Wikipedia talk:Categorization

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

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

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

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

Fictional couples

Category:Fictional couples is a mess. How much fiction doesn't involve couples? Even restricting it to those who appear in multiple works still seems too broad to me. Thoughts? Clarityfiend (talk) 08:51, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

It seems like a pretty pointless category to me, but off the top of my head I'm not sure exactly what P&G it's in violation of. However, you might suggest that the category should only be used to list articles that name or explicitly refer to fictional couples (e.g. Frankie & Alice), rather than any article that has a couple as an arguably non-primary focus (e.g. Gold Blend couple). DonIago (talk) 13:12, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Are dropouts alumni?

The word "alumnus" in English is ambiguous: it is sometimes used to mean people who once attended a school, and sometimes used to mean people who have finished a course of study at a school (that is, graduates, or people who have received a degree). My understanding is that our many alumni categories should only be used for the stricter meaning of graduates, because only that is defining: attending a school but then dropping out or transferring elsewhere is non-defining. User:SammySpartan obviously disagrees, and has been edit-warring to add Category:San Jose State University alumni to Rita Sanchez (who dropped out and later earned multiple degrees from a different school). Opinions, please? I'm asking here rather than starting a discussion on Talk:Rita Sanchez because I think this is a very general issue that we should have some global consistency on. I checked the archives but found only many discussions on what to call the alumni categories, not really touching on who should be listed in them. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:20, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• I classify an alumnus as someone who attended a school. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 00:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Cambridge Dictionary: Someone who studied at a particular school, college, or university. [1]

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: A person who has attended or has graduated from a particular school, college, or university.[2]

Dictionary.com: A graduate or former student of a specific school, college, or university, especially a man[3]

The definition is pretty clear that an alumni does not have to be a graduate. I don't see why Wikipedia should have a private definition of the word in this case. SammySpartan (talk) 00:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The definitions you quote are pretty clear to me that there are two distinct meanings: "who has attended OR has graduated"; "graduate OR former student". If these were intended to be a single meaning encompassing both the graduates and the former students, then the graduate parts of these definitions would be redundant and should have been omitted: one cannot be a graduate without attending. Since those parts of the definitions were not omitted, they make sense only as a way of describing a distinction between two different usages of the word "alumnus". Therefore, the question should not be, what is the definition, but rather which of these two meanings we should follow. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I have seen schools list people who attended as alumnus. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 00:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Additional comment, not all schools offer degrees, so former student makes more sense to me. Some military schools are an example. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 01:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with FieldMarine. I have always interpreted it as meaning someone attended (so, including dropouts). I don’t see any reason to interpret the term more strictly here.

That said, WP:DEFCAT applies. We should only be applying categorisations if they are defining and I suspect that while I would call Rita Sanchez an alum of San Jose, her status as such seems less likely to be defining. Bondegezou (talk) 07:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

See also link to m:Help:Sorting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And at the basis of these lie rather terrible edits like this one. I don't know if only one editor makes these or if more people do the same, but we have a few hundred articles that probably need reverting[4]. Fram (talk) 12:02, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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WP:SUBJECTIVECAT says

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

And fine, but then WP:CATDEF has

Be sure to include categories for all defining characteristics

and WP:NONDEFINING has

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reason I'm thinking about this is, I hate to see stuff like this picked off at random (somebody comes across "Skeptics" and has it deleted, while "Miser" etc happens to remain, luck of the draw). This leaves a gap-toothed smile, and that is not excellent, and we should strive for excellence. Have an RfC to decide if we want to this class of categories (that is, categories where many or most articles in it are because of a subjective editor opinion) or something, I'm thinking. Yeah decisions on which categories should fit in the "Not that subjective, keep this cat" and "Too subjective, dump this cat" (e.g. keep "Hoaxers", delete "Heroes" and whatever.) Oh well that is Wikipedia. Herostratus (talk) 18:53, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

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

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