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Ian Wolfe
User:FieldMarine has removed Category:United States Army personnel of World War I because of WP:CATDEFINING. See Talk:Ian Wolfe#World War I service, where I have easily found people in that category who have their service less sourced (or unsourced) than him (Los Angeles Times obituary and other sources). I have also brought up categories that are not defining by any stretch of the imagination. FieldMarine refuses to budge, so here I am to solicit others' comments. (Frankly, it may be time to reconsider whether CATDEFINING should even exist. Vast numbers of categories, much less entries in those categories, don't qualify.) Clarityfiend (talk) 08:59, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
Removal of category failed
Hi all, I removed Category:Asian anthems from Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata using HotCat. But neither the article not the category shows any change. Meanwhile, the other category I removed later, did get removed from the article. Why is this happening? I already tried purging and null edit. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- I suspect it's a badly coded part of Template:Anthems of Asia which causes all its entries to carry that category. Preceding the category in
|below=
at that template with a colon (:) shyould fix it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:18, 1 June 2022 (UTC)- Better still, remove the category declaration, the includeonly tags, and everything else between them from Template:Anthems of Asia per WP:TEMPLATECAT. Either way, if there are any other pages in the navbox that do in fact belong in the category and are then removed from it by removing the transclusion, then they will need to be added back manually (normal categorization process). --DB1729 (talk) 11:42, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, those navboxes were actually inappropriate on this article. Don't know how it missed my eyes, perhaps because they were collapsed. I now removed them accordingly. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:04, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Peter Grant series
I'd like to create a category for articles about Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series but I'm not sure if I should put it in Category:Fantasy books by series or category:Fantasy novel series.
There're already a few articles on some of the books in the series as well as the main one I linked to. KaraLG84 (talk) 16:44, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Update:: I went and created it using both parent categories. If there's anything I've done wrong. please fix it. Category:Peter Grant (book series) KaraLG84 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
removing punctuation from DEFAULTSORT
Hyphens, apostrophes and periods/full stops are the only punctuation marks that should be kept in sort values. The only exception is the apostrophe in names beginning with O', which should be removed. For example, Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}. All other punctuation marks should be removed.
The first and last sentences are in conflict. Fuddle (talk) 02:04, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think they're in conflict but it's slightly confusing because of the Irish Complication. Perhaps this would be clearer:
Hyphens, apostrophes (except the apostrophe in Irish names beginning with O') and periods/full stops are the only punctuation marks that should be kept in sort values. All other punctuation marks should be removed.
- This could be supplemented with several examples:
- Eugene O'Neill is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:Oneill, Eugene}}.
- Alberto Dell'Acqua is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:Dell'Acqua, Alberto}}.
- Wilfrid Hyde-White is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:Hyde-White, Wilfrid}}.
- E. B. White is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:White, E.B.}}.
- The $128,000 Question is sorted {{DEFAULTSORT:128000 Question, The}}.
- Interestingly, while looking for examples for a couple of these situations, I discovered a bunch where, for example, leading "The" was simply omitted rather than moved to the end, or where the rule we're discussing here wasn't followed correctly. Also, note the missing space in "E.B.", and I'm not sure whether the dollar sign in the last example counts as a punctuation mark that should have been removed, or whether it should have been kept. Largoplazo (talk) 02:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
- Originally I was only here to clear up the cited section, but now I see that keeping the apostrophe is a problem, example here with All Saints' in Churches in Dorset. Fuddle (talk) 03:58, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
DEFAULTSORT for churches
Hallo, I noticed that @Fuddle: has changed the DEFAULTSORT of St Chad's Church, Far Headingley from "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church" to "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley". Digging into the page history I find that you established the "Far Headingley..." sortkey in 2018. Fuddle has changed many such sortkeys today. Is there a guideline, policy, discussion, anywhere about this which establishes our practice for DEFAULTSORT for (UK?) churches one way or the other? I've asked Fuddle to stop making these changes while I look into this. I was going to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography and Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture, then managed to track you down as the editor who'd set this sortkey, so thought I'd start here.
My own view is that while the placename may be appropriate for categories comprising churches only, and can of course be added within those categories in the article, it might be better to leave the DEFAULTSORT at the article title (but with "St(.)" expanded to "Saint"), so that in general categories the article files in an unsurprising place, but I'd be interested to know where it's been discussed in the past. Practice seems pretty inconsistent: see Category:Grade II* listed churches in West Yorkshire and Category:Anglican Diocese of Leeds (though some of those may, like St Chad's, have been changed today). Thanks. PamD 08:01, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- I've now pinged @Peter I. Vardy:, who created Old St Ann's Church, Warrington (picked at random from Fuddle's edits of today) in 2008 and gave it the DEFAULTSORT of "Warrington, St Ann's Church" from the start, so this is clearly a long-established practice. PamD 08:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hi PamD; this is a practice that I have picked up from editing RAF Stations. When you view the category (whatever that might be), there is a potential that they all end up under the same letter. IE; the Category, Category:Royal Air Force stations in Yorkshire, without the DEFAULTSORT key, all end up under the letter 'R', as they begin with an R in the RAF. I just did the same with churches, as the official name of each church is Church of FOO, so they would all end up under 'C'. To avoid this, I have separated them by geography, following a tradition in other Category pages. As far as I am aware, there has been no discussion, just to me it's common sense. Happy to have a discussion, and to fall in line with a consensus. But to me, the geographical place takes precedent over name, otherwise we will have a massive list under 'C' and 'S' in the church category, given how many churches are named after a saint or other. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 08:40, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- PamD As an example, see Category:Royal Air Force stations in Oxfordshire - RAF Kingston Bagpuize appears under the letter 'R' instead of 'K'. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for involving me. It's a long time since I wrote a church article, and when I did, there seemed to be no policy on this matter. Some used Saint... or St...., some used the name of the dedicatee, others used the location. I thought that the last option was the most sensible, as in the example given by PamD. The other options seemed to have little point, or to cause a muddle. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 14:03, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hello, all. I was being bold and here is my rationale:
- There's nothing in the documention for DEFAULTSORT that discusses sorting by place. What is there is spelling out abbreviations.
- If churches need to be sorted by place, then we may need subcategories.
- Don't worry about how many articles are in a given section of a category. Think of a book's index that has no such anchors. People understand alphabetical order.
- Grade I listed churches in Dorset is in strict alphabetical order and it is fine. No one will be confused by it. Fuddle (talk) 14:47, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Conversely, there is nothing in the DEFAULTSORT guidance saying not to use a geographical separation. So if we are not separating by location, why do we even need a defaultsort? The template says that we don't need it if we have no need tp sort it differently from its article name. Template:DEFAULTSORT. The joy of all things (talk) 15:48, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- To remove initial articles and to spell out abbreviations. Otherwise, a given article doesn't need one.
- I suspect that the policy of sorting churches by place was started in the early days of wikipedia when many users didn't fully understand categories and wanted to provide some organization. It is well-intentioned but counterproductive. Users shouldn't need ESP to know that a given category is alphabetized a certain way. Alphabetization and categorization are different things.
- I also recently removed several like {{DEFAULTSORT:Whale, Blue}}.
- Fuddle (talk) 16:40, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Well, on the blue whale sort I completely agree. On the others, meh. My reasoning is cosmetic, as in it looks nicer, so I won't get upset about it. The joy of all things (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Conversely, there is nothing in the DEFAULTSORT guidance saying not to use a geographical separation. So if we are not separating by location, why do we even need a defaultsort? The template says that we don't need it if we have no need tp sort it differently from its article name. Template:DEFAULTSORT. The joy of all things (talk) 15:48, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hello, all. I was being bold and here is my rationale:
- Thanks for involving me. It's a long time since I wrote a church article, and when I did, there seemed to be no policy on this matter. Some used Saint... or St...., some used the name of the dedicatee, others used the location. I thought that the last option was the most sensible, as in the example given by PamD. The other options seemed to have little point, or to cause a muddle. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 14:03, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- PamD As an example, see Category:Royal Air Force stations in Oxfordshire - RAF Kingston Bagpuize appears under the letter 'R' instead of 'K'. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hi PamD; this is a practice that I have picked up from editing RAF Stations. When you view the category (whatever that might be), there is a potential that they all end up under the same letter. IE; the Category, Category:Royal Air Force stations in Yorkshire, without the DEFAULTSORT key, all end up under the letter 'R', as they begin with an R in the RAF. I just did the same with churches, as the official name of each church is Church of FOO, so they would all end up under 'C'. To avoid this, I have separated them by geography, following a tradition in other Category pages. As far as I am aware, there has been no discussion, just to me it's common sense. Happy to have a discussion, and to fall in line with a consensus. But to me, the geographical place takes precedent over name, otherwise we will have a massive list under 'C' and 'S' in the church category, given how many churches are named after a saint or other. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 08:40, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- This issue has been debated on Commons several times, the current consensus is to use
locationdedication but this is controversial. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Crouch, Swale: could you link to one of those discussions please? PamD 21:17, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- @PamD: Commons:User talk:Motacilla, (lots of general discussion) Commons:Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2018/09 section 4 (original consensus in 2018), Commons:Commons:Village pump/Archive/2020/05#Defaultsort for UK buildings RFC (2020 discussion that you, Pam participated in) and User talk:Ulamm#Sorting churches (March 2022). The arguments in favour of location are generally that most readers will know the location but few will know the dedication, arguments against are generally that the location isn't the name and it opens the door to sort other things by disambiguator etc. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:29, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- I feel that if this is going to go the distance, it should be moved away from my talk page, and into the appropriate forum for discussing this. Hosting it on my talk page limits others getting involved, and if we ping them all, then it risks the page getting seriously long. Thanks. The joy of all things (talk) 21:34, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for those links, @Crouch, Swale:, but those discussions are all about sorting files in Commons, which is a very different situation from sorting articles in Wikipedia - though it's interesting to note the 2018 statement "
However, we seems to have inherited a system from en:WP of default sorting churches and pubs by location first, then name. So "St Bernard's church, Sometown" is defsorted so that it appears under "S" rather than "B" (obviously sorting under "St" is unhelpful because most would then sort under "S", which would be overwhelmed and thus useless).
". PamD 08:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)- @PamD: The discussions on Commons are mainly for categories since Commons has a category for most churches in England though categorization of files would be the same. Many of the similar principals apply to the WP articles as the Commons category as they are more or less equivalences. The proposer Rodhullandemu has repeatedly complained that Commons decisions shouldn't be based on the English Wikipedia as they say its not a master project, I'd point out that Commons and WP should work together and try to be consistent and since churches matter more on Commons since as noted Commons has a category on most while WP doesn't have an article on most, we should probably defer to Commons.
- Sorry I meant to say the current consensus is dedication rather that location per the 2018 discussion. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:06, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @PamD: Commons:User talk:Motacilla, (lots of general discussion) Commons:Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2018/09 section 4 (original consensus in 2018), Commons:Commons:Village pump/Archive/2020/05#Defaultsort for UK buildings RFC (2020 discussion that you, Pam participated in) and User talk:Ulamm#Sorting churches (March 2022). The arguments in favour of location are generally that most readers will know the location but few will know the dedication, arguments against are generally that the location isn't the name and it opens the door to sort other things by disambiguator etc. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:29, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Crouch, Swale: could you link to one of those discussions please? PamD 21:17, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
I thought that the well-established consensus was to sort by the name of the church rather than location. See previous discussions here and here. There may be more recent discussions. RAF stations are not a close parallel - unlike names of churches, names of RAF stations have a standard format, perhaps more akin to a ship (SS), and sorting follows the guidance in WP:SORTKEY ("In some categories, sort keys are used to exclude prefixes that are common to all or many of the entries"). If churches are sorted by location, why not schools or hospitals?
But where a church article has the title Church of St X, rather than St X's Church, I would sort by Saint X's Church.--Mhockey (talk) 03:30, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks, @Mhockey: for those two links to archived discussions. There seems to have been very little support for the DEFAULTSORT to be by location, even though this practice has been used by some editors for many years. There does seem to be agreement that "St" or "St." should be replaced by "Saint" in the DEFAULTSORT. There seems to be no one place where the use of DEFAULTSORT is comprehensively set out in policies or guidelines, though there is a lot of useful stuff at Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys. I've boldly linked to that section, from the "see also" note in Template:DEFAULTSORT/doc.
- There are some unusual DEFAULTSORT conventions for particular types of article, thus UK road A65 road has {{DEFAULTSORT:6-0065}}, resulting in category sorting like Category:Roads in Cumbria (though a couple of B road articles seem to have been created by editors who didn't know the system!) and Category:Transport in West Yorkshire, but I suggest that road articles are on the whole a more specialised area, while a greater range of editors write about, or care about, articles on churches, either from an architectural or a religious aspect. It's difficult to see where a convention for sort keys for church articles, even within church-specific categories, could usefully be discussed and a non-standard sort key, such as by location, could find a consensus.
- As for our readers: I'd think that anyone looking for a church in a particular place, and not sure of its name, would probably start with the article on the place and look there for a mention of the church and perhaps a link. We also have a set of very useful dab pages which list all the churches with a particular dedication, whether they are "Church of St Xxx" or "Saint Xxx episcopalian church" or whatever, such as St. Martin's Church, which has incoming redirects from Church of St Martin and umpteen other variants.
- Having started this discussion because I was concerned about Fuddle's overturning of a long-established set of DEFAULTSORTs (ie moving churches away from location-first DEFAULTSORTs), I think I'm now happy enough with their ongoing project of doing so. What do other editors think? PamD 16:46, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- I was a participant in some of the Commons discussions, and a firm advocate that location (then dedication) is much the most sensible sort order. The main exponent of sorting by dedication (which has never made much sense to me) was a single very determined user who was later banned. In most counties the majority of churches are parish churches, and the village (or town, subsorted by dedication where there is more than one church) seems the obvious order. The only time I would sort by dedication would be in a category such as "Grade II listed churches in Cambridge" (fictional example) where it would be daft to have every church listed under "C". In a more typical category (e.g. Grade II listed churches in <county>, 19th-century churches in <county>, etc.) the village/town seems much the most sensible order. Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'd also add note that Methodist churches are rarely (if ever?) dedicated, being generally referred to as "Foohampton Methodist Church". So if we use the name as the sort field in a category that contains both Methodist and Anglican churches (such as frequently occurs in the listed building categories that are my main interest), Foohampton Methodist Church will be listed under F and St Anne's Church, Foohampton, will be listed under A. Is that sensible? As for the ease or otherwise of finding a specific church on a category page, I would confidently assert that (assuming a particular church in mind) more people will know the name of the village than know the dedication. If I want to check whether Foohampton parish church is included, and I don't know its dedication, I'll have to use the browser search for the village name within the page just to find it (or visually scan the whole list). Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:39, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- A further thought. Sorting by "name" as @Mhockey: advocates means we end up with the majority of churches listed under S for Saint, apart from those dedicated to All Saints, Holy Trinity, Christ the King and a few others. Again, is this sensible? Dave.Dunford (talk) 18:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Dave.Dunford: But within that "S" they would be in normal A-Z order, "Saint Andrew's church", "St Anne's Littletown", "Saint Audrey's cathedral...", no problem surely? PamD 18:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
There seem to me to be perhaps three issues:
- (a) How should churches be sorted in categories which are church-specific such as Category:Grade I listed churches in Cumbria?
- (b) How should churches be sorted in more general categories such as Category:Kirkby Lonsdale? and
- (c) What should the default sortkey for a church be?
- and perhaps (d) How do we disseminate / where do we document any agreement reached, so that future editors can find it?
It would be possible to have churches with DEFAULTSORT the article title, expanding "St" to "Saint" etc, and with a location sortkey specified for church-specific categories - or to have a location-specific DEFAULTSORT and then specify the natural title for general categories. An argument for the DEFAULTSORT being the natural article title (give or take St/Saint), is that articles appear in various other listings (maintenance categories etc) for editors, who may be surprised/baffled if the order is by location. But the main needs seem to be firstly that we should have consistent sorting within any one category, and secondly that we avoid edit wars by reaching a consensus. At present an editor is systematically changing location-based defaultsorts to natural-title-based defaultsorts, and there seems to be no policy or guideline to say whether or not this is a good thing to do. PamD 18:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
More prior discussion, both 2021: Talk:Old_St._Peter's_Basilica#Defaultsort and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Christianity/Noticeboard/Archive_11#RFC:_sortkeys_for_church_articles. PamD 18:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Good analysis, and it's a fair point about maintenance categories, which I hadn't considered. I wouldn't object to the DEFAULTSORT being "Saint Mary's Church, Kirkby Lonsdale", with "Kirkby Lonsdale, Saint Mary's Church" as an override for the various church categories (though in practice these tend to outnumber the rest of the categories, so we end up with the DEFAULTSORT being overridden in the majority of cases, which might seem counter-intuitive). In Category:Kirkby Lonsdale, I would (obviously?) expect to see St Mary's Church, Kirkby Lonsdale listed under S – sorting it under "Mary" (as was advocated on Wikimedia Commons by User:Rodhullandemu, now banned) seems illogical even there (or worse, under C for "church" as I've sometimes seen it). TBH, I'd prefer anything to the current inconsistent mess, even if the chosen outcome differs from my personal preference. To answer your three cases, I'd say (a) "Kirby Lonsdale, Saint Mary's Church" (b) "Saint Mary's Church" and (c) "Saint Mary's Church, Kirkby Lonsdale". Dave.Dunford (talk) 19:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- What is meant by church categories? Is Category:19th-century Church of England church buildings a church category. Maybe just me, but it seems bonkers to sort that by location. Even worse to have some sorted by location and some by name. older ≠ wiser 19:30, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, that would be a church category (and I agree, it's a mess, and anything's better than a chaotic mixture where "St Mary's Church, Anytown" can variously appear under A for Anytown, C for Church, M for Mary or S for Saint). But why is sorting by location "bonkers"? It seems the least worst solution to me. It allows people who know where a church is but not its dedication to find it where they'd expect without having to do a browser search (and the opposite never applies – no-one would ever go looking for "St Mary's Church" without caring about the place), it puts multiple churches in the same place next to each other (including "Anytown Methodist Church", "Church of St David, Anytown", "Holy Trinity Church, Anytown" and "St Mary's Church, Anytown"), it doesn't rely on someone remembering to add a DEFAULTSORT to sort "Church of..." under S, it's relatively easy to understand, and it spreads the entries across the alphabet (rather than overloading "S"). Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- That makes the case for the subcategory Category:Churches in Anytown. Fuddle (talk) 20:18, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Where "Churches in Anytown" categories exist (and there are some, though not many), the dedication is the obvious sort – no argument there. But does an analogy help? I see the dedication as the equivalent of a person's first name, and the location as the surname. We don't expect to find "Anne Smith" listed under "Anne", except in a category of people called "Smith". Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:28, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- I was the creator of Category:Kirkby Lonsdale back in 2019 and as you can see I sorted it under "St Mary's Church". Today although I don't change defaultsorts on Wikipedia I do make sure when I add the location's category I sort by dedication if it has a location defaultsort. I don't have much of an opinion on what the correct sort is for location categories so if people thing "Saint" or "Church" is more appropriate I'd be fine with that but again I do think we should try to do the same as Commons. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:28, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Where "Churches in Anytown" categories exist (and there are some, though not many), the dedication is the obvious sort – no argument there. But does an analogy help? I see the dedication as the equivalent of a person's first name, and the location as the surname. We don't expect to find "Anne Smith" listed under "Anne", except in a category of people called "Smith". Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:28, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- That makes the case for the subcategory Category:Churches in Anytown. Fuddle (talk) 20:18, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, that would be a church category (and I agree, it's a mess, and anything's better than a chaotic mixture where "St Mary's Church, Anytown" can variously appear under A for Anytown, C for Church, M for Mary or S for Saint). But why is sorting by location "bonkers"? It seems the least worst solution to me. It allows people who know where a church is but not its dedication to find it where they'd expect without having to do a browser search (and the opposite never applies – no-one would ever go looking for "St Mary's Church" without caring about the place), it puts multiple churches in the same place next to each other (including "Anytown Methodist Church", "Church of St David, Anytown", "Holy Trinity Church, Anytown" and "St Mary's Church, Anytown"), it doesn't rely on someone remembering to add a DEFAULTSORT to sort "Church of..." under S, it's relatively easy to understand, and it spreads the entries across the alphabet (rather than overloading "S"). Dave.Dunford (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Taking a concrete example, consider two churches in Frindsbury.
- Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringders (which lists all bell towers with three or more bells) lists the Anglican church as "Frindsbury, All Saints".
- The church website calls it "All Saints, Frindsbury".
- Wikipedia calls it All Saints Church, Frindsbury.
- Rochester Diocese calls it "Frindsbury: All Saints".
- It's sometimes "All Saints", and sometimes "All Saints'"
Now considering some chapels:
- The website calls it "Frindsbury Baptist Church", there is no dedication.
- Some websites call it "Frindsbury Baptist Chapel", just to add to the confusion.
- Nearby is "Strood New Testament Church of God", also called "New Testament Church of God, Strood".
- Just across the river is "The Redeemed Christian Church of God Victorious Family Parish Chatham".
Many nonconformist churches do not have a dedication and just take their name from the street or settlement they are in. If we are wanting to establish some sort of convention for all churches and chapels (and sensibly this can be extended to other places of worship) then I would suggest that the only common factor is the place name and this should be the basis of the default sort. The default, after all, has to apply to all the categories it could be in. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- I'm certain that I contributed to a very similar discussion two years or more back (it was certainly before COVID-19 forced me to change many habits), but I can't find it. In that thread there was a widespread misunderstanding of (a) what the present situation was and (b) what should be done about it. One such misunderstanding that I recall was the idea that one-size-fits-all sorting was mandatory - that is, assuming that because a particular sort order is correct for category:Foo means that it is necessarily also correct for category:Bar.
- Anyway, PamD's second post of 18:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC) - that's the one beginning
There seem to me to be perhaps three issues
- covers pretty much everything, but at the risk of duplication:- The value fed into
{{DEFAULTSORT:...}}
should be the name of the page, adjusted in line with WP:SORTKEY. So an article titled "St Foo's Church, Barton" would get{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Foos Church Barton}}
- Each individual category that the page is placed in is allowed to have differing rules which may mean that the default sort key may be overridden when necessary: It should be clear that sorting the page as "Foo" in each and every one of these would be the wrong approach. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
[[Category:Churches in Barton|Foo, Saint]] [[Category:Churches dedicated to St Foo|Barton]] [[Category:16th century architecture]]
- I don't think anyone has suggested sorting under "Foo" except in the discussions on Commons, nor under "Church" unless it is the first word of the article title. I think the only options being considered are sorting by the article title, and sorting by the location. Of course "location" is not as simple as it might be: some urban churches are named by street, or suburb, rather than town; what about placenames which are ambiguous?; some churches have a parish name which is not their physical location; etc. PamD 22:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Just to add to Martin's list: the NHLE refers to the Frindsbury church as "Parish Church of All Saints", gives its statutory address as "Parish Church of All Saints, Church Green", shows it as being in Medway authority and no civil parish, and only mentions Frindsbury in the first line of "Details", with the rather confusing text "STROOD CHURCH GREEN, TQ 7469 NW FRINDSBURY Parish Church of All 4/267 Saints 24.10.50 II* Parish church." (What on earth is that 4/267 between "All" and "Saints"?)
- Choosing the title of the article for a church is a separate issue, though of course affecting our decisions on sort keys. Perhaps we should keep this discussion to questions of "How do we sort articles on churches, given the range of formats of title they have?", rather than diverting into "How do we decide which title to give an article?" Just, please, remember always to create redirects or dab page entries from all plausible forms of the church name, to help our readers to find the church article (I think they are much more likely to use a different title than to go looking at categories, which they won't even see if they're on a mobile phone), and also to reduce the chance of a duplicate entry being created. PamD 22:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)A very good addition. Bear in mind though that the "Details" section, from which you quote, is a machine copy of a legacy database. The "4/267" looks like an artifact from this. "TQ 7469 NW" is the OS map on which it is found (I strongly suspect the old 2½" series) and 24.10.50 is the listing date. Generally I find that the formatted part of the entry (top matter and Location) are more up to date, in this instance showing the district as Medway (Unitary Authority) which didn't exist in 1950. Courtesy link: 1107886 Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:12, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- The value fed into
- Having thought it through (and this conversation has improved my thinking), I conclude that my preferences are exactly the same as Redrose64, though for completeness I'd also add:
[[Category:Churches in Bartonshire|Barton, Saint Foos Church]]
- (which would also apply to "19th-century churches in Bartonshire", "Grade II listed churches in Bartonshire", "Churches designed by Sir Bartholomew Foo-bar" – i.e. any category that includes only churches, but with multiple dedications and places). To answer @PamD: The NHLE list (with which I'm all too familiar) appears to have been sourced from OCRed paper documents – I've found numerous transcription errors of the type you'd expect (lower-case L for the digit 1, etc.). Thus I've always assumed the "4/267" code is probably some (right-aligned?) internal reference number that has been inadvertently OCRed into the general flow of text. Whenever I submit a correction to NHLE, they generally tidy up the "Details" section of the record while they're at it (example). Dave.Dunford (talk) 09:06, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- In terms of the arguments I'd point out that unlike things like school and tourist attractions that the name if often well known but the location may not be I'd point out that parish churches generally come with the location and the location is generally well understood and usually the only thing most readers will know. Look at Suffolk Churches for example, if you look at St Mary, Woolpit most readers are only going to know the location and most churches are usually referred to as "Location Church" such as "Woolpit Church" not "St Mary's Church" so while the location may not be part of the name its usually the only thing readers will know so there is a reasonable argument for using location so it could be argued {{DEFAULTSORT:Woolpit, Mary}} is better that the current consensus of {{DEFAULTSORT:Mary, Woolpit}}. With other types of buildings I'd agree with what Mhockey said on Commons in that how it it defined especially since its often not known and things like schools and tourist attractions often say they are in a larger settlement even though they aren't even in the administrative division never mind settlement such as Hill Hall being in Theydon Mount parish but often said to be "in" Epping or Royal Hospital School being in Holbrook parish even though its often described as being "in" Ipswich. So if we did sort other places this way it would require the reader to know/guess the "location" which would not generally be helpful and as noted people who know the location would probably look in the location category/article. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:06, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Crouch, Swale: No, I don't think there is a "current consensus of {{DEFAULTSORT:Mary, Woolpit}}". I haven't seen anyone on en.wiki (as opposed to Commons) suggesting it, and I haven't seen it in use in any categories I've looked at. Churches have been sorted either by the title of their article (with "Saint" spelled out), or by location. Commons has different challenges, different situations - as you say, they are sorting categories - and what they do over there is not really relevant to what is appropriate for the readers of en.wiki. PamD 08:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @PamD: That's the current consensus on Commons per the 2018 discussion, I'm not sure what's different about Commons categories to WP articles, a WP article is broadly equivalent to a Commons category so while this may not be consensus on WP it does seem reasonable to follow it absence of any consensus here. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:28, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Crouch, Swale: No, I don't think there is a "current consensus of {{DEFAULTSORT:Mary, Woolpit}}". I haven't seen anyone on en.wiki (as opposed to Commons) suggesting it, and I haven't seen it in use in any categories I've looked at. Churches have been sorted either by the title of their article (with "Saint" spelled out), or by location. Commons has different challenges, different situations - as you say, they are sorting categories - and what they do over there is not really relevant to what is appropriate for the readers of en.wiki. PamD 08:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Do "Most readers" use categories at all? If so, why are they not offered on the mobile interface, which is what most readers probably use. PamD 08:21, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- No they probably don't since they appear at the bottom of a page but those that do are affected by this and I suspect more use Commons categories since that's where we generally point them. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:28, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not all users or editors are from the UK or are familiar with church nomenclature. Making a special rule here is a complicated solution to a problem that doesn't exist. No one is confused by the order of Category:Churches in Dorset. Fuddle (talk) 13:55, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fuddle: Not confused, but noticing an inconsistency - look at the St Aldhelm's Chapel and Church entries - one has the apostrophe in the DEFAULTSORT (correct I believe) and the other not, so they file wrongly. Just shows the pitfalls. PamD 16:59, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not confusing (and better than a mixture, as I've said elsewhere), but it's not particularly logical either. Fleet Old Church is listed under F and Holy Trinity Church, Fleet, is listed under H. Churches in Dorchester are listed under A, C, H and S. Upwey's two churches are listed under S and U. Unrelated churches that share nothing but their dedication are, however, next to each other. Someone looking for the church in (say) Abbotsbury but who doesn't know the dedication will either have to use their browser search facility or scan the whole list. Dave.Dunford (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- But that could be true of any article in any category. Those are the names they have.
- The way to bring together churches is Dorchester is Category:Churches in Dorchester. Fuddle (talk) 20:04, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
Those are the names they have.
Point taken. But I'd refer you back to my surname/first name analogy. I see categories as analogous to the index of a book. And in the index of a (hypothetical) book about churches, I would expect to find the churches listed by place, which I personally would find much more usable than your solution. In reality, hardly anyone would look up a church by its dedication. Dave.Dunford (talk) 09:34, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not confusing (and better than a mixture, as I've said elsewhere), but it's not particularly logical either. Fleet Old Church is listed under F and Holy Trinity Church, Fleet, is listed under H. Churches in Dorchester are listed under A, C, H and S. Upwey's two churches are listed under S and U. Unrelated churches that share nothing but their dedication are, however, next to each other. Someone looking for the church in (say) Abbotsbury but who doesn't know the dedication will either have to use their browser search facility or scan the whole list. Dave.Dunford (talk) 18:35, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Mhockey, Motacilla, and RexxS: I would say with the likes of Commons:Category:English Farm, Nuffield I'd agree with Mhockey's point about readers having to guess the location and unlike churches the names of farms are generally known by the name, would many people really expect "English Farm" to be indexed as "Nuffield"? I can't think why I'd expect to find it under "N" rather than "E" especially since its not even in the village of Nuffield. I can't think why people would even call it "Nuffield Farm" often. I certainly can see the logic in sorting Commons:Category:Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone as that's how parish churches are often known namely "Stone Church". Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:44, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Has this discussion reached a consensus? 100+ church articles have just been re-sorted according to their name 4 days after this conversation. If I can add 2 more cents: According to WP:SORTKEY: "In some categories, sort keys are used to exclude prefixes that are common to all or many of the entries." As most categories for English churches are their counties or countries, then those churches are sorted based on their location. Church names are very problematic, they can be called the "Church of ...", "Saint .... Church" or "Town Denomination Church". For example, look at "Category:Gothic Revival church buildings in London", where All Saints Church, West Dulwich is the first one just because it has the word "church" in its title. The exception would be when the category is the home town of the church, e.g. "Category:Buildings and structures in Weston-super-Mare" where an article's name is its sortkey for that category. Sacred Heart Church, Liverpool was a good example, before its re-sorting today. Where are we all with this? Is it closed? Cardofk (talk) 15:12, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Having read all of this, I maintain my opinion given above, that location seems to be the most logical. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 17:33, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Having started this discussion when I noticed Fuddle's editing project on my watch list, I'm at a loss as to how we should go forward. There is not unanimity. There is inconsistent past practice which Fuddle is working to change in their preferred direction. This touches on the interestes of several Wikiprojects: Categories, Christianity, Architecture, UK, UK geography, and of course all the "child" projects thereof - different denominations, different counties etc. Of course there are churches elsewhere too, but Category:Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts shows no sign of sorting by location, though the "change St. to Saint for the sort key" rule has been applied in most but not all cases, and nor do Category:Churches in Corsica and Category:Churches in County Kilkenny, and I think we could reasonably restrict the discussion to churches in the UK.
- I began by asking "
Is there a guideline, policy, discussion, anywhere about this which establishes our practice for DEFAULTSORT for (UK?) churches one way or the other?
". The answer seems to be "No guideline or policy, several previous inconclusive discussions". Would an RfC be useful at this stage: an RfC which actually closes with a consensus? With the consensus arrived at then recorded in some appropriate place or places so that we don't go round the loop again? Or, otherwise, how do we get to have consistently-sorted categories? PamD 20:09, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
For info: The previous en.wiki discussions people have found and mentioned above are:
- 2011 Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Archive_14#Sorting_of_churches
- 2013: Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Archive_15#Sort_keys_-_churches
- 2021: Talk:Old_St._Peter's_Basilica#Defaultsort
- 2021: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Christianity/Noticeboard/Archive_11#RFC:_sortkeys_for_church_articles (following on from the previous: just 3 contributions and no formal closure)
- I think that's the lot, but please add any others. I don't think discussions about Commons categories are relevant.
PamD 20:22, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I would support an official opinion. There are other topics with rogue sorting practices as well. Fuddle (talk) 22:22, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I too would support (and obey) an official opinion – though even if I disagreed with it I wouldn't refer to it as "rogue". Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:24, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
1. I agree with Dave.Dunford's wise comment earlier that people are more likely to know a church by the name of its location than by its dedication, if it has one. Further, some Anglican churches currently have no dedication. They may have had one centuries ago, but it is long lost. And cathedrals all have dedications, but relatively few people know them and even fewer use them in normal conversation, with a few exceptions such as "St Paul's" in London and "St Peter's Basilica" in Rome. Normal usage is to say "Chichester Cathedral" or "Durham Cathedral", without having a clue what patron saint or saints it may have. Where the same place has more than one cathedral, common practice is to distinguish them by denomination, not dedication. People say "Liverpool Anglican Cathedral" or "Liverpool Catholic Cathedral".
2. In places that have more than one church of the same denomination, such as cities or large towns, people are more likely to know the dedications of churches in order to tell them apart. For example, I would expect people in Henley-on-Thames to refer to "St Mary's" or "Holy Trinity", to tell the two parishes apart. But in a large town, practice may be mixed. For Example, in Worthing one would refer to "St Paul's" or "Christ Church" in the town centre, but further out one would say "Broadwater Church" or "Tarring Church".
3. Some previous comments have referred to the discussion of this topic on Wikimedia Commons. Some users had been alphasorting churches on Commons by place rather than dedication, before I even joined the project, more than a decade ago. I saw the practice, saw the good sense in it and copied it. But one user, who lives in a large city (see point 2. above), launched a long, aggressive and intimidating cyber-bullying campaign against me to stop me from following established practice. Only after a year or two did he seek, and get, a community consensus. That consensus was reached on strength of numbers, not strength of argument. And in the discussion, it was asserted that Commons should do its own thing, regardless of what English Wikipedia does.
4. The same church will appear in several categories. In, for example, a list of "Grade II listed churches", or "19th-century churches", or "Gothic Revival churches", "Anytown Baptist Church", "Anytown Methodist Church" and "Anytown URC Church" will all be consecutive. Do you want Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in the same town to be consecutive with them, or scattered elsewhere in the list?
5. On Commons this controversy cost me a mental health crisis and thousands of pounds worth of private mental health care. Since then I have all but given up donating photos of churches (or pubs, for that matter) to Commons, let alone sorting them. I look forward to the matter being resolved more respectfully and to a higher standard here on Wikipedia. Motacilla (talk) 07:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Draft RfC
@Fuddle, The joy of all things, Peter I. Vardy, Crouch, Swale, Mhockey, Mhockey, Bkonrad, Martin of Sheffield, Redrose64, Cardofk, and Motacilla: (ie, I hope, everyone who has contributed to this discussion)
Rather than start an RfC and then find there are further points to discuss, I've drafted one at User:PamD/rfc draft. Please comment on its talk page if you think it should be amended - this is the first time I've started an RfC, but as the initiator of this lengthy discussion I think it's probably my job to do so now, in the hopes that we can come to a consensus and move forward together to improve the encyclopedia. All being well I'd expect to launch the RfC tomorrow, and will notify the five main relevant WikiProjects to whose editors it may be of interest (Christianity, Architecture, UK, UK geography, Categories) I hope we can calmly reach a closure of the RfC which will enable us to move towards consistent sorting in categories, and to avoid future to-and-fro good-faith editing of DEFAULTSORTs Thanks. PamD 10:01, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Dutch name sorting and capitalising
I posted these questions first at the teahouse (see here), but was told to go here. So, I'm copy/pasting from there.
- As explained in more depth here and here, Dutch names that have prepositions, do not have the preposition capitalised. They are also not sorted by preposition. Both these things happen regularly on EN:WP and I find myself fixing that equally regularly when I come across it. Both of these do happen correctly when such Dutch people (and their descendants) immigrate. Example:Martin Van Buren.
I came across Mark Van Drumpt in Category:Sportspeople from Arnhem and fixed his name to Mark van Drumpt. However, this man is only notable for things he did in Ireland and so I was wondering if What I did was correct. 2nd Q.) He is defaultsorted by Van Drumpt. Do I leave this as is? Change it to Drumpt? Or, do I use the |pipe and do it different for Irish and Dutch categories?
Dutchy45 (talk) 11:42, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Then there are the different Flemish rules or conventions.... In all cases, we have to try & find what WP:RS do, with a preference for those in English and/or based where the person is active. I'd say the style & sort should be the same in all en:wp categories. With van Drumpt the bigger Irish media seem to use "van", but his own family's death notice has "The death has occurred of Mark Van Drumpt", hmmmm. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- We shouldn't be sorting names based on the nationality of the people they belong to. That kills consistency and defeats the purpose of sorting, which is to make things as easy to find as possible. We should not have some Van Burens (or van Burens) sorted under V and some under B. We should have them sorted where English-speaking readers who don't know the collation conventions of other languages or countries are mostly likely to look for them. Largoplazo (talk) 16:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- We should be sorting names on a WP:COMMONNAME basis, which will involve some different sorts for different people with the "same" name. That is the way to make them easiest to find. If you are suggesting overall rules for all such cases, that would be a mistake. Johnbod (talk) 16:38, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Could you clarify what you mean? How does WP:COMMONNAME guide us in choosing between "Eyck, Jan van" and "van Eyck, Jan", neither of which is the common name of Jan van Eyck? Largoplazo (talk) 22:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- Certainly. The WP:COMMONNAME is "van Eyck, Jan"; nobody ever uses "Eyck" in running prose (or "Jan Van Eyck"). Johnbod (talk) 03:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks. Largoplazo (talk) 10:30, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Certainly. The WP:COMMONNAME is "van Eyck, Jan"; nobody ever uses "Eyck" in running prose (or "Jan Van Eyck"). Johnbod (talk) 03:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- Could you clarify what you mean? How does WP:COMMONNAME guide us in choosing between "Eyck, Jan van" and "van Eyck, Jan", neither of which is the common name of Jan van Eyck? Largoplazo (talk) 22:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Largoplazo "We should have them sorted where English-speaking readers who don't know the collation conventions of other languages or countries are mostly likely to look for them" An argument can be made that many if not most English-speakers who find their way into this sort of categorisation are familiar with Dutch conventions. Dutchy45 (talk) 23:31, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is explained at WP:NAMESORT (aka WP:LISTAS). The method for "van" is different for Dutch, Belgian, American names. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:34, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
- We should be sorting names on a WP:COMMONNAME basis, which will involve some different sorts for different people with the "same" name. That is the way to make them easiest to find. If you are suggesting overall rules for all such cases, that would be a mistake. Johnbod (talk) 16:38, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Would it be ok if I alerted WikiProject Netherlands to this discussion, or would that be considered canvassing? Dutchy45 (talk) 00:23, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
Another dispute about categorisation and CATDEFINING
... at Talk:Robert Schumann#Recent category edits. I'd appreciate any comments there. Graham87 07:54, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Request for Comment on sorting of UK churches in categories in English Wikipedia
How should UK churches be sorted in categories in en.wiki? For background, including links to previous inconclusive discussions, please see the section #DEFAULTSORT for churches above. Note that articles on UK churches have a wide variety of title formats. Consider St Chad's Church, Far Headingley, but also:
- St Mark's Church, Woodhouse, Leeds
- Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Killinghall
- Parish church of St Giles, St Giles in the Wood
- Bethel Chapel, Ynysybwl
- Lenton Methodist Church
- The Holy Sepulchre, Northampton
- Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury
- Mount St Mary's Church, Leeds
- Leeds Minster
- Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St Simon Stock.
(It is of course possible that some of these should have other article titles).
The practice of expanding "St" or "St." to "Saint" is mandated by WP:SORTKEY and appears uncontroversial, so "Sort by article title" or similar, in this RfC, can be taken to mean "Sort by title with "St" expanded to "Saint" (and with a leading "The" removed in rare cases)".
The only existing guidance on sortkeys appears to be that at WP:SORTKEY, which includes the option that "Systematic sort keys are also used in other categories where the logical sort order is not alphabetical (for example, individual month articles in year categories such as Category:2004 use sort keys like "*2004-04" for April). Again, such systems must be used consistently within a category.
". There is no one Wikiproject dedicated to UK churches, though they come within the interests of many Wikiprojects: Christianity and its denominational subprojects; Architecture; United Kingdom; and UK geography and its country, county or regional subprojects. Categories is also relevant. There seems no obvious place to record the consensus with which this RfC will close, but an archived RfC lodged in the wiki-memory of a variety of editors will be useful. If agreement can be reached, we can (a) move towards consistent sorting within categories and (b) avoid conflict between editors and time wasted in changing DEFAULTSORTs. PamD 06:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
Discussion
Please express your preference within each of the three groups of options below:
- How should UK church articles sort in "UK church" categories (where all or almost all of the entries are UK churches), eg Category:Grade II* listed churches in West Yorkshire?
- By article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
- By location, eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
- By dedication, eg "Chad, Far Headingley"
- How should UK church articles sort in other categories, eg Category:Headingley?
- By article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
- By location, eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
- By dedication, eg "Chad, Far Headingley"
- What should the DEFAULTSORT be for a UK church article PamD 06:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- Article title, eg "Saint Chad's Church, Far Headingley"
- Location, then title eg "Far Headingley, Saint Chad's Church"
- Dedication, then location eg "Chad, Far Headingley"
- Not 1A, but choice of 1B/1C will depend upon whether the category name is for a specific dedication (in which case 1B), a particular location (in which case 1C) or neither (in which case other factors can be considered). Not 2C, but choice of 2A/2B will depend upon the nature of the category - if the cat is primarily about a location, and contains a variety of objects linked to that location, 2B would be inappropriate and I would go with 2A on that (but there may be circumstances where 2B is appropriate). 3A, definitely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B is the obvious choice here. 2A would be choice for other categories that are not predominantly churches. 3B as that will cover the most categories in the article, the few left can be overridden. Keith D (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- Users expect articles in categories to be in alphabetical order. The single-letter anchors reinforce that. If churches need to be arranged by place, that can be accomplished by a list article like List of churches in London. 1A, 2A, 3A Fuddle (talk) 13:21, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2A, 3A. Sorting by article title (which means, effectively, by dedication) in church categories (option 1A) means that most churches can only be found if you already know the dedication (if you don't know the dedication of Foohampton Parish Church, you won't be able to find it except by searching the page for "Foohampton", or scanning the whole list). It also means that two churches in the same place (e.g. "Foohampton Methodist church" and "St Bartholomew's Church, Foohampton") do not appear together, whereas churches that share nothing but their dedication will, arbitrarily, appear adjacently. The argument that users expect articles in categories to be in alphabetical order has some merit, but it's effectively analogous to sorting people by their first names, and will have to be broken anyway for articles titled "Church of..." and "Parish church of...". Furthermore, under such a scheme, cathedrals (e.g. Durham Cathedral) and churches without dedications (e.g. Westgate Methodist Chapel) will be illogically and inconsistently ordered. It also means that most church categories will have lots of entries under "S" and very few elsewhere (though that is a secondary consideration). Dave.Dunford (talk) 14:07, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2?, 3B. In the quoted example of Category:Headingley I will accept that location first may not be optimal but this is only the case for a strictly limited area. In all other cases the B option seems to be the best. Dedication is always problematic, many Free Church chapels do not have a dedication and may instead be known by the address: consider Stream Road Methodist Church, Kingswinford. Consideration should also be given to routinely including the denomination, for instance it might be relevant to point out that Cheadle, S Giles is actually RC, not CofE. I've checked Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers which list a large number of CofE churches in England, along with some RC and some outside England. Their style is "<location>, <dedication>", they've been doing it for 70 years and are considered a standard reference source for bell ringers. The CofE's "a church near you" website uses a mixture but predominantly "<location>, <dedication>", I do notice however that they list "Rochester Cathedral" rather than "Rochester: Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary"! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:53, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- Generally 1B, 2A, 3A, though Redrose64's "depend upon the nature of the category" observations are correct. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- Firstly, thank you PamD for putting in the effort to move this discussion towards a consensus and decision. At first, I could understand why sorting a church based on its name made sense, a name is a name after all, but then I saw Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St Thomas More, Chelsea, which is sorted to the word "Church", and how the sorting it according to place name would just be more logical. Therefore, I choose : 1B, 2A, 3B. Cardofk (talk) 21:27, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2A, 3B. Dave.Dunford's point about sorting people by their surnames is well-made. Oculi (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2A, 3A. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:26, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2A, 3A/B makes sense to me provided that articles are named consistently and the sort key can be found in the title. I have encountered various articles over the years where the sort key has no relation to anything in the title, rendering the article impossible to locate in category listings, something like "St. Peter's Church, Factorytown" being sorted under "Manchester" because the former town of Factorytown was at some point absorbed by Manchester. Either the article should be renamed or it should be sorted under the locality in the title.-- choster (talk) 15:02, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1B, 2C, 3B, 1 I'm not sure about but most people will probably only know the location, 2 definitely shouldn't be B 3 probably for the same reason as 1 most people only know the location of churches and that's almost always tied to them, the same cannot generally be said for other buildings like schools or places of interest where the location is often stated as a larger better known nearby place. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:20, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
- 1A, 2A, 3A, with the proviso that if the article title is "Church of.." the article should be sorted to ignore "Church of". These seem to be cogent arguments:
- As a general principle articles should be sorted in the order that is least surprising to the user.
- Sorting by location begs the question of which location to use. Far Headingley, Headingley or Leeds? Ecclesiastical parish or village? Sorting by location is only useful to a user who knows not just the actual location but the location name adopted by WP, leaving the user to guess.
- Sorting by dedication does not work for churches which have no dedication - dedications are usual (but not universal) for Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, but not for other denominations.
- Why should churches in the UK be sorted differently from churches in other countries?
- Why should churches be sorted differently from other buildings strongly linked to or identified with a particular community, e.g. schools or hospitals? You may know that there is a school or hospital (or church) in a location, but not know the name of it. But that cannot be a reason for not sorting the article by its name.
- Sorting by name would mean a large number of articles in the S section of a category, but why should that make it harder to find the right church? Within S churches are sorted by dedication, and within the same dedication, sorted by location.
- The argument in favour of location seems to be that many users will not know the formal name or dedication of a church in a particular place, so the article should be sorted as if the article named St Chad's Church, Far Headingley was named Far Headingley Parish Church. But that is not the article name, and should not be unless "Far Headingley Parish Church" satisfies WP:COMMONAME. If the user does not know the name of the church, but only the location, he can find the article in the same way as any article for which he is unsure of the name, e.g. through location categories, list articles or the article on the location. --Mhockey (talk) 23:04, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
- Churches are often referred to as "Location church" even though they may be called by the dedication in sources. IMO WP:SORTKEY can be more lax than WP:COMMONNAME about what the reader may know/expect since although the dedication is used by sources its often not known by most readers. I completely agree with other buildings that readers would have to guess the location of which they often wouldn't know but that's not normally a problem for churches where the location in normal speech is attached to the church. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- If by the "location in normal speech is attached to the church" you mean that in normal speech a church is known as "Location church" or "Location parish church", surely if it is supported by evidence then that should be the article title, following WP:COMMONNAME. That is how articles on cathedrals are usually named, rather than by their dedication. But sorting as if the article had a different title seems to me to be a confusing half-way house, as though you wish it had a different title but cannot find the evidence to change the title. Mhockey (talk) 20:44, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- What readers refer to topics isn't necessarily the same as what reliable sources refer to a topics as (which COMMONNAME is mainly about). While I agree per the principal of least astonishment normally the sort key should be close to article title I don't think this is always needed, think about Isle of Bute or The Bahamas where we would not expect to find "Isle of Bute" under "I" except at Category:Buteshire. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:32, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- If by the "location in normal speech is attached to the church" you mean that in normal speech a church is known as "Location church" or "Location parish church", surely if it is supported by evidence then that should be the article title, following WP:COMMONNAME. That is how articles on cathedrals are usually named, rather than by their dedication. But sorting as if the article had a different title seems to me to be a confusing half-way house, as though you wish it had a different title but cannot find the evidence to change the title. Mhockey (talk) 20:44, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
- Churches are often referred to as "Location church" even though they may be called by the dedication in sources. IMO WP:SORTKEY can be more lax than WP:COMMONNAME about what the reader may know/expect since although the dedication is used by sources its often not known by most readers. I completely agree with other buildings that readers would have to guess the location of which they often wouldn't know but that's not normally a problem for churches where the location in normal speech is attached to the church. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2022 (UTC)