Vegaswikian (talk | contribs) →Help creating a category page: Already answered |
Alan Liefting (talk | contribs) |
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Thanks to anyone who can point me to the right Wikisource page. [[Special:Contributions/69.125.134.86|69.125.134.86]] ([[User talk:69.125.134.86|talk]]) 23:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC) |
Thanks to anyone who can point me to the right Wikisource page. [[Special:Contributions/69.125.134.86|69.125.134.86]] ([[User talk:69.125.134.86|talk]]) 23:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC) |
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:Asked and answered [[Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Help.21_Creating_a_category_page|here]]. [[User:Vegaswikian|Vegaswikian]] ([[User talk:Vegaswikian|talk]]) 00:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC) |
:Asked and answered [[Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Help.21_Creating_a_category_page|here]]. [[User:Vegaswikian|Vegaswikian]] ([[User talk:Vegaswikian|talk]]) 00:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC) |
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== Category:Intel International Science and Engineering Fair == |
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Is [[:Category:Intel International Science and Engineering Fair]] really needed? It only contains the subject article and four asteroids discovered during the fair. This is not really how categories work IMO. -- [[User:Alan Liefting|Alan Liefting]] ([[User_talk:Alan_Liefting|talk]] - [[Special:Contributions/Alan_Liefting|contribs]]) 22:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC) |
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WP:AFCH
Hi, at the moment I'm improving the WP:AFC helper tool. Should I add {{uncat}} as I did here or is catimprove better? mabdul (public) 10:18, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
- I guess the simple answer is that if there are no categories use {{uncat}}. But if the article needs additional categories then use {{catimprove}}. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:19, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
- So for the cate that template:L is added, add catimprove. OK. Thanks. mabdul 12:23, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
What to do if an article needs adding to lots of categories
I often come across cases where an article is only in one of potentially hundreds of categories. Some examples:
- Bracken could be in the flora or fern categories for almost every country
- Black rat could be added to many "Invasive species in [Country]" categories
- The entries at List of the world's 100 worst invasive species could be sprinkled throughout 1000s of categories
Another situation: Clematis vitalba (Old man's beard) is in Category:Invasive plant species in Oregon It could be in Category:Invasive plant species in New Zealand (and many other categories if they existed) but the Old man's beard in New Zealand article is in it.
There are two issues: WP is work in progress (not all possible categories exist) and we may need to limit the categorisation of articles (which is done anyway). Given that categories are poor cousins to articles and lists (in that they get less hits) there should be a stronger focus on lists.
Another point: in both Category:Invasive plant species in New Zealand and Category:Invasive plant species in the United States for example, there are screeds of species binomial names, which to most mortals are meaningless, that hide all the more interesting stuff (POV alert!!) In these cases List of invasive plant species in New Zealand and List of invasive plant species in the United States would be better than cluttered categories. This is the WP:CLT issue. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:52, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- Biota found in most countries can be categorized in Category:Biota found in most countries (the exact name and the precise criteria to be decided). Then that category can be a subcategory of almost every country subcategory of Category:Biota by country. A similar procedure can be used for various types of biota: plants, animals, mammals, ferns, and so forth.
- In regard to WP:CLT, there can be sortable wikitables coexisting with many categories, and vice versa. In working from a category to a list, one can look for a few informative aspects for each entry on the list, and make corresponding columns in a sortable wikitable. In working from a list to a category, one can add a corresponding category to each listed item that is not already in that category.
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:04, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
- However, this is a good example where a list(s) could be better than a category. I wonder if there is some way that wikidata could be of value in areas like this. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Mass media by topic and Mass media by interest
Hi, folks! What's the difference between Category:Mass media by topic and Category:Mass media by interest? I believe that these should be merged, don't you think? --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:57, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Gardens and landscapes by designer
We categorise buildings by architect and computer games by designer but I'm a bit surprised that we don't have categories for the works of garden designers and landscape architects. Before I go ahead and start creating some, I'd appreciate some views on:
- whether there's a reason these don't exist (has it been discussed before)?
- what the naming convention should be; although you could argue that landscape architecture and garden design are different disciplines (and should have distinct categories) often the same people carry out both occupations. Perhaps something simple like Category:Works of Lancelot "Capability" Brown, Category:Works of Gertrude Jekyll etc would make sense, or is that too generic? WaggersTALK 07:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
- My view is that having categories for works by a particular individual is likely to be useful for readers, considering that people are often interested in the output of particular designers. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
- I agree that such categories are likely to be useful to readers, and I support their creation. About why they don't exist already, it's probably just because no one thought of it and there aren't that many notable garden designers. About the naming convention, I'd try to avoid having separate categories for works that are landscapes and for works that are gardens, because of the obvious ambiguity of where to place the boundary between them. Also, whether the naming would be "Works of...", or "Designs of..." or "Gardens of...", etc., would depend on what the parent category would be. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
- @PaleCloudedWhite and Tryptofish: Thanks both, that's very useful, especially the point about the parent category. I think the way to go is "Gardens by Designer" within Category:Gardens, and subcategories "X Gardens" within that (since "X buildings" is the convention for buildings by architect, for example). I don't know at this stage if we'll need to disambiguate by the designer's nationality as well - we may not have enough of them to warrant that. I'll get started. WaggersTALK 07:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
- If you look at Category:Works by creator you'll see that the six immediate subcats are "Works by ...", all nice and neat. But expand any of those six, and it immediately becomes clear that there is no firm consistency to their subcats. Of the 150 second-level subcats, 116 are "Works by ..." but the other 34 include: "Ballets by ..." (3); "Buildings and structures by" (2); "Songs by ..." (3); and 26 others. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:04, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
- @PaleCloudedWhite and Tryptofish: Thanks both, that's very useful, especially the point about the parent category. I think the way to go is "Gardens by Designer" within Category:Gardens, and subcategories "X Gardens" within that (since "X buildings" is the convention for buildings by architect, for example). I don't know at this stage if we'll need to disambiguate by the designer's nationality as well - we may not have enough of them to warrant that. I'll get started. WaggersTALK 07:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
- Good, glad to help. And I see that we now have Category:Gardens by designer, which I agree is the right way to go. When adding more subcategories to it, I'd suggest "Gardens by ..." as the naming format. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:54, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Native American categories
I am unsure how consistently our "Native American" categories pertain by design to Native Americans in the United States (or perhaps sometimes to natives of North America?) rather than to indigenous peoples of the Americas.
For example consider Category:Non-fiction books about indigenous peoples of the Americas and its subcat Non-fiction books about Native Americans. Probably the subcat is designed in regard to current U.S. territories, perhaps North America on some definition. But we don't have generally have 'indigenous peoples of the Americas' categories with 'Native Americans' subcategories; at the moment I don't see that for the more numerous fiction books.
Seven articles are now in Non-fiction books about indigenous peoples of the Americas rather than its Native Americans subcat. Two are geographical general, one specific to South America, one to Canada. Three are specific to U.S. (territory). All articles in the subcat are specific to U.S. territory --without benefit of any main article or preface.
Depending on purpose, many or all 'Native Americans' categories need prefaces that define by reference to the article Native Americans in the United States, aka Indigenous peoples of the US. The number of categories may be too numerous to put the latter article in all of them as a main article (or * or + article in the list of pages).
--P64 (talk) 20:43, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
- When I read "native americans", to me that reads as "native americans from what is now the US" - in Canada they use different terminology, and I'm not sure of the terminology for Mexico, Central America, and s. America. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
re alphabetizing categories on the article pages
I occasionally notice editors going through articles on my watchlist and re-ordering the categories alphabetically. While this is not a huge deal, I don't really go for this. Categories should be grouped conceptually, so that (say) "Writers from Arkansas" and "Arkansas novelists" would be close together and not separated. "Alphabetically" seems rather close to "random" (although granted lots of times alphabetic groupings and conceptual groupings are similar, e.g. "African-American this" and "African-American that" are together in both cases.)
Is there any guidance or accepted practice on this? Herostratus (talk) 05:49, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
- I happen to think it's a bad idea, so if there isn't guidance, we should create some. Grouping thematically makes much more sense, and makes it much easier to maintain (and see which cats might be missing or duplicate, etc.) --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
- I agree on all substantial points.
- Vaguely I recall someone's try for a guideline in favor, sometime 2012/2013, and I doubt that any guideline pro or con alphanumeric order can achieve consensus.
- --P64 (talk) 20:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
- Yea, there have been discussions before. Strict alphabetic order is not possible since we have templates that add categories. Also, choosing alphabetic order over importance of the category is purely arbitrary and not to everyone's liking. Consensus here is likely impossible due to the many issues and preferences. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
- There can be an alphabetical (or other kind of) listing of themes (concepts), and an alphabetical listing of categories within each theme.
- Introduction
- ==First heading==
- First section
- ==Second heading==
- Second section
- ==See also==
- Internal links
- ==External links==
- External links
- <!-- Categories -->
- <!-- Please maintain the present arrangement of themes, and an alphabetical listing of categories within each theme. -->
- <!-- First theme -->
- Categories in first theme
- <!-- Second theme -->
- Categories in second theme
- <!-- Miscellaneous categories -->
- Miscellaneous categories
- —Wavelength (talk) 22:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
- @Wavelength, Vegaswikian, Obiwankenobi, and Herostratus: Again, templates higher up the article that add categories would muck that up, as would tools that can't read/recognise the themes such as HotCat, AWB, numerous bots, etc. The amount of reprogramming of such tools that would be required to implement this, along with the maintenance of a database that logs which categories belongs to which themes, renders this kind of approach a non starter.
- What could be done, though, is a script that changes the order in which categories are displayed (in "read" mode) regardless of the order in which they appear in the article's source markup (ie in "edit" mode). Again, you'd need to maintain a database of which categories are in which themes if you want it to work like that. Frankly, my view is that it sounds like more effort than it's worth - making sure articles are in the correct categories is enough work in itself without worrying about the order in which they appear. WaggersTALK 09:34, 3 June 2013 (UTC) Please use
{{Replyto|Waggers}}
when replying so that I receive a notification.- actually I disagree - you don't need to solve all problems. This much would suffice: 1) ask all bots to stop alphabetizing 2) ask everyone driving AWB to stop alphabetizing 3) add to the guidance that alphabetization is not desired and can be reverted by consensus if a different ordering is agreed upon. Then for articles where it matters, editors can set up the groupings. You seem to suggest that we need metadata to define the themes, which I disagree with - an HTML comment will suffice. In cases where someone adds a new cat that isn't in the right section, someone else Can fix it later. We don't need perfection, but I've in several cases organized cats (according to tree, like 'writers') only to have it undone by a bot-driver. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 12:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
- From the left-side panel, you can select "Special pages", and open "Special pages". Then, from the section "High use pages", you can select "Pages with the most categories", and open "Pages with the most categories". Many of the articles listed there appear to have their categories arranged in alphabetical order or ASCIIbetical order.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
- I have no problem with alphabetization within a particular thematic grouping - the reason some of those have so many categories is because of things like Category:Wars involving Italy, so WWII gets Category:Wars involving EVERY COUNTRY - so sorting this alphabetically makes perfect sense. But, why should Category:World War II come *after* all of the "wars involving" categories? That's what alphabetization does - like sticking the eponymous cat to the bottom, instead of at the head where I think it should be.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
- I have two responses.
- (1) Does Wikipedia have or should Wikipedia have a policy or guideline requiring or allowing or forbidding the placement of an eponymous category at the top of a list of categories? Does an article in Category:Bilateral relations such as "China–India relations" have two eponymous categories? In an article with one or more eponymous categories, if it or they are listed first, then the first theme can be titled "Eponymous category" or "Eponymous categories".
- (2) For an article with a very large number of similar-named categories, is it possible to categorize all of those categories into a more comprehensive category (for example, Category:Wars involving more than 100 countries or Category:Wars involving X group of countries), and then replace the many similar-named categories with the more comprehensive category?
- —Wavelength (talk) 20:17, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
- Do remember that Wikidata is expected to allow better searches. So many of us are waiting to see how that rolls out and the fallout on the categories. I for one anticipate that rollout could eliminate the need for any intersection categories. Since you would be able to do a query for what you need rather than trying to find a category that provides this or worst creating another category intersection that may or may not have value to the community at large. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:04, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
- (1) I don't know of a guideline, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding that, e.g. "In general, it is preferred to place the eponymous category at the top of the list.
- (2) Yes, but I'm not sure if that would be worth it - such cases are actually rather rare.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:53, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
- I feel that it may sometimes be more appropriate to categorize by date or era or specific timeframe - for example in regards to historical events or significant people or populations in specific time ranges, and you might have a category by decade and then list them by subcategory by year and then alphabetize by name in regards to specific people, and alphabetize populations separately by group identity (i.e. "African American Freemen" and "African American Slaves" or rather to give more weight to specific people/populations within an era by listing them first. For musicians, you may also want to refer to specific decades and then list specific artist per decade by the name of the artist, listing them by actual date of 1st recording or album, and then listing the musicians alphabetically when multiple artists of that genre or sub-genre began recording in the same year. When someone creates a list that does follow the alphabetic formula they can explain on their talk page; therefore editors should look at the talk page before reorganizing alphabetically, and if there's a dispute they can discuss it.Sylvia Blossom (talk) 03:19, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
- I have no problem with alphabetization within a particular thematic grouping - the reason some of those have so many categories is because of things like Category:Wars involving Italy, so WWII gets Category:Wars involving EVERY COUNTRY - so sorting this alphabetically makes perfect sense. But, why should Category:World War II come *after* all of the "wars involving" categories? That's what alphabetization does - like sticking the eponymous cat to the bottom, instead of at the head where I think it should be.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
- The second of five considerations listed at Wikipedia:Categorization#Articles (version of 23:50, 26 May 2013) is "The order in which categories are placed on a page is not governed by any single rule (for example, it does not need to be alphabetical, although partially alphabetical ordering can sometimes be helpful). Normally the most essential, significant categories appear first." I propose that that section be revised to include the illustration which I mentioned on this talk page at 22:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC). If an editor visits the edit window of an article page and sees the hidden comments indicating that there is a purposeful organization rather than just disorganization or incomplete alphabetization, then a visit to the article talk page might not be necessary.
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:25, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
- I guess the problem with that is that if they're editing with VisualEditor - which will shortly be the default way of editing - they won't see html comments. Similarly (as mentioned above) if they're using HotCat or similar. Maybe page notices are a better way to go?
- The important thing is to get the wording right; I'd rather less experienced editors added a category in the wrong order than got confused by a bunch of instructions telling them what order to put it in and gave up. Equally any comments/notice shouldn't have undue weight - in the scheme of things the order categories appear in barely matters, IMHO. WaggersTALK 07:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
- I completely agree - inexperienced users or those using HotCat can simply stick the cats where they like. My point is, we should actively discourage people from alphabetizing the categories if they've already been sorted in a specific fashion and have HTML-comments to prove it...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:33, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
- I, too, agree that alphabetising categories is never a good idea and should be reversed on sight. I would go further and have the guidelines say that any edit whose sole purpose is to re-order categories is discouraged, but that is probably a minority view. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
- I completely agree - inexperienced users or those using HotCat can simply stick the cats where they like. My point is, we should actively discourage people from alphabetizing the categories if they've already been sorted in a specific fashion and have HTML-comments to prove it...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:33, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Undoing a category rename
Greetings! It looks like a pair of categories were mistakenly moved to new names. The relevant edits are this and this. Any routine check (using google ngrams or just searching book titles) confirms that the unhyphenated version has the lion's share of modern usage. I don't mess with categories as a whole, though, so I don't know the best way to go about undoing these changes. I appreciate any advice or help about what steps to take. Rschwieb (talk) 16:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- The move of Category:Nonassociative algebras to Category:Non-associative algebras was requested with this edit; the move of Category:Nonassociative algebra to Category:Non-associative algebra was requested with this edit. Ths code "C2D" refers to this criterion; I note that for the first category move, the related article is named Non-associative algebra. If you disagree with the reasoning, I suggest that you take it up with Marcus Qwertyus (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
- Generally, category names follow article names. If you want these moved back, I'd suggest renaming the article first, then submitting a speedy request to rename back to match the article. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:17, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
Third opinion request
There is an ongoing discussion about categories on the She Has a Name article here. The two of us who are engaging in the discussion have not been able to come to an agreement on our own, and so have together decided that seeking a third opinion would be best. Any constructive comments you are willing to provide in order to resolve this matter would be greatly appreciated. Neelix (talk) 15:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Help creating a category page
I've been working with categories for a few weeks now and I've read all of the policy and guideline pages about categorization. But I can't find out how to create a category page. I'm not contemplating generating a lot of new category pages (believe me, I've worked more on merging and deleting categories) but I'd like to know how to create a new one should the article require it.
Thanks to anyone who can point me to the right Wikisource page. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 23:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
- Asked and answered here. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
Category:Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
Is Category:Intel International Science and Engineering Fair really needed? It only contains the subject article and four asteroids discovered during the fair. This is not really how categories work IMO. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC)