ten years, their last post being somewhat out-of-scope for Wikipedia as a whole.
As PamD notes, subcategories should be more specific than their parents, see Help:Categories#Category tree. There is much more detail at Wikipedia:Categorization#Category tree organization. I don't see anything in what PamD has written that goes against that community-agreed guideline. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:05, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
@Montanabw and Ser Amantio di Nicolao: I can never remember which links generate a message to the user concerned and which don't, so "pinging" you both here as experts mentioned above, in case you haven't been alerted. PamD 08:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
PamD, for an edit to trigger a notification requires three things to be done in the same edit: (i) one or more new lines of text, within which there needs to be (ii) a link to the user page of the person that you intend to notify and (iii) your own signature, as produced by four tildes. (ii) need not use a template, but if it does, that template needs to produce a wikilink to the user page, not an "external" link. Templates such as {{replyto}}, {{u}} and {{user}} are all satisfactory for this. (ii) and (iii) need not be in the same new line of text as each other.
Let me know if this edit didn't notify you. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:59, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Those articles were brought to FA of which she was part of. Secretariat has been in my Watchlist a lot. As far collaboration and consensus I was not talking about on this page but taking off and making changes before the discussion was done. Thanks. dawnleelynn(talk) 14:17, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I just checked Secretariat’s article. Not edited in 10 years? That’s crazy. There are tons of edits just in 2021 and 2021 alone. Many by me and montanabw. dawnleelynn(talk) 18:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
@Dawnleelynn: Please calm down and read the post to which you are replying. The ten years figure referred to the edits by an editor, not the edits to an article ("they haven't edited", not "it hasn't been edited"). Please don't call other people's accurate statements "crazy". Who did and didn't edit a FA is not particularly relevant to a discussion about categorisation, though I note that neither Secretariat (horse) nor California Chrome has any instances of being a member of a category and also of that category's parent category - so Secretariat is in Category:Racehorses bred in Virginia but not also Category:Racehorses bred in the United States. As they are both Featured Articles, I'd have been astonished to find any such incorrect use of categories. The barrel racing women, not being Featured Articles, have not been subject to any careful scrutiny. PamD 19:27, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
The crazy remark is just an expression; it was not meant to be taken literally. Check a slang source. I'll say sorry anyway though. I'm not going to say much about the FA articles, was just trying to say she's done lots of FAs where you have to get the categories right. Forget about it. The two horses were just examples of many FA articles so not meant to take just those two so literally. Charmayne James is a good article I did with a real former barrel racer Atsme and also a mentor, who also does some overlooking in the barrel racing area. dawnleelynn(talk) 16:21, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Hey everyone, it’s all Ok. By the way. I know who Greensodagal was, IRL— I took over the article after she created it because she had a COI. She thanked me later for the work I did on it. Montanabw(talk) 17:20, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
I've finally had a chance to look through here - the categories currently seem in order to me. I did, yesterday, remove all articles located in the category Category:American barrel racers from the subcategory Category:Barrel racers; there are instances where a category can be non-diffusing, but this does not appear to be one of them, to me, so there's no need for them to be in both categories simultaneously. As to the gender issue: my suggestion would be to create, at minimum, a category titled Category:Female rodeo performers to hold all articles about female rodeo performers, located immediately under Category:Rodeo performers and Category:Sportswomen by sport. If there's any desire for a more specific category Category:Female barrel racers, that could be created as a subset, then. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 17:11, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Thanks for that. I'd just had a look at the GA mentioned above, Charmayne James, and noted that at the time it passed GA in 2017 it had just the "Barrel racers" category. The "American barrel racers" category was added later, and I noticed that you'd recently cleaned it up by removing the parent category. Thanks.
Just to tidy things up I've created Category:Canadian barrel racers and added the women who were still in Category:Barrel racers (well, one was an American who'd got left out somehow), and also added them to Category:Canadian female equestrians to get them into a "Sportswomen" category tree. So Category:Barrel racers now just contains the two subcategories. I hope everyone's now happy. PamD 17:35, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment Pings don’t trigger email to me, only talkpage posts do. I’m sorry that I’m late to this party. Here’s the deal: in theory, men aren’t banned from barrel racing. But in practice 99.999999% of all competitors are women and girls. So it’s absolutely ridiculous to create a ghetto of male or female barrel racers. There are a few boys who might compete in barrel racing at very local levels, and now that transgendered people are more widely excepted, we may see a blurring of these categories even further. But at a professional level this is a women’s sport, when created in part because women were banned from some of the other events many years ago, and still have not really achieved parity. What has now happened looks like everything is going in the right direction. What I wish is that everybody hadn’t gotten so snarky about all of this.Montanabw(talk) 17:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Islamic scholars or Muslim scholars of Islam

There is a lot of confusion in category names between these two. Islamc scholar is a term which usually refers to Islamic scholars in the traditional sense, see - Ulama. Muslim scholars of Islam may refer to Muslims who have studied Islam as an academic subject in an academic course designed for study by both Muslims and non-Muslims. The category Category:Muslim scholars of Islam by century mostly refers to Ulama. It should be made clear on the category page if it refers to both Islamic scholars and Muslim scholars of Islam. If it refers mostly to Islamic scholars then renaming should be considered and those who are not Islamic scholars should be deleted and placed in a seperate category or a list. The same is true for it's subcategories. There are similar issues with many of the categories which use either of these terms. It is making it very difficult to look up Isamic scholars in the sense of Ulama through category searches and be sure the results are correct and not misleading. The same is true when looking up academic scholars who have studied secular courses. Amirah talk 21:22, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

'Scholar' in the academic sense on Wikipedia usually refers to a graduate from a university course. There is no reference on the page to any such course or university or level of study. The reference to him being a scholar of any kind is cited by a dead link. There are indications to me which would lead me to think he would be in the Islamic scholar category. The words 'spritual leader', his age, traditional attire, and the fact he is described as a Zaidi scholar (most university courses would be of a broader nature than just covering a minority sect, unless it was a Phd course which was focussed on a narrower field but then a university would be mentioned). A Google search does give further evidence which the article would benefit from. There are articles which say that they were descended from Royalty and that his father was a religious leader and that this teaching was passed down from father to son. This would indicate that he was an Islamic scholar in the sense of Ulama. Although not all Islamic scholars gain their teaching from their own fathers it is common, particularly if there is an ancestral lineage which is titled (such as Sheikh or royalty). Amirah talk 10:44, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
I have given multiple reasons from various sources of evidence to substantiate the claim, but any single one of those reasons would be evidence in itself. Nevertheless, if an article does describe someone as an Islamic scholar it would be beneficial to the article to also include evidence of who their teacher was, (see Ulama, which states that 'by tradition, a scholar who has completed his studies is approved by his teacher') and any specialisation such as the branch of Islam or any particular field of Islamic study that they specialised in. Also, Zaidi scholar would be a valid subcategory of Islamic scholar, and there are many articles which describe him as a Zaidi scholar. He is variously described as 'religious scholar', 'Zaidi scholar' and 'Islamic scholar'. If you require a reliable source which uses the exact term 'Islamic scholar' then here is one from Elcano [7] which states 'Badr el Din al-Houthi was a renowned Islamic scholar' in the seventh paragraph under the 'Analysis' sub-heading. Amirah talk 18:15, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, there may be as 'Muslim scholars of Islam' also means Muslims who have studied a university course in Islamic studies for example, whereas 'Islamic scholars' are only those who have undertaken a traditional form of training, ie. it is a term which is understood as an English translation for the word Ulama. Amirah talk 01:23, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of all Z-number templates

Template:Z1 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page.

"Z-number templates", like Template:Z1, Template:Z208, or 200 other ones, are a means of tracking use of substed templates. More information about what these templates are for, is available at Template:Z number documentation. The deletion discussion is here. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:55, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to Exclude TV series debuts from Establishments in countryname

Discussion launched by Dutchy45 at Category talk:Establishments#Exclude_TV_series_debuts_from_Establishments_in_countryname, which I think has wide ramifications about the scope of (dis)establishment categories.

Editors interested in joining the discussion should post their comments on the category talk page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

When to add a category?

There is a content dispute at Talk:Lincoln, Nebraska#Ukrainian refugees in Lincoln about the addition of Category:Ukrainian communities in the United States to a city where 0.09 percent of the city's population is Ukrainian. Your input would be appreciated. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:32, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Possibly empty category § Hiding this template when unneeded

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Possibly empty category § Hiding this template when unneeded. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:09, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Fiction-based redirects to list entries category handler#How to interpret closure?

 You're invited to join this discussion too.—S Marshall T/C 19:39, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Translation cats

{{rough translation}} was recently changed to categorize by date in addition to county. There are hundreds of articles now in Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template because the cats "Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation from MONTH YEAR" don't exist. I don't do much with cats. Do these need to be created manually? I made Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation from January 2021 but aren't sure I did it correctly (and maybe not the best way). MB 15:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Kate Baker

I have added Kate Baker to Category:20th-century Australian women. At the risk of getting a lot of hate, can someone please review to check if this is correct? - Aussie Article Writer (talk) 15:18, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Kate Baker is definitely a woman who lived in Australia in the 20th century, so I don't see why it should be controversial.--Dalziel 86 (talk) 08:24, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Category:State government in Nigeria

Category:State government in Nigeria is a mess. It must be made more consistent. I can fix it if you just answer these two quick questions.

First question: In which categories should the articles for an individual state government be placed? Ex: Government of Lagos State.

a) Only the category with the same name (Category:Government of Lagos State)
b) Both the category with the same name, and Category:State governments of Nigeria
c) Both the category with the same name, and the politics category for the specific state (Category:Politics of Lagos State)
d) The category with the same name, and Category:State governments of Nigeria, and the politics category for the specific state
e) Option a, along with the state category itself (Category:Lagos State)
f) Option b, along with the state category itself (Category:Lagos State)
g) Option c, along with the state category itself (Category:Lagos State)
h) Option d, along with the state category itself (Category:Lagos State)
i) Other

Second question: In which categories should the category for the state government be placed? Ex: Category:Government of Lagos State.

a) Category:State governments of Nigeria and the politics category for the specific state (Category:Politics of Lagos State)
b) Category:State governments of Nigeria and the state category itself (Category:Lagos State)
c) Category:State governments of Nigeria, the politics category for the specific state, and the state category itself
d) Other

Thank you. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 05:06, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Category:Ethnic humour

I don't think it's particularly clear what the category Category:Ethnic humour is intended to be categorising. Some of the pages which appear under this category are clearly about comedy that emerges from particular cultures, such as the article Australian comedy or Jewish humor, while others seem to be about racist "comedy", such as the article Blackface or Examples of yellowface. While these articles do share some tangential similarities in subject matter, I can't help but question whether this broadness violates WP:NPOV; it wouldn't be hard to imagine someone seeing the articles Racial brownface and Indonesian comedy in the same category and coming away with a negative impression of Indonesian culture. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 10:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Rename to Category:Humour by ethnicity and create a new cat for the racist / deplorable articles. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:34, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
If you want to rename a category, you must use the WP:CFR process. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:34, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Sex/gender confusion in categories

I noticed this category move on my watchlist, which (I believe correctly) changed "female" to "women". However other closely related categories were not also moved to refer to gender instead of sex. Could a bot be tasked to systematically fix such errors in category titles? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:56, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Dodger67, if they meet one of the criteria at WP:C2 which from your description it seems like they do, you will have to compile a list of them and add them to the speedy renaming requests list on the same page. If no one objects in 48 hours, the CFD regulars will rename the cats using the bot. I think this should be the minimum level of human oversight desirable for such tasks because cats are sensitive, especially these ones. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Adding sortkey to categories based on pattern recognition of sister categories

Hi, This is to notify the Wikiproject about Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Dexbot 12. Here's an example edit Special:Diff/1045097487 Ladsgroupoverleg 12:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Category:Music memes and Category:Internet memes

Hi,

I hope it's the right place to talk about this.

Akandkur (talk · contribs) is currently removing articles from Category:Music memes and Category:Internet memes based on personal opinion rather than sources.

Some examples: [8][9][10][11][12].

What do you think?

Pinging Rodney Araujo who added the categories on some articles. --Thibaut (talk) 00:03, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Well, I think it's inappropriate. Categorisation isn't based just on personal fancy. If it's used as a meme, it should be in the category. Dege31 (talk) 16:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Diffusion

Hello! Advice seems to indicate that categories like Category:Irish male actors and Category:Irish actresses should not be diffusing with Category:Irish actors but they are. Can anyone help me understand this? Usedtobecool ☎️ 02:19, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

It's because Irish actors are also sub-categorised by century, medium, and county/town, and those are diffusing categories of Irish actors. – Fayenatic London 15:53, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Request for Comment on subcategories of Category:Paintings by collection

After multiple WP:CfD nominations produced contradictory results, I've set up a Request for Comment here to try and determine which naming convention should be used for the subcategories of Category:Paintings by collection. Should it be (A) Paintings in [a museum, etc.] or (B) Paintings in the collection of [a museum, etc.]? Resolution is sorely needed so that names elsewhere in the category tree can be cleaned up, so please contribute! Ham II (talk) 08:18, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Template question

So I know we have {{container category}} and {{cat diffuse}} for when a category should have no articles, or very few articles, respectively, but is there a template for the opposite case, where a category should contain only articles? For instance, all of the "XXXX births" categories should contain only articles, and while I think that is common knowledge and so don't think such a template would be needed on those, is there a template to use on only-article categories where that is less commonly known? Thanks in advance, UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:42, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know of one. (For births, you could add such a notice box to {{Birth year category header}}.) – Fayenatic London 07:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't this List be a category?

See List_of_scientific_skeptics A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 15:47, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

No, only a list can state the activities of each individual which provide the grounds for inclusion. Unfortunately even this list fails to do that for a lot of the entries. – Fayenatic London 20:53, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Fair, thanks Fayenatic london. I'll go ahead and ask in WikiProject Lists about it. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 08:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion for WP:COPSEP

See this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:53, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Add Categories to Page - doesn't find keywords??

Just checking When I go Edit-> Category and them go to add a category. If I enter Say Wikipedia Victoria, then it doesn't show Wikipedia in Victoria, but asks me to create a category Am I doing it right?? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:52, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Wakelamp d[@-@]b,
Can you say the name of the page you are looking to categorize? It's easier to be specific about search terms than to answer a question like this in a general way as I'm not sure what you're seeking with "Wikipedia in Victoria". Liz Read! Talk! 20:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Doh -My mistake it was WIkipedians in Victoria (Australia), and on my own page. When I etered Wikipedians Victoria it offered to create a page. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 05:36, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

2022 categories

Hello, folks,

Every year, we have lots of editors eager to create the next year's annual categories and we will soon see a lot of empty 2022 categories on the empty category list, especially towards the end of December. I'm already running into premature "X in 2022" articles in main space and I expect to see this happen with categories in coming weeks.

Even though we deal with this every autumn/winter, I don't recall if there are specific guidelines about creating these annual categories early and I don't see anything about this in my very quick scan of the categorization pages. If the categories are empty, they can just be tagged CSD C1 but any other advice on whether categories prematurely created and filled with a few pages should be emptied and turned into temporary redirects until the year is actually underway? I don't think it would be useful to clog up CFD with deletion nominations for categories that might well need to be recreated once we hit January. I don't expect this to be an issue until December but I thought I'd ask before it becomes a problem. Many thanks, in advance. Liz Read! Talk! 20:55, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

No point in deleting if they're likely to be recreated and are already filled with pages. Dege31 (talk) 12:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Concur with Dege31. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:17, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Mass shootings in the US by state

There's an ongoing discussion on the talk page for Category:Mass shootings in the United States about whether the {{all included}} banner should appear on the page. Interested editors may wish to join the discussion there. Thank you. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

RfC re rule for how "expatriates" are categorized

It's a page that few people watch, so more eyes invited: Category talk:Expatriates#RfC: Proposal to change the definition of "expatriate" for the purposes of categorization Herostratus (talk) 18:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

WP Gender studies

Most of the categories related to WikiProject Gender studies do not match the project name. The word "studies" should not be capitalized.

Here's a list of the categories that need to be moved/renamed:

Then, to repopulate the right categories, correct the word "studies" in the project template and the userbox. I'll manually check every entry. Thanks in advance, Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 07:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Est. 2021: Thanks for putting all of these together. This request should be made at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy, since it is eligible for speedy renaming as a capitalization fix per WP:C2A. bibliomaniac15 17:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Non-diffused category checker

See discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Non-diffused category checker. All comments welcome. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Weird kind of delay in categorisation

I recently attempted to add {{they do}} to Category:Editor's pronouns templates, but for some reason the Category page wouldn't show up {{they do}}, while every other page showed up including those which were added to the category after I added {{they do}}. What happened here? ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 10:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

There is often a delay in updating category pages if a category is added via a transcluded page. You can force it quickly by making a null edit of Template:They do and not just of Template:They do/doc. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Perfect. This worked.  Thank you very much! PrimeHunter ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 13:23, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Tag for miscategorisation of a category

Is there such a tag? For example for a category that is categorised under what should be its own subcategories. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I generally just fix them. Cats like this usually occur because people are unaware of the direction of the parent/child relationship. Do you have examples? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Redrose64, Category:Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has several, also some which are good. I also usually fix if it is straightforward, but sorting these out looks like a fair sized job and I am busy with something else, so wanted to mark them for attention. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
OK, the child cats seem fine, so let's look at the parents. Here's the wikicode: 
[[Category:Disasters in Ontario]]
[[Category:Great Lakes ships|Great Lakes]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks in lakes|Great Lakes]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks of New York (state)]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks of the United States|Great Lakes]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks of Canada|Great Lakes]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Illinois]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Indiana]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Michigan]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Minnesota]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Ohio]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:Transportation disasters in Wisconsin]]
[[Category:Water transport in Ontario]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Illinois]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Indiana]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Michigan]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Minnesota]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Ohio]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Pennsylvania]]
[[Category:Water transportation in Wisconsin]]
Disasters in Ontario is inapplicable, because not all were in Ontario. Similarly for Shipwrecks of New York (state) and all those from Transportation disasters in Illinois through Water transportation in Wisconsin inclusive. Great Lakes ships I'm not sure about: whilst shipwrecks normally involve ships, they are not ships themselves. Shipwrecks in lakes is a definite "keep". That leaves Shipwrecks of the United States and Shipwrecks of Canada - these could be seen to fail the same criterion as the majority (no shipwreck in Lake Michigan could possibly have occurred in Canada) but I think they're better kept. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:15, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
I would consider Category:Great Lakes ships and Category:Shipwrecks in lakes to be valid. all the others apply to only some of the articles in the category, and probably a different subset for each, so somewhat labour intensive. I am reasonably confident I can fix this all, but not quickly, and all purely manually. I am used to doing category work on an ad hoc basis, not normally such a large batch with so much to fix. Is there a semi automated way to do it? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:46, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
@Peter Southwood: Is there a semi automated way to do it? Wikipedia:Cat-a-lot? ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:42, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
I take your point about shipwrecks not necessarily being ships, but the articles I have checked are mainly about the ships, and shipwreck can be a noun or verb, and both the wrecking and the wreckage are usually mentioned, even if only to say that the location is unknown. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 11:02, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
Got rid of the miscats, applying them in the proper places when I notice or can work out that they are applicable. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:57, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Academics by gender

I am in a dispute with Rathfelder. The subcategory "New Zealand women academics" states at the top of the page that the articles in this subcategory can also appear in the parent category i.e. in "NZ academics". Rathfelder has removed articles on women academics from the category "NZ academics". I don't think this is correct. Any thoughts appreciated. MurielMary (talk) 11:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

@MurielMary and Rathfelder: I think the justification, taking Lisa Emerson as an example, is probably that Category:New Zealand academics is a parent category of Category:Massey University faculty of which she is a member, and the statement you quote above refers to "... or in diffusing subcategories of the parent." There is a discussion going on somewhere I've seen today about this issue, because not all academics working in a place will be of the nationality corresponding to that place, and vice versa, so there is an argument for categorising someone as both Category:New Zealand academics and Category:Massey University faculty, and not making the latter a child of the former, to distinguish employer from nationality, but at the moment I think Rathfelder is probably technically correct. PamD 12:21, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Ah, the discussion "somewhere" is immediately above! PamD 12:23, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Hi @PamD: and thanks for the reply here. The conversation above is about academics categorised by nationality. My query is about academics and gender. MurielMary (talk) 18:30, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
@MurielMary: But if you read my reply carefully you'll see it explains the problem you have encountered about academics and gender: as explained below, it's all to do with nondiffusing subcategories. PamD 20:35, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
@MurielMary: Rathfelder is correct here, with the way these categories are structured. As Pam quoted, the way non-diffusing subcategories work is that the subject (e.g. Barbara Burlingame) should be in both the non-diffusing subcategory (Category:New Zealand women academics) and in "the parent category, or in diffusing subcategories of the parent". It does not mean that the subject needs to be directly in the parent category (Category:New Zealand academics). In this case, Burlingame is in a diffusing subcategory of "Category:New Zealand academics," namely Category:Massey University faculty. Per normal WP:SUBCAT rules, an article shouldn't be in a parent category when it is already in a diffusing subcategory of that parent category. Does this make sense? I know non-diffusing subcategories are confusing. Aerin17 (t • c) 19:04, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
What Aerin wrote is correct. Basically, don't put an article in both the child and the parent; always choose the child. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Academics by nationality

I found myself in a dispute with @Rathfelder: on the P. J. Rhodes article. They removed "Category:English academics" from the article on the grounds that it is covered by "Category:Classical scholars of the University of Durham". That category is indeed in the hierarchy - "Academics of Durham University" --> "Category:Academics by university or college in England" --> "Category:English academics". But why is it? "Category:English academics" describes itself as "This category is about Academics from England" and is part of the "Category:English people" tree (i.e. a nationality tree). It is perfectly conceivable that someone might be an academic based at an English University without being an "English person", so it seems strange to me that "Academics by university of college in England" is included in the "English people" tree. Furius (talk) 01:09, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree - Rathfelder gets himself into many such problems. These should be reversed. I expect he has done loads of these. There are of course large numbers of foreign academics working in English institutions, and large numbers of English academics working in foreign ones (or just Scottish, Welsh in both cases). We should have both academics by nationality and academics by institution categories. Perhaps in theory "Category:Academics by university or college in England" should not be a sub of "Category:English academics", but given neither part of the tree is complete I doubt this should be changed. Johnbod (talk) 02:12, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
We categorise people as "from" places. This may not be where they were born. Its supposed to be defining. For academics the location of their institution is generally defining - and they may be located in more than one. See WP:SUBCAT - "pages for sub-categories should be categorised under the most specific parent categories possible." When we describe categories as based on nationality that too is a slippery concept and generally includes location and often language and culture. And very few biography articles have any explicit information about nationality. Besides, English has not been a nationality since 1707.Rathfelder (talk) 08:39, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Sorry, this is largely nonsense. It is true that nationality categories are difficult, or "slippery" if you like, especially in edge cases, but they form a large part of our biographical categories, and the novel idea that your nationality is based on where you work, or have worked in the past, is ridiculous, and unsupported by consensus or precedent. If you don't like the splitting of most British categories between the four home nations, take that up elsewhere, probably starting with pursuading the Scots. Good luck with that! Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
There are probably relevant discussions about footballers, who often play for teams in countries other than their own. PamD 12:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Interestingly, Category:American academics has a clarificatory note saying: Academics who are American citizens or of any nationality who are or have been based in the United States., though there is nothing equivalent at Category:British academics or Category:New Zealand academics. Category:Moroccan academics has a note saying "This category is for articles about academics from the African country of Morocco." created using a template, and Category:Indian academics defines "Academic" but not "Indian". In short, we have the usual inconsistency. Perhaps it needs some consideration. PamD 12:33, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
At present, if someone of any nationality teaches for a few years at the Sorbonne, they end up categorised under Category:French people (via several layers of subcategory) - and as many other nationalities as their academic career has taken them to. Hmm, not ideal. Should we have a new intermediate level of categories for "Academics working at institutions in ..."? PamD 12:43, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Please god no! The category structures are so large that complete logic is unachievable. Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Agreed that this is not ideal. Going back to the original example, just because someone is or has been an academic at the University of Durham should not mean that they are, through several levels of subcategory, categorized as an English person. I would be in favor of simply removing Category:Academics by university or college in England from Category:English academics, and so on for the rest of these categories, fixing inconsistencies as necessary. As for your (Pam's) suggestion- I'm not sure how that would be different from the already-existing Category:Faculty by university or college. Aerin17 (t • c) 18:46, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
As I said above, this removal would be logical, but all of Rathfelder's edits would need to be reversed first, and probably vast numbers of other additions to Category:English academics made. One might wonder if it is worth the effort, which will be made by .... who exactly? Johnbod (talk) 19:13, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Valid point. I wonder if this is something AWB might be able to help with? It feels vaguely possible, though I'm not familiar enough with the program to know. And even if not... I feel like I'm going to be scolded for saying this, but could we not just make the change to the categories and leave some articles miscategorized? One could argue that they already are (specifically, the aforementioned articles potentially categorized as a nationality they are not), so the change would be an improvement- at least this way, the category structure would be correct. Aerin17 (t • c) 19:39, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
In my view, it's a matter of what the long-term impact of a given category scheme will be. If the situation is left as is then, over time, more editors will do as User:Rathfelder has done and eventually all academics of x-nationality at a university in x will be purged from the x-nationality cats. OTOH, if Aerin's proposal is followed then, over time, any academics missing from x-nationality cats will be re-added. So, it seems to me that Aerin's proposal is the way to go. Furius (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I rather doubt this is right. Most prolific category editors don't worry much about issues from 3 levels higher up the tree, and tend to add rather than remove cats. Johnbod (talk) 04:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I'd support the removal of the "... in Fooland" from the "Fooish academics" categories. The vast majority of "Fooish academics" will already be categorised as "Fooish historians/ physicists/..." so will be in that category. The example which kicked this off is, I think, a rarity as categories by discipline and institution intersected are uncommon. We should not be miscategorising people by nationality. (I suspect that footballers are in a similar mess). PamD 06:59, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I very much doubt this is right - Category:English academics doesn't have enough sub-cats for it be so, & for some reason does not connect to the scientists' tree at all. The footballers are (locally) probably better as there is a vast forest of Category:Expatriate sportspeople in England and sub-cats and Category:Expatriate sportspeople by country of residence covers over 200 countries. Probably the best way to go, but we don't have the manpower to do this all over. Johnbod (talk) 14:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
@Johnbod: But if you follow the tree up from Category:Manchester United F.C. players you can still get to Category:British people. PamD 15:49, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
Looking at Category:Classical scholars of the University of Durham and its parent two categories, it suggests that classical scholars are unusual: there are no other subcategories of Category:Academics of Durham University, while Category:Classical scholars by academic institution has 52 institution subcategories. PamD 07:31, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
True but an irrelevant coincidence - most of his edits are to people without the extra layer - see this just 3 hours ago. He really should stop these while discussion continues, but of course he knows he is right, so won't. Johnbod (talk) 14:10, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • A stricter approach to the categorisation of biographies by nationality will not work. Less than 1% of biographies contain any explicit information about nationality. Nationality is in practice conflated with location, and often with language, culture and ethnicity. And English is not the nationality of anyone after 1707. Rathfelder (talk) 10:02, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Is there a way to resolve this by using diffusing/nondiffusing categories, so that we allow someone to be categorised both at "Category:Fooish academics" and at "Category:Academics of the University of Western Foo"? That way, anyone who was actually trying to find academics of Fooish nationality would be able to do so, without having to also consider everyone of any nationality who spent a couple of years working there 30 years ago. At present, that is impossible. PamD 15:49, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • These issues are not special to academics. Many others in Category:People by occupation and nationality conflate location and nationality. In reality there is very little information in most biographies about nationality, and nationality law is complex and obviously different in each country.Rathfelder (talk) 18:06, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
    No, that's not right. Most articles on individuals start with something along the lines of "Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician" "Franklin Delano Roosevelt... often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician" "Peter John Rhodes, FBA (10 August 1940 – 27 October 2021), usually cited as P. J. Rhodes, was a British academic and ancient historian." It is one of the first things that a biography article seeks to nail down, it is clearly treated as a defining characteristic, and it is rarely difficult to find out (where it is difficult, e.g. Einstein, that's usually explained at some length). The English-after-1707 thing that you have raised a couple of times now is a red herring - it's not as if you replaced 'Cat:English academic' with 'Cat:British academic', you just got rid of it, you're doing the same thing with other individuals where no such issue exists, like Nigerian academics, and you're not claiming that 'Cat:x academic' should be removed from articles like Serafina Cuomo where nationality and nation of employment differ, so you don't actually object to categorising by nationality as a concept, you've just arbitrarily decided that you're going to delete nationality categories in this one specific context. Furius (talk) 02:25, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
    It's getting worse. Now everybody in Category:Massey University faculty, incl. Americans like Wendy Baltzer, is categorised in Category:People from Palmerston North. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    It's probably time to call in an admin. Rathfelder is making a massive range of changes for which they do not have consensus. They are welcome to challenge that consensus, but the appropriate venue for that would be an RfC, not unilateral action. Furius (talk) 15:45, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    We have categories like Category:New Zealand people by city and occupation in almost every country. It doesnt mean that all the biographies are of people who are nationals of that country. Plenty of the Category:Writers from London are not British citizens. Rathfelder (talk) 16:07, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    Could you provide a specific example? I clicked randomly through a few in Category:Writers from London, and all of the articles began "so-and-so is a/an English/British [list of occupations including writer]." If someone is "from London", enough so that it is a defining characteristic of them, this means that they probably ought to be considered an English/British person, whether or not they are legally a British citizen, and if not, they shouldn't be in that category. Also, I'm not entirely sure why this is relevant. The discussion is specifically about academics, many of whom may be employed at institutions in a different country than that of their nationality, which makes it a unique case. In few of the other categories you have linked as an "example" are people automatically put in a category describing a nationality that isn't necessarily their own simply by nature of the institution they may have worked at for some time; if they do, perhaps those categories (or their specific placement on certain people) is incorrect too. Aerin17 (t • c) 16:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    Quite a few of the articles directly in Category:New Zealand academics were about people working at NZ universities who were clearly unlikely to be NZ citizens - sometimes even when the article started "Joe Soap is a New Zealand economist". Similarly quite a lot of the articles in Category:Academics of the University of Oxford are clearly about people from other countries. There is nothing unusual about this - the way categorisation works is that many articles are a couple of levels below the country level, in something which is described as "by nationality" but which contains stuff which is actually categorised by location. Plenty of categories are of the form "Somethings from Someplace". "From" is completely ambiguous. It might mean they were born there, but it is supposed to mean that they did whatever made them notable there. Categorisation is an imperfect art. Rathfelder (talk) 20:25, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    "but it is supposed to mean that they did whatever made them notable there" (1) Where does this claim come from? (2) It's not ambiguous with categories like Category:English academics since they are part of the "people by nationality and occupation" tree. "Similarly quite a lot of the articles in Category:Academics of the University of Oxford are clearly about people from other countries." Yes, that is why I've been objecting to removing Category:English academics from English academics based at an English institution. I can't comment on Joe Soap. Furius (talk) 13:03, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Immediately above that is a section entitled By nationality and occupation, which reads, "People are usually categorized by their nationality and occupation, such as Category:Ethiopian musicians." This is clearly exactly analogous to Category:English academics. Furius (talk) 18:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout § Template:Improve categories

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout § Template:Improve categories. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:20, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

This is now an RfC about the placement of {{improve categories}} and {{uncategorized}} within WP:ORDER - unspecified, after categories but above stubs, below stubs? PamD 09:45, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cats2

Template:Cats2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. 65.92.246.142 (talk) 03:16, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

People from Gibraltar

I usually add biographies to a "People from <city of birth>" category. Category:People from Gibraltar was merged with Category:Gibraltarians in Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_May_7#Category:People_from_Gibraltar (@Rathfelder: as nominator). So I'm a bit stuck with what to do with René Neuville, the son of a French diplomat who was born and raised in Gibraltar but never described as "Gibraltarian" in terms of ethnicity or nationality. Is the existence of an "edge case" like Neuville enough to recreate the category? Or should I just leave the article out of that category tree? – Joe (talk) 11:32, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Good question, but hard to answer. Gibraltar is unusual in having no geographical subdivision. Neuville didnt seem to do anything notable in Gibraltar. We dont put people in geographical categories just for a place of birth which they left as children, which I guess he did, so I wouldn't put him in a Gibraltar category. And NB the article is rather ambiguous where it says "Neuville's father was the consul general of France in Gibraltar. He entered the diplomatic service at a young age..." Clarifying that would help. Rathfelder (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
    As far as I can tell he left Gibraltar when he was an adult, when he left for his first diplomatic posting. – Joe (talk) 18:28, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:Cafés

Discussion about the tree of Category:Cafés, see WikiProject Food and Drink talk page. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:01, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Colons at the start of new Categories

I often work on and often find new pages with colons at the start of otherwise perfectly good links to categories eg Dwarka Courts Complex: Revision as of 00:57, 15 February 2022 (edit)

References

Category:South West Delhi district Category:Courthouses in India

This leads to a minor adjustment removing the colon, and the category displays correctly. It seems that the colon is being introduced somewhere in a new page template somewhere, and if it could be removed it would save much time and effort having to remove it again. It would be great if someone could help with this. Many thanks, Berek (talk) 10:48, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

In this case, as in many others, the colons were required as long as an article is a draft. When it gets moved into article space, those colons should be removed. This happens usually quickly. It can be automated if categories in drafts are surrounded by {{Draft categories}}, but that method is not widely used. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:55, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
@Michael Bednarek: Shame {{Draft categories}} is not more widely used. Another problem with the leading colon is if there is a sortkey added, the category declaration is converted into piped-link syntax. This results in the display only showing the sorting key, which looks odd and confusing. Template:Draft categories does not do that. It displays the category link as intended, and as it would appear in a live article. In fact, it also provides a brief explanation in a box, which is nice.
Does Template:Draft article automatically add leading colons? If so, wouldn't it be better if it wrapped the categories with 
{{Draft categories|...}}
instead? DB1729 (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

History question

[13] Why is there so much variance in the number of items in this category? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:18, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe we got rid of most of the unwanted cats five years ago and there are few left to discuss? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Redrose64 I see, thanks! It just piqued my curiosity. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 21:09, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorting keys

I make a lot of category sorting edits, adding and modifying sorting keys. Occasionally I am questioned (ex1, ex2) or reverted [14] [15] [16] by well-intentioned, even experienced editors, who have mistaken category sortkey syntax for piped link syntax. This is understandable and not surprising. The two functions happen to use the same markup, the pipe "|" character being the main culprit in the confusion.

I have identified three areas that are either exacerbating the problem or could be improved to help the situation:

  • Leading colons in drafts – It is common practice and important to disable category functions in drafts. Usually this is done by placing a leading colon within the category declaration like here [[:Category:Topic]]. That's fine, but the problem with this method is when there is a sortkey added. The leading colon effectively converts the category declaration into a piped-link, and the resulting display only shows the sorting key, which looks odd and confusing. For example, a draft titled Draft:List of amphibians of Argentina, we would expect it to contain the following category with the Argentina sortkey, but [[:Category:Lists of amphibians by country|Argentina]] merely produces Argentina, which would appear at the bottom of the page where the categories are located. It would not be unreasonable for an editor, especially a newer one noticing this odd behavior, to assume "|" is part of a piped link and remove it thinking it will cause the same behavior in mainspace after the suppression is lifted. They might even challenge others who try to add them after the page goes live. Note the other, less-used suppression method {{Draft categories}} performs far better. It displays the category link as intended and as it would appear in a live article. In fact, it also provides a brief explanation in a box, which is nice.
{{Draft categories|Category:Lists of amphibians by country|Argentina}} produces:
This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.
Categories:
    Category:Lists of amphibians by country
Suggested solutions – Modify the section Wikipedia:Drafts#Preparing drafts to indicate {{Draft categories}} is preferred over leading colons. Change the leading colon function to make all text between the brackets visible. Or, code a bot or something that suppresses draft categories with {{Draft categories}} and automatically converts leading colons in draft categories to the Template:Draft categories markup. Maybe another category suppression method could be used to help?
  • WP:SORTKEY – This shortcut is often used to quickly explain a sortkey to other editors. It redirects to the section Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys. The problem is that section itself does not do a very good job in quickly explaining how they work. If the user spends some time reading it closely, it may become clear to them, especially if they follow the link at the top to Help:Category#Sorting category pages, which is a much better explanation in my opinion.
Suggested solution – Rewrite Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys to at least include examples of actual words being used as sortkeys and explain how the syntax resembles that of a piped link, but has a different function. Both these important points are made at Help:Category#Sorting category pages and they are worth repeating.
  • HotCat edit summary – When adding or changing sortkeys using HotCat, the default edit summary is "(new key for Category link: "key word or character" using HotCat)". It supplies no link to a guideline or anything explaining what a "key" is. An editor unfamiliar with the function and its confusing syntax has to figure it out themselves from a dead start.
Suggested solution – Modify the HotCat edit summary to include a link to the section Help:Category#Sorting category pages or even to Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys if that section is sufficiently improved. I suppose this point would be more appropriately brought up at WT:HotCat, but thought I would run it by here first.

I have no idea how feasible some of this is or if posting it here will help at all, but any thoughts on all or any part of it is appreciated. DB1729 (talk) 21:41, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Criteria for creating tracking categories

Are there any guidelines or criteria for making tracking maintenance categories? I found how-to instructions but I did not find any should-you-actually-be-doing-this guidelines. This is about the tracking categories, which are usually of the form Category:Articles with X where X is some sort of problem to be fixed. Should there be any discussion or consensus that X is a problem before creating a tracking category for it? It seems obvious, but I didn't see it detailed anywhere. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:41, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations#Lists of ambassadors categorization

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations#Lists of ambassadors categorization. --DB1729 (talk) 03:09, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

First time

I just created my first category, Category:Ballpoint pen art. Feel free to tell me if I did anything wrong. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Trees of categories

Hi, i was trying to create new categories, I have already red the guidelines but i didn't quite grasp it fully, for example how to make a tree of categories, i use {{CatAutoTOC}} and leave it to work its magic (and i double check for results). Would you mind to take a look at my attempts see here,here, and here and share any suggestion on how to do it better? Some advices would be helpful. Cheers. --Opencross (talk) 15:04, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Opencross: You didn't create Category:Defunct tennis tournaments, which has existed for almost nine years. Your creation of Category:Tennis tournaments in Czech Republic will disrupt this CFR/S request; apart from that, it didn't have a WP:SORTKEY, which I have rectified. Category:Indoor hard court tennis tournaments lacked a category for indoor sports; but it is probably redundant to Category:Indoor tennis tournaments. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:17, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
You sort of missed greatly the point here, which was to have explained, in plain words possibly, how i did in Categories, and not "what i did" (if that was right or wrong). I was asking about the process, otherwise why would i have written here in first place, am i right?
And for sure i didn't create Category:Defunct tennis tournaments, you got this wrong or maybe i didn't explain further, i linked it to give an example of the "tree of categories" i was asking about and specifically how one of the category i created have fit into the main/upper category, which was cause of discomfort and prompted me to ask for advices.
That being said, thanks for pointing me toward "sort keys", and for your advice on main categories, i would have liked to understand what you did and how to use "default sort" i was reading about in the guidelines. Maybe another time. Opencross (talk) 19:25, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

  • John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Categories for release dates on upcoming products

I've started a thread at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Years#Year_categories_for_upcoming_products having run into some pushback on removing categories such as Category:2023 films on upcoming films at Category talk:2023 films and I couldn't find any official guidance on the matter - thoughts welcome.Le Deluge (talk) 17:16, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

How to trace parent/grandparent/etc. cats

If I know a specific article "X" is within a subcat (at arbitrary depth) of a specific cat "Cat:Y", is there a way to trace the cat hierarchy ("Cat:Y contains Cat:A, which contains Cat:B, which contains X")? My specific use-case is that PETSCAN is giving unexpected pages when I request a cat-tree, and I'm trying to figure out which intermediate cat is mis-categorized. DMacks (talk) 17:35, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Relevant categories are being deleted en masse with HotCat

I opened a discussion in MOS:TV about the deletion of 13 categories from a TV series. The series is well-known for its inclusion of LGBT characters and topics -- yet LGBT categories were deleted. Prior to this, 15 categories (including LGBT-related) were deleted from a film whose main character is a lesbian teenager and the plot revolves around her. I discovered these deletions because the articles are on my watchlist ... but how many other articles are experiencing the careless deletion of categories with the HotCat gadget? The discussion in MOS:TV is here. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 12:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary: Coming late to this but Hotcat is generally reliable, it doesn't delete categories "by accident", the editor will have made that choice. I can't comment on that particular article or an editor's motives for editing (other than to WP:Assume good faith) but TV articles in general tend to have egregious WP:OVERCATEGORISATION. I'd be far more concerned if only 1-2 LGBT categories were being removed, but if it's in double figures then that looks like normal pruning of excess categories. I suggest you have a read of WP:DEFINING to help you concentrate on the most important categories, they're not just random metatags for anything that gets mentioned in a show. Le Deluge (talk) 21:28, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Categorizing biographies by cause of death

Cause of death for most people is not a defining characteristic. Should cause of death be a category to add to every possible Wikipedia biography? Cause of death is not mentioned in WP:PEOPLECAT and would seem to fail WP:CATDEF? Hundreds of biographies are now having death-related categories added. For example, Category:Stroke-related deaths in Arizona was just added to Lillian Moller Gilbreth. She was noted for several things, but what she died from at age 93 isn't one of them. Why is it diffused by state? She lived in Arizona with her daughter only after she became too frail to live alone in New Jersey. Wikipedia category pages aren't the place to build up such public health data by state. That is what Wikidata is for, where one can query "people who died of stroke in Arizona", "engineers who died of stroke", "women engineers who died of stroke" and any other combination that might be of interest for some purpose. StarryGrandma (talk) 15:31, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Strongly agree with everything you've said here. I think it might be worth mentioning something about this at WP:PEOPLECAT. It might also be helpful to add a brief note about WP:CATDEF to some of the category pages under Category:Deaths by type of illness. I tried to search the archives for discussions on this topic, since it seems like it must have come up before, but I wasn't able to find much, beyond some brief discussion at Category talk:Deaths by type of illness and here. Colin M (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Agree. Cause of death is usually only defining if its violent or unexpected, or in some other way newsworthy. We should remove a lot of these. Rathfelder (talk) 22:40, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Agree. The same guidance is used in documentation for {{infobox person}} about putting cause of death in the infobox: should only be included when the cause of death has significance for the subject's notability. MB 22:57, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Agreed. I'm going to remove these when I come across them. KaraLG84 (talk) 11:59, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
Generally agree, but how does wikidata know what people died of? I thought it used categories/infoboxen for that? Furius (talk) 22:41, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
since I removed these categories from Angela Morley and Robert Moog yesterday I had a quick look. It seems to me like it probably does. Moog's record pulls his cause of death from the Ukrainian Wikipedia. Not sure exactly how.Morley's record doesn't have any cause of death listed, but I'm not sure if it did before I edited the article. I undid my edit to see if it gets added back in. I know hardly anything about Wikidata so hopefully someone else will chime in. KaraLG84 (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Template:Expand language has an RFC

Template:Expand language, has an RFC which is within the scope of this WikiProject, for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --N8wilson 21:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Rebel_Wilson#The_LGBT_categories

Informed opinion sought. Subject came out this week. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:49, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

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