Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 10

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Archive 5 ← Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10

Man-made objects

It's ironic and unfortunate that this page suggests the use of gender-neutral language, yet it hosts a section titled "man-made" objects. 71.254.77.193 (talk) 02:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

A fair observation. I've changed "man-made" to "manufactured," which admittedly doesn't completely purge the gendered etymology but improves things. "Artificial" would also work, strictly speaking, but the secondary meaning ("false") might be potentially confusing. The Tom (talk) 23:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I would never think of "man-made" as anything other than gender neutral, sort of like "human" or "mankind" - which although they have "gendered etymology" (at least for me) don't have any gender specific meaning whatsoever. For the kinds of categories "man-made" intends to cover, I'm not sure "manufactured" is quite synonymous since manufactured has a connotation of a large scale industrial operation, or use of industrial machines. The distinction is with naturally occurring features like mountains, rivers, etc. I'm not sure I'd think of buildings as being "manufactured". Trying to avoid using "man-made" here strikes me as political correctness run amuck. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Male/Female or Men/Women

Is there any consensus on which to use for cat names? I ask because I recently came across Category:Women screenwriters and Category:Female film directors. We should use either Male/Female or Men/Women. I don't really care which, but I think we should be consistent.--Rockfang (talk) 07:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

General naming conventions

While the requirement that says category names should stand alone clearly means no ambiguous names, I wonder if we should actually state that ambiguous category names need to be avoided? Vegaswikian (talk) 01:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Special conventions for characters

I propose adding a special convention for characters to the convention. Not having a mention of the need to not use special characters in category names is a surprise to many. So a brief mention in the convention seems called for. Something like:

Since special characters are difficult to enter from a keyboard and since category redirects do not work in the same way as article redirects, non standard keyboard characters should be avoided in category names.

I think that is a fair statement of the implementation that has been used for deciding this in the last few years. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Heritage red-links updated

The Heritage section was full of red-links (previous examples that are no longer applicable). Updated with current examples and text derived from:

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Hyphenated Americans

The Americans cannot agree to follow the Heritage naming conventions of the rest of the world. There are two current CfR, each pointing to a series of old CfR decisions (the latter calling the most recent previous CfR "anomalous"). There has been surreptitious changing via category redirect contrary to previous consensus, and category duplication and other changes without any CfR at all.

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 2#Category:Turkish Americans → Category:American people of Turkish descent

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 3#Category:Americans of Polish descent → Category:Polish-Americans

Policy status

Apparently, without formal discussion, the header template was repeatedly changed and reverted from policy to guideline, always by the same user, and in the final instance with a misleading log entry.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions are formally policy, but are currently mistakenly listed in Wikipedia:List of guidelines.

In particular, this policy was formally approved by the bureaucrat on 2005-09-25 13:30:49 UTC. Category titles are impossible to move, and time consuming to rename. That makes correctly naming categories increasingly important.

Without objection, I'll restore the correct heading and listing.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Upon further investigation, it appears the most recent confusion was the result of an ill-advised change to the wording of the header template that conflated all naming conventions. Better to eschew the subcategorization scheme, leaving this in Category:Wikipedia global policy together with Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Does anybody know of other naming conventions that should be similarly treated?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:29, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Special conventions for lists of items

There are a number of current discussions about the distinctions between singular and plural categories. They seem to be confusing folks.

We've used this convention for a very long time, since 2005-08-31 18:53:30, migrated from 2005-09-27 00:53:20. After researching the history, I've moved the existing note to the top, as it had become buried in the middle of the section list, and its lack of indentation was out of place. Maybe the more prominent location will help.

Should we change to add "topics" to the singular, as has happened in several instances over the past few years?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

RfC

For those who haven't yet seen the announcement elsewhere, there is an RfC going on about treatment of eponymous categories and their articles, at Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC. Please comment there.--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Disentangling race & ethnicity

We've a couple of related nominations, intended to help disentangle the many cross-categorization and category intersections that have arisen recently:

Should the first be successful, we must amend the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policies and related guidelines to clarify that "race" is not appropriate for categorization.

The second is somewhat dependent on the first. However, the inclusion of ethnic "origin" and "descent" is already against policy without notability, and these should never have been intermixed with the less contentious (more easily verifiable) nationality categories.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
The first (about "race") was approved by the community, the second (about "ethnicity") wasn't. Changes should be made accordingly, if at all. Debresser (talk) 02:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
And was completed at the locations specified, long before your insubstantial comment above. Please don't leave random thoughts weeks after discussion had concluded, it impedes our archiving mechanism.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:05, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Page protected

I have placed this page under full protection so that consensus on the disputed edits, or at least an agreement to stop reverting each other, can be achieved on this talk page. Once that agreement has been made, feel free to request unprotection at WP:RFPP.--Aervanath (talk) 13:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

General naming conventions

I quote the first two points on this conventions page (which have been cited at the above RfC):

  1. For a pre-existing category, the article of the same or similar name and (rarely, or) on the same topic should be added to that category. When creating an article one should, only if appropriate (especially horizontally), create a category of the same or similar name on the same topic.
  2. Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.

As a newcomer to this page, my impression is that (a) these statements are so opaque that it's hard to discern any meaning in them; (b) if anything, they seem to be about category creation and page categorization, not about category naming, so don't belong on this page at all.

Can these points be either rewritten so they make sense and so their relevance to the topic of this page is clear, or simply removed?--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

These are two of the most basic principles for creating and organizing categories, and should not be removed. Category names reflect category contents, and vice versa. There are many other instances of restriction on the content of categories, as these reflect decisions about appropriately named categories to retain.
Note that this is essentially descriptive, and is qualified by the more prescriptive specifications later in the policy page.
According to the history (that should always be checked before making any substantial modification), these were "Taken verbatim from Wikipedia:Categorization#General_naming_conventions" at the time this policy was originally written, during many months of discussion. The language for the 1st bullet was written in November 2004. The language for the 2nd bullet was written earlier in August 2004. Note that even then, folks were discussing eponymous categories.
While the language has survived hundreds of edits to this page, and is fairly comprehensive and comprehensible in context, perhaps dividing it into bullets and expanding slightly would help you:

  • When creating an article, always check for an appropriate category.
  • For a pre-existing category, an article of the same or similar name that concerns the same topic should be added to that category.
  • Otherwise, create a category of the same or similar name as the (main) article, according to these naming conventions.
  • Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible.
  • Articles should be more specific than (or equal to) their categories.
  • Categories should be more broad than (or equal to) their contents.

Does that improve the description sufficiently?
And I'm going to mention here that your being bold on the policy page today wasn't appreciated. You may have gotten away with being bold completely re-writing the Wikipedia:Categorization guideline in February (with only 2 days notice on the talk page), but folks take categorization policy pretty seriously here. Changes usually occur here after months of CfD, not hours or days or weeks.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:53, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Folks clearly don't take it seriously enough to write it in a way that can be understood, unfortunately. Hence the total mess we have with categorization. Most people who have commented have appreciated my attempts to tidy it up, but we still have a lot of work to do. Now, what are your bullet points above supposed to mean? I'm sorry, but for me they are total nonsense.--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Or anyone? Can anyone explain the meaning of the above statements and/or what they are doing on a page on naming conventions?--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Hello, Kotniski. I agree that the first version, quoted above, is indeed a little hard to understand, but it is possible. :) The version William Allen Simpson proposes sounds very nice and is a little easier to understand. The second half of it still needs some polishing, but the idea is clear. That categories should be named in such a way that a number of articles could be grouped in them. In other words, they should be specific, but not too specific. Debresser (talk) 10:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Can we just say that in the policy, then, instead of what we have now? It isn't clear to me how the words above, even in William's improved version, lead to that conclusion.--Kotniski (talk) 11:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I feel we need the input of more people here. I'll ask on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy) that people should have a look here and add their ideas. Debresser (talk) 13:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Do we mean specific or just focused? I think that focused better addresses the issues and concerns instead of specific. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:59, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I find the language in both the original and suggested revision to be largely uninterpretable. Looking at the suggested revision, I do not understand what the pair of bullet points Articles should be more specific than (or equal to) their categories. and Categories should be more broad than (or equal to) their contents. mean in practice. What does it mean to be more specific than or more broad than? older ≠ wiser 14:07, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
It's only stating the obvious. An article won't fit in a category that's smaller than it is. Peter jackson (talk) 15:11, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
But that terminology is very unclear. What does it mean for a category to be smaller than an article? older ≠ wiser 15:29, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
That is my point precisely. I understand what it means, see my explanation above, but I'd like some advice as on how to expess this more clearly. Debresser (talk) 15:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I think you did it pretty well above: "Categories should be named in such a way that a number of articles could be grouped in them." That's about as much as we can say in terms of naming conventions. I presume by the bigger/smaller thing you mean that Paris belongs in Category:France, but France doesn't belong in Category:Paris. That's also quite important I suppose, unless we consider it too obvious to be worth mentioning, but it doesn't have anything to do with category naming - such things should be dealt with at WP:CAT.--Kotniski (talk) 16:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that's the sort of thing I meant. Peter jackson (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, seems this could be stated more clearly. I think Kotniski may be onto something with regards to separating guidance about naming conventions from guidance about the process of categorization. older ≠ wiser 16:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Delete the first two bullet points under "General naming conventions". I believe the above discussion shows that in their present form they are either meaningless, or at best irrelevant to the subject of this page.--Kotniski (talk) 06:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, cancel that request - I have a broader proposal that I will make in a new section at the bottom.--Kotniski (talk) 12:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

New wording proposal

I've copied the text of this page to User:Kotniski/NCCATS to work on some improvements. To begin with I propose replacing the lede and the first section of this page with the reworded version from there, namely:

This page contains a list of guidelines on how to name categories. Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalise regular nouns except when they come at the start. If you wish to propose a new or modified category-related naming convention, please do so on the talk page, while also publicising the proposal at any other relevant pages.

General naming conventions

  • Names of topic categories should be singular, normally corresponding to the name of a Wikipedia article. Examples: "Law", "Civilization", "George W. Bush".
  • Names of list categories should be plural. Examples: "Writers", "Villages in Poland".
  • Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II. However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts.
  • Choose category names that are able to stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories. Example: "Wikipedia policy precedents and examples", not "Precedents and examples" (a subcategory of "Wikipedia policies and guidelines").
  • Don't include the category structure in names. Example: "Monarchs", not "People - Monarchs".
  • As with lists, avoid descriptive adjectives such as famous, important, or notable in category titles.

This improves some of the poor wordings, removes the meaningless points discussed above and replaces them with useful general rules, and hopefully improves the presentation. Any comments?--Kotniski (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I've met with a misunderstanding of "Choose category names that are able to stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories". The correct understanding is that a category name should be understandable and logical on its own, even for an editor who has no previous knowledge of its place in the category tree. The misunderstanding was that there is no reason a category should be named in accordance with the names of other categories in the tree (this was here). Therefore I propose to remove those words and adopt the simpler wording "Choose category names that are able to stand alone, understandable even for an editor who has no previous knowledge of its place in the category tree." Debresser (talk) 17:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree with that too.--Kotniski (talk) 17:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Page header

The header of this page says

If you wish to propose a new or modified category related naming convention, please do so on Wikipedia talk:Category names/Archive 10, while also publicising the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, Requests for comment, and the Village Pump, as well as at any related pages.

I think this is greatly ovedone. Wikipedia practise is to have discussions on the talkpage and that's it. Only if editors decide by consensus to ask for broader input, they put a notification elsewhere. And if a discussion might be relevant to related pages, like Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, they will surely put a notification there. In light of the above, and in order to clarify this text, I propose to remove part of the text and rephrase to

If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify and old one, please do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider putting up a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages.

I think this is better English also ("the talk page" is bold only because it links to this very same page, but will be a normal blue link when this text is on the policy page). Debresser (talk) 17:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's pretty much the same as what I did in my proposal above. Either wording is fine by me, and certainly a great improvement on what we have at present.--Kotniski (talk) 17:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Your version above was based on an edit of mine that has now been reverted. That's why I decided to bring up this point, even though I personally consider it an obvious and uncontentious improvement". Debresser (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Abbreviations

I also think the point about abbreviations could be improved. I don't think being "official" is really the point. Surely the standard should be the same as for article names (see WP:ABREV), so that category names and article names correspond.--Kotniski (talk) 12:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I see no problem there, but there is usually room for improvement. Would you have a proposal? Debresser (talk) 12:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Maybe something like: Avoid abbreviations, such as U.S. for the United States or WW2 for World War II. However, abbreviations that are used as the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article (in accordance with WP:ABREV), such as NATO, should be used in category names too.--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Now that sounds smart. Debresser (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Special conventions

Much of the "Special conventions" section can simply be cut out, as it relates only to categorization, not to naming. Trying to preserve (and improve) the points that do relate to naming, I came up with the following version:

Again, please comment on this proposal.--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I object to "All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, etc.", since I have shown in #Update administrative categories section that that text has no consensus, nor is it followed in practise. Debresser (talk) 14:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
That's why I added the "if" clause. It could doubtless be worded better though - what do you propose (or should that point simply be omitted)?--Kotniski (talk) 14:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Since we are talking about categories anyway, I don't see we need that point. Better to leave out anything that can be used later to press points, as we have seen lately. Debresser (talk) 15:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Maybe something very general, like Categories used for Wikipedia administration purposes should be named in such a way that they are not likely to be confused with content categories (with maybe an example or two)?--Kotniski (talk) 15:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I like that idea, yes. One example without "Wikipedia" and a second could be with (in that order). Debresser (talk) 17:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Update administrative categories section

  • I'm not sure that this is an "update".
  1. At Special conventions for Wikipedia-related categories, it currently says:

    All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, and placed in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree.

  2. Obviously, "and placed" is poor grammar. How about "and should be placed"?
  3. Are there any administrative categories that aren't somewhere in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree?
  4. Although hidden categories are relatively new, and are not mentioned in the naming conventions, quite a few are already hidden.
  5. Are there examples that are not hidden that should be hidden?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

There is a discussion of some category names already in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree that do not currently have Wikipedia as part of their name:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 26

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

In that case..
  • All administrative categories used on main space, with the exception of stub categories, should be hidden and be placed in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree.
"Should be" distributes, and so does "should" but really any of the three wordings are fine by me. And I am suggesting we update the section, hence use of the word "update". Whether there are any not in the tree I don't know but it seems a reasonable requirement, and worth advising would-be cat creators. There probably are not hidden that should be ISTR I fixed one yesterday. Might be worth scanning for. Rich Farmbrough, 23:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC).
Disagree with run-on sentences. Splitting it to separate sentences:

All administrative categories shall be placed in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree. Each should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name; exceptions are granted through Categories for Discussion. Any used in main namespace should be hidden, with the exception of stub categories.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Actually looking at the "tree" this advise is that great but it's better than nothing. But we are side-tracking into grammar and layout. The substantive points are the removal of the need for the word "Wikipedia" and the suggestion that they should be hidden. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
OK, given that both CfD have closed without "Wikipedia", and there is already parallel language about the hidden attribute elsewhere, it seems we have consensus on those points.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Scanning the tree is initially appearing infeasible because Category:Categories (for example) is a child of Category:Wikipedia administration. This highlights the problem that categories should be able to be members or sub-cats. But that isn't for here. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
Looks like somebody made that change last year without an edit summary. Two edits later, the same person put Contents back, as it wasn't correct without it, but never fixed the older mistake. Reverted, it's not an administrative category, although several subcategories intersect with an administrative subcategory.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the formulation of Rich Farmbrough. "Should be" is more fitting than "shall". This is a wiki and not a royal decree! Also, common use in Wikipedia seems to be "should".

I also agree with Rich Farmbrough that the requirement that Wikipedia-related categories should begin with the word "Wikipdia" should be dropped. Rich Farmbrough has made that point eloquently in Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_4#Category:Articles_to_be_split. I might add that even a cursory look at Category:Wikipedia deletion e.g. will show that the pages with "Wikipedia" are about 1 out of 4. In Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories given month e.g. this is 1 out of 6. QED. Debresser (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories given month is a controversial page developed by you and Farmbrough, without consensus (or even discussion). There have been multiple reports here and at WP:AN about that abusive page, including at least one by you (complaining that administrators were reverting your edits). It has no standing. Moreover, your flagrant disregard for naming conventions, WP:CFD, and WP:BRD renders it contentious.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Since it is a list and not a policy (like this page) there is nothing "controversial", "contentious" or "abusive" about it, nor can there be. No reports have been made about that page. And most importantly, what does that page have to do with anything? It was just an example. Debresser (talk) 13:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Recent edits here pretended to reflect consensus , but in fact did not reflect consensus at all. In this edit I changed that section to reflect consensus and good reason. Debresser (talk) 02:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

In light of a recent conflict here I'd like to specify that consensus is based on the opinions of three editors, stated specificaly here or implied by their revertal of edits by William Allen Simpson. Further edits by William Allen Simpson without participating in this discussion and against consensus will not be tolerated. Debresser (talk) 18:22, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia using wiki software. That doesn't mean that there are no requirements, and anybody can do anything they please. This is not a playground.
  • Posting a comment here ( 2009-06-12 02:13:01, without a relevant section edit summary), and then edit warring on the project page starting a few minutes later (2009-06-12 02:18:45) does not constitute consensus.
  • Two random people "talk"ing here over a period of a few minutes or hours or days does not constitute consensus.
  • There are currently 208 categories with prefix "Wikipedia:" and 5,601 categories with prefix "Wikipedia ". Consensus will only be reached after all editors involved in those administrative categories and their related projects are given an opportunity to participate, using the procedures required by this policy.
My most recent edit of this section reflects the consensus confirmed by 3 recent CfD after weeks of discussion.
  • The word "shall" is used elsewhere in this policy, and is common both in law and technical specification. Inclusion in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree is mandatory, and not a matter of discretion. (I've more than 25 years professional experience writing statutes, regulations, and consensus technical and organizational specifications in state, national, and international jurisdictions.)
  • There was no discussion (therefore no consensus) to remove the requirement of Wikipedia from administrative categories. There was discussion and consensus for allowing exceptions after discussion at CfD. That is precedent.
  • The additional (uncontroversial) language about hidden categories is parallel to long discussion elsewhere and current inclusion in other guidelines.
Moreover, Debresser's objection to this language appears to be personally motivated, demonstrated by his objection to its citation by the distinguished long-time editor at CfD, Kbdank71.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Accusing me of edit warring after you have been blocked for edit warring here, is peculiar, at the least.
I respect your professional expertise very much, but would like to point out that Wikipedia is not a court of law, and its policies not legal documents. In Wikipedia "should" is prefered. This is not a big problem in my eyes, but in pages that are not core policies and do not have all kinds of legal and nasty complications to take into account, "should" should be enough. :)
There was discussion. You can scroll up and read it. And there was consensus here, which was 3:1 against your opinion. Furthermore, precedent of 1:4 or 1:6 is enough to validate a change in the text of this guideline even if there would not have been clear discussion about the subject.
There are no "procedures required by this policy". You can not own this page or any other part of Wikipedia.
Kbdank71 is indeed a "distinguished long-time editor at CfD". But what does that have to do with anything? Please notice that over there I say the same thing as here: that you changed the text of this policy against consensus. Just that over there I don't specify that point clearly, just allude to it. Now what is the problem with that?
Please have a look at Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#Characteristics of problem editors and take that to heart. Debresser (talk) 13:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
I would like you to specify which "3 recent CfD discussions" you are refering to. Please notice that if the crucial part of those discussions was a quote (likely by you) from this same contested text, it can not be considered a valid proof. Debresser (talk) 16:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Just to note for the record that my recent block mentioned above was about 7 hours after editing has ceased, apparently due to Debresser beseeching various administrators via multiple channels (pretending false urgency). I'd continued normal editing some 5 hours before retiring for the day. It had little or no consequence to me as an editor. But rather a surprise to discover the following morning....
And most unusual, as I was undoing repeated reverts by 2 editors warring together on a policy page, a circumstance that is normally given considerable leeway. (See Wikipedia:Edit war "Enforcing certain overriding policies", "reverts made by multiple accounts count together", and "tag team reverting".) In this case, the overriding policy is specified in the lede of this policy page.
By strict count, I'd not violated 3RR. I'm reasonably careful, know the rules well, and had written up the problem at WP:AN/EW by 2RR for me (7RR cumulative for the tag team warriors). However, the Wikipedia:Edit war policy permits such a block without 3RR, at the discretion of the administrator.
Unfortunately, Aervanath protected the page at a version of 5 months ago, instead of 2 weeks ago. Hopefully, that can be restored without incident in the near future.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
None of your comments address the arguments I brought forth refuting your arguments. I'd like to consider that agreement. Debresser (talk) 20:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Heritage

It says in the subsection about heritage: "Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors."

This text seems to have originated in this deletion discussion of May 20, 2006, where it was used by Kurieeto and William Allen Simpson. During this discussion William Allen Simpson remarked on May 24, 2006: "This decision should be well documented." (stress is mine). Likewise he said on May 29, 2006 in this Village pump (policy) discussion: "It will result in new guidelines." The only other editor participating in this discussion was Hmains, who was strongly opposed to the change. From there it was proposed on this talk page (archived) on July 3, 2009, and presented as "The requirement that living people must have self-identified was overwhelmingly supported on the Village pump ... I've crafted wording that reflects a cross-selection of the arguments there." The discussion on this talk page at that moment was focused on changes to hyphenation and this specific subject was not discussed there except briefly by the three same editors I have already named. I have found no other discussions at around the same time about a related subject (apart from [1], which does not seem to be the source of the policy refered to as "overwhelmingly supported", since it discusses a slightly other question and is refered to in another discussion on this talk page). The change to this policy page was made in this edit on July 12, 2006.

After this short treatise on "How to make policy", I'd like to propose a minor correction. The principles behind this correction were was actually alluded to in [2] by William Allen Simpson and in a discussion that went parallel with the deletion discussion mentioned above by Valiantis.

We have various categories Categories:People of xxx decent. Since "descent" per definition is determined by parents, it should be stated in the instructions that categories of this type are an exeption to the rule. E.g., an American with an Italian father may not be categorised as an "Italian American" unless he has self-identified as such, but he may be identified as an "American of Italian descent". Debresser (talk) 02:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly being 'of X descent' is a fact, like date of birth, or nationality and 'self-identifying' to a fact seems very bizarre. My understanding was that an Italian American is exactly an American of Italian descent - "An Italian American (Italian: Italoamericano singular, Italian: Italoamericani plural) is an American of Italian ancestry". (WAS does seem rather inclined to mistake his own opinions for policy, often because it turns out, if one digs back far enough, that he wrote the policy.) As far as I am concerned we just need a source for an Italian ancestor (which is usually a parent as info on grand-parents is not readily available even for prominent people). It is not usually controversial to have an Italian father; BLP concerns do not arise. Occuli (talk) 13:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
This is the wrong place to talk about this. Who should be included in a particular category is a whole different matter than what the category should be called. By dictating category inclusion standards, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) overreaches its purpose and tries to make policy that, by definition, it can't. As the intro states, "Naming conventions (categories) is a list of guidelines for how to appropriately name categories" - that's the only set of rules it can contain. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't have time this morning to thoroughly rebut the above misinformation. I'll just note that the first link provided does not have a mention of the text it pretends to reference. Debresser apparently agrees that discussion took place for months before the decision was recorded on July 12, 2006. Please take all Debresser's other comments here with a grain of salt.

While I may often record the policy, it always reflects well developed consensus. Policies and guidelines are meant to be enforced. This particular policy has been repeatedly affirmed and enforced in recent months.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason to take my well argumented opinion with any amount of salt whatsoever! The "enforcement" you are talking about has been YOU pushing things against many protests, while refering to this very same page. So your logic is no more than a circular argument, and is not valid. And again, you do not address the arguments themselves... Debresser (talk) 20:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

I have a comment. A big one. Quite a few editors have stated that this is not the right page for policy on inclusion criteria. If so, we have to remove these parts to Wikipedia:Categorization of people or where appropriate Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. BTW, I hold this last page should be merged with the first. Debresser (talk) 16:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I quite agree. (But I don't see it has anything to do with my proposed wording change above, so I've made this into a separate section.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:45, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
So we should make the appropriate proposals. Debresser (talk) 17:19, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Agreed, inclusion criteria should be in Wikipedia:Categorization of people, where it's relevant, not here. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppose, noting that "quite a few" appears to be 2 or 3.

Names of categories are based on their appropriate contents, and vice versa. We don't create certain categories, nor do we permit a category definition that includes such contents (under some otherwise innocuous name).

As the need appeared for a strengthened policy, inclusion criteria were explicitly copied and/or removed from various (sometimes conflicting) categorization guidelines. That's how this policy page was started!

Don't confuse the mere existence of various guidelines with the need for clear policy explication. As long as the guidelines conform to the policy, that's acceptable.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

So if this page is to be about more than category naming, it should be renamed, surely? Or combined with WP:Overcategorization and the other pages somehow? If you call it something and include whole reams of information about something else, then people looking for that something else will not know to come here to look for it. The mess needs sorting out somehow - if you don't offer any proposals on how to do it, maybe you could stop being so negative towards everyone else's ideas.--Kotniski (talk) 06:54, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Hear, hear! By Jove! Debresser (talk) 20:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Place of birth

Both in the heritage and in the Residence subsections it says "The place of birth is rarely notable". What does this mean? That we should avoid creating categories of the type Category:People born in xxx?

If the answer to the above question is yes, then we have 2 problems:

  • The text had better be changed to something more clear, like "Since place of birth is not a notable characteristic of a person, do not create categories of the type Category:People born in xxx."
  • I have seen many times that a person born in place x, who has lived and worked in place y, is a member of both Category:People from x and Category:People from y. In the spirit of the above, we should then add an instruction not to add that first category, like "Place of birth is usually not an appropriate criteria for categorisation." An additional problem would be that common practise seems to be otherwise, and we should have a broader discussion about this subject before sharpening the instructions. Debresser (talk) 02:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I think we have deleted 'born in' categories. John McEnroe was in one that was deleted - Category:German-born Americans. WAS probaly means 'defining', not 'notable'; or perhaps that being born in Foo does not make one Fooian (although I expect 99% of people born in Foo are Fooian or could claim Fooian citizenship). (I have no idea how to restrict/limit 'from X' categories. They seem relatively harmless. I know where I am from but anyone reading my CV would have about 20 places to choose between.) Occuli (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't have time this morning to thoroughly rebut the above misinformation. In context (emphasis added):

  • People are sometimes categorized by notable ancestry, culture, or ethnicity....
    • The place of birth is rarely notable.
  • People are sometimes categorized by notable residence....
    • The place of birth is rarely notable.

Note that mere "defining" is not the standard. Persons must be notable for their Heritage or Residence. As with any well-written policy, the word rarely implies that there might be well-documented exceptions.

Therefore, place of birth is rarely an appropriate rationale to add either a Heritage category or a Residence category for any person. We do not create such categories, nor do we permit a category definition that includes such persons (under some otherwise innocuous name).

Please take all Debresser's other comments here with a grain of salt. It appears there is a problem with English as a second language, or he pretends to have such a problem. There is no ambiguity in these concise declarative statements.

Examples abound. This particular policy has been repeatedly affirmed and enforced over the past 6 years (indeed, long before the policy language was consolidated here).
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

  • 'Defining' is and has always been the criterion for categories, not 'notable'. WAS seems to have difficulty with English as a 1st language. (Place of birth is rarely defining but it can very often be used as a claim to nationality; eg someone born in the UK pre-1980s had a right to British citizenship.) Occuli (talk) 09:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I find the interpretation of WAS valid (although his personal attacks are deplorable). So let's rephrase this to say clearly that "Place of birth is not generaly a valid indicator of ethnicity". Debresser (talk) 20:25, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
"Place of birth is not generally a valid indicator of ethnicity" is certainly true; indeed there is no causal connection whatever. Occuli (talk) 08:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Certainly. But since place of birth is at least a first indication of possible ethnicity, I like the phrase above. In gneral, I fell, Wikipedia guidelines and policies are not laws, and I have a tendency to keep their formulation on the less side of formal. What do you think about that? Debresser (talk) 15:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Concrete proposal

Let's have a look at where we've got from the above threads. Focusing on the lede and the first two sections for now, I propose that we change them in accordance with this diff. (This basically implements the changes discussed in the foregoing threads, though I've made some minor rewordings and changed the order of points in second section.) Please have a look at this (I mean everyone, not just we two;) ) and see if there are any objections. If not, then I'll make an editprotected request to bring it live on this page (or to get this page unprotected if appropriate).--Kotniski (talk) 11:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Your proposal for the lead is to:
This page contains a list of guidelines on how to name categories. Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalise regular nouns except when they come at the start. If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify an old one, please do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider placing a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages..
My suggestion is:
This page contains a list of guidelines on how to name categories. Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalize regular nouns except when they come at the beginning of the title. If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify an existing convention, do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider placing a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages.
I will say that I'm not completely OK at this time taking out the other suggested notice pages since relevant is, as we have seen, too subjective.
As the the remaining changes, they are significantly more extensive and with only input from two editors are far from ready to be implemented. I suggest that we agree on a rework of the lead and then proceed forward. At this time I can not support the additional proposed changes. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
I suppose each paragraph will have to discussed this way. Vegaswikian has the best of these 3 present options, but I wonder how many editors will really know what 'other appropriate discussion pages' might be and so just ignore that phrase. Hmains (talk) 02:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
We can go with Vegasikian's version as far as I'm concerned - it isn't that important. But V, why do you not support the other changes - is there anything specific you object to? (I don't think they're "extensive" in terms of substance - it's mainly just clearing out stuff that's irrelevant or meaningless, as discussed above.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I wanteed to say just that. That version is fine, but what specifically is wrong with the other porposals? Debresser (talk) 09:14, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm not convinced about the acceptability of the other proposed changes. I'm really not able to take the time that is needed to read and reconsider all of those changes. It is more that just the words. I'm not convinced that I support all of what is in there. Maybe a little wordsmithing is all that is needed, I just don't know. So it's fine to start on parts where there is consensus. I'm also concerned by the amount of input on these changes. Small changes, even without extensive input is generally OK (the lead). But the larger changes do need more input. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppose -- I join with Vegaswikian and Hmains at this point. The method for proposing changes is already well-defined in the lede. Vagueness is not only likely to be ignored, it makes changes much too easy on its face. That only 2 folks want to make sweeping changes to the future modification procedure after a mere few days discussion here is a harbinger of things to come.

As to the specifics:

  1. "'''{{PAGENAME}}''' is" → "This page contains"
    1. This changes the usual convention that the page title is bold in the first sentence (bad). Also, use of PAGENAME is fairly standard, and part of the base software magic words.
    2. Changing "is" to "contains" weakens the statement of purpose of the page (worse); implying a mere collection of principles, rather than the method superior to all others. This page was originally intended (and certified) as a policy page. Any other guidelines that conflict (usually through inadvertence or mistake) are superseded.
  2. "for how to appropriately name" → "on how to name"
    1. This use of "on" is a common error when English is a second language. This is not a piece of furniture.
    2. This is the page that defines "appropriately" naming. The use of the category is reflected in the name, and the name must reflect the contents. Categories are deleted or renamed anytime they are not appropriate.
  3. "regular nouns." → "regular nouns except when they come at the start."
    1. Huh? This is incomprehensible instruction creep. The start of what? The simple imperative is more useful and intelligible.
  4. "a new or modified category related naming convention," → "a new naming convention for categories or modify an old one,"
    1. Dangling; an old what?
    2. Boldface is appropriate here, to emphasize this is a naming convention page.
    3. I've reverted this particular deletion by Kotinski several times over two weeks, and he has never explained his reasoning for reducing the emphasis of naming convention, and failed to conform to Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle#What BRD is, and is not, instead choosing to edit war.
    4. Reminder, it is not up to a reverter to discuss, it is up to the modifying editor to discuss. WP:BRD requires posting to the talk page in advance, and bold editing only after a failure to achieve consensus after deadlock, not as an initial edit!
  5. "If relevant, consider placing a notification"
    1. No, that leaves the decision to the editor (worst). There is no compromise here. All such proposals SHALL be publicised in advance.
    2. Moreover, being bold is not appropriate, as Wikipedia:Be bold#Non-article namespaces warns.
    3. While it currently goes without saying (merely implied), proposing trivial modification for clarity might take place only on the talk page without broad notification. The procedure used recently by Vegaswikian is exemplar: propose adding 2 words, wait until the archive software records the decision after 28 days, then make the change.

In recent months Kotniski made sweeping changes to Wikipedia:Categorization and other guidelines without prior discussion, or after a mere 2 days post on the Talk page. This behavior is not acceptable anywhere, let alone a policy page. Be warned!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Not true in my experience - especially when the page title contains parentheses.--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Says who? This page is a total mess (see above threads) - it can hardly be considered authoritative about anything. But the contains/is question is trivial - it really doesn't matter either way.--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
To me, "guidelines on how to name" sounds better English than the other version. "Appropriately" is redundant (obviously we wouldn't be giving guidance about how to do something inappropriately). --Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Well it's Category:Writers, not Category:writers (agreed that might be obvious - but then the whole sentence is obvious).--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
A naming convention for categories - how is that not obvious?--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
If so, then bold the first occurrence.--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Don't personalize please. See my reply above.--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
I've never seen that interpretation before. --Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
From the page you quote (about editing policy pages): "spelling and grammatical errors can and should be fixed as soon as they are noticed". I.e. be bold abour presentation, but discuss changes of substance, which is what we're doing now. Please stop personalizing - this debate should be about how to improve the content, not carping about editors' behaviour. --Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Sweeping maybe, but again, it was about presentation, not substance. Tidying up policy and guideline pages that have got out of control over the years is a GOOD thing for WP - it doesn't serve the project to have instructions that people can't follow or find their way around, or simply don't make sense.--Kotniski (talk) 07:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on Vegaswikian's reservations. This is a page which is not frequented by many. As you can see above, I've posted on the Village Pump and have received at least some input from "outsiders" (there are no outsiders in Wikipedia). I think all changes here are not really major and we shouldn't be afraid of change. Basically only 1 editor opposes the changes discussed here, but he doesn't seem to bring any arguments that are logically sound. Consensus doesn't mean that all have to agree... Debresser (talk) 20:35, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

How does developing consensus have to mean that we ignore concerns. I fail to see why you are not willing to go what what is agreed and then work on the rest of the changes. If we can't implement what is agreed on why consider additional changes? Even though a portion of the proposal have basic support I'm not even sure that the wording is nailed down. Maybe I'm not willing to jump in since your track record as shown above is to disparage comments by others. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
There must be some misunderstanding here. I am completely in support of implementing those changes that have majority support. And I am content with the progress we are making on reaching consensus. As to my "track record", I'll write on your talkpage, because I think personal comments should not be clouding discussion. Debresser (talk) 22:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Back on point

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I think there's sufficient consensus here for the change to Vegaswikian's suggested change to the lede, so I will go ahead and make the change. Those editors who oppose the change are advised to propose changes to this wording for further discussion. This consensus seems only to apply to the lede, though; the other changes discussed above should be polled separately.--Aervanath (talk) 06:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

So to move this back on point, is there support for

This page contains a list of guidelines on how to name categories. Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalize regular nouns except when they come at the beginning of the title. If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify an existing convention, do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider placing a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages.

as the new text? The consensus needs to be clear if we want to update the locked page. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:51, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

  • Oppose for the detailed reasons stated above. Moreover, removing the requirement for widespread discussion at specified locations would be detrimental to the continuity of policy. We've already seen that some feel anybody can edit the page at any time, without conforming to actual precedent.
    --William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Requiring that one and the same discussion be held on four different pages is impractical to the absurd. The remedy is to center discussions. In relation with this I have to notice that you have broken up a few policy pages into subpages, which does not fascilitate discussion, or anything else, apart from keeping the status quo, which often you had established whithout consensus or precedent. Now isn't that a marvelous piece of divide and rule? Debresser (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. I've answered WAS's "detailed reasons" above (someone's moved my comments so it's not immediately obvious what each is a response to, but hopefully it's still clear enough). There's no need to imply that changes to this page need to be publicized on specific other pages, any more than changes to guidelines/policies generally do - editors are intelligent enough to know where to publicize their (or others') proposals in accordance with general principles and common sense.--Kotniski (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Support – although 'except when they come at the beginning of the title' doesn't seem optimal. 'except for the first word of the title'? Occuli (talk) 10:34, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Categories that are unsourced or irrelevant

Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 6

I've nominated them for deletion, as they present an attractive nuisance. Editors may think it's a good idea to leave an unsourced or irrelevant category on an article, simply because these templates exist. Something like {{fact}} for categories, except these present a large block of text.

In both cases, the category should be removed entirely – especially in the latter case. These have been used on biographical articles. In one case, the unsourced WP:GRS category has been left on the WP:BLP article for nearly two years! When I've removed the category, was reverted with the edit summary (revert: the fact that a maintenance item has been outstanding for a long time is not a reason to remove it.)

Please join the discussion.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

We HAVE joined the discussion. You haven't. As witnessed by the fact that you keep making your edit. We call that "edit warring". The only right thing to do in Wikipedia is WAIT for the outcome of the discussion. NOT to act upon YOUR opinion. Consensus, in other words. (Stresses added to fascilitate understanding of the important things.) Debresser (talk) 12:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I see no attacks, sorry. Ad hominem, or personal. In English or in Latin. The edit warring takes place on Wieland Speck, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:William_Allen_Simpson_reported_by_User:Debresser_.28Result:_.29. Debresser (talk) 12:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Closed no violation, before I'd even had an opportunity to respond. Moreover, irrelevant to this section's subject. A perfect example of your attempt to poison the well.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Republic of Macedonia

A decision has been reached at WP:NCMAC. To summarize roughly: we are going to use Republic of Macedonia for the article, because it is ambiguous with the region and with the ancient kingdom of the same name, as well as a region of Greece, which used to be an administrative subdivision, and some minor uses.

We are going to use Macedonia wherever possible, unless disambiguation is needed. We are not going to use FYR and FYROM at all, except in discussing the present naming dispute with Greece. (Do check this rough summary with the fuller page.)

The question is: what do we do with the cats? Macedonia only refers to one modern state, and for most of the associated cats, like Category:National sports teams of FYR of Macedonia, now at WP:CFD simple Macedonia would be unambiguous. Do we use it, or do we always use Republic of Macedonia? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

From a quick look, we would be safest using Category:Republic of Macedonia. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree for the main cat, which would be ambiguous. Do we need to spell it out for the subcats? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Just for background, I collected some documentation of the present naming status quo here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, when discussing "national" this or that, there is no ambiguity since none of the other Macedonias have "national" anything. (Taivo (talk) 21:20, 11 July 2009 (UTC))
Yes, obviously. The issue is just that at WP:MOSMAC2 we have generally favoured the approach of only disambiguating where contextually necessary, whereas WP:NCCAT has always placed higher emphasis on maximal uniformity across categories. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, without looking, is Category:People from Central Macedonia ambiguous and is it clear which group this is a part of? I'll hazard a guess that to the experts this would be clear, but to the average reader it could be confusing unless you look at the parents and it probably is not ambiguous. So the question may well be how much sorting for clarification for the average reader should the category names do in this case. I'm open on this at this time. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
You are right that things like Category:People from Central Macedonia are probably obvious only for the experts (Central Macedonia is one of the administrative subdivisions on the Greek side, and there is no officially defined unit of that name in the Republic or elsewhere, even though of course informally one could use the phrase about parts of the Republic too.) But what the existence of these categories shows is that readers can deal with quite a bit of superficial ambiguity. These Greece-related cats have existed for a good while and never caused problems. Likewise, it's only obvious to the experts that "Category:Medieval Macedonia" or "Category:Macedonian monarchs" couldn't possibly refer to the country, because it didn't exist in the middle ages and it never had monarchs. I guess when readers come across them, it's always from the context of either an article that makes the intended scope clear, or through the category page, which of course contains a definition. If these can stand without explicit disambiguation in the category title, why should the same not go for the country-related ones? We have also used the simple adjective form "Macedonian" for all the "topic-by-nationality"-type categories without problems, even though it's just as ambiguous as the country-name noun. I think my personal preference would be something like the disambiguate-only-where-necessary rule we used for articles. Keep Category:Macedonia for dealing with the wider region as a whole and as a parent cat for all the others; have the main country cat at Category:Republic of Macedonia (and a daughter to the former), but from there downwards again use plain "... of Macedonia" except in the handful of cases where it conflicts with another category of the same topic under a different scope. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Update: two recent CFD's have now closed with a result of applying the WP:MOSMAC2 naming pattern to category names, i.e. using plain "Macedonia" when not in direct conflict with another category (Christianity in Macedonia, National sports teams of FYR of Macedonia, both closed by User:Xdamr). If that's indeed the emerging new consensus, we should probably modify WP:NCCAT accordingly. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:58, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Further improvement

Continuing the process of improving the wording of this page (as discussed in several threads above), can we agree on this proposal (well two proposals really, as the deletion and addition are independent of each other):

  • Firstly, delete the following paragraphs, since they are incomprehensible, or at best irrelevant to the subject of this page (as discussed above):
    • For a pre-existing category, the article of the same or similar name and (rarely, or) on the same topic should be added to that category. When creating an article one should, only if appropriate (especially horizontally), create a category of the same or similar name on the same topic.
    • Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.

Thoughts, tweaks?--Kotniski (talk) 13:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

For those of us who are mathematically inclined, the 2 paragraphs you propose to delete, contain very clear instructions. Nevertheless, as I have argued elsewhere, we definitely need to simplify these instructions. What you are doing is restating the rules using practical examples, rather than theoretical descriptions. Which is fine with me.
More specifically, I'd like to add the folowing to the second paragraph you proposed: "The article Writer must be a member of Category:Writers." That is restating the first paragraph you propose to delete in simple, practical words. Debresser (talk) 17:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, I thought I was mathematically inclined, and those two paragraphs make absolutely no sense to me. It wasn't really my intention to restate them; they seem to be (if anything) about categorization rather than category naming, and the paragraphs I propose adding are about naming, which is what this page should be about. If the thing you say about Writer is the norm, then I guess it certainly should be mentioned, but possibly not on this page (or if so, then only in passing). (I notice that in fact Writer is not currently a member of Category:Writers.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
That just comes to show how well understood these guidelines were. But you are right, that this is a page about naming, so I take that back. I agree with your paragraphs "as is". Debresser (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Since there are no objections, I'm going to make this change.--Kotniski (talk) 11:15, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Names taken from reliable sources

I suggest adding the sentence "Particularly for technical subjects, use words and phrases which exist in reliable sources, so that those sources may be used to support inclusion of articles." to the end of the section WP:Naming conventions (categories)#General naming conventions. This is justified simply as a re-statement of WP:RS in this context, but also helpful as a practical reminder. If this rule is not obeyed, the words in a reference designed to support the inclusion of an article in a category will be different from the name of the category, so some measure of interpretation will be required in deciding that they do support it. This is at best pointless and at worst allows for misinterpretation. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you give an example of how this would make a difference?--Kotniski (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
I wanted to avoid doing that, since it would divert attention onto the particular case, whereas I think it's better to consider the general principle first. Having said that, I will tell you that the case which prompted this for me was the set of categories like Category:Polish-language surnames, where the phrase "Polish-language surnames" is totally absent from the literature, that concept always being referred to as "Polish surnames". But I don't want to argue that specific case here, since possibly other criteria come into play. The general principle must hold anyway. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, I see what you're getting at. (We really have categories called X-language surnames? Sounds a bit strange.) So yes, the addition seems sensible to me.--Kotniski (talk) 12:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Suggested change

Change:

  • "However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts."

to:

  • "However, abbreviations that have become the official or generally used name (such as NATO) should be used where there are no other conflicts.

Any objections?--Kotniski (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done then (and I see the proposal above has been done as well).--Kotniski (talk) 06:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Good work. Debresser (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Trim irrelevant info

The right page for detailed information about when to choose lists and when to choose categories is surely Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. This page should stick to its brief of describing naming conventions for categories. So I propose deleting those points under "Special conventions for lists of items" that don't relate to what we call categories. If there is anything valuable there that isn't covered satisfactorily already at CL&NT, we can incorporate it there - does anyone see anything like that? (Personally I think it's all already covered.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. Debresser (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
All right, I'm going to remove what appears to be irrelevant. If anyone thinks any of it is important, please consider re-adding it at Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates or some other appropriate page, not necessarily back here. --Kotniski (talk) 08:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

One more thing

We still have the paragraph "All administrative categories should have "Wikipedia" (without a colon) as part of the name, and placed in the Category:Wikipedia administration tree." As has been noted before, this rule isn't observed (there are many categories in that tree that don't begin "Wikipedia..."). Is there any objection to the previous proposal, i.e. to say that "Wikipedia..." is required only when necessary to prevent ambiguity, and to give real examples both with and without that prefix?--Kotniski (talk) 08:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

No objections. The new formula reflects good sense and ample precedent. Debresser (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Done then, with a couple of real-life examples as proposed some time ago.--Kotniski (talk) 10:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hills

I've added Category:Hills by country to the list of included landforms for which "...of country" applies. My rationale was that categories for hills are usually subcategories of the category for mountains, and mountains are on the list (as are mountain passes, volcanoes, mountain ranges, etc.). The top-level category of Category:Landforms by country is also on the list, so logic would probably dictate that all landforms should use this format. Any objections? Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

No objections here. Debresser (talk) 22:29, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Country qualificator

A recent discussion has brought me to make the following proposal.

All categories named for geographical objects that are country specific (like cities foremost) should specify the name of that country, separated by a comma. E.g. Category:London should be Category:London, England. I find there is hardly a day with a nomination of this kind. This would have to be slowly implemented for already existing categories also (as a project not in need of discussion for every individual nomination). One (and only 1) of the reasons I'd like to propose this is the fight against systematical bias on WIkipedia. Another is that it is just so much clearer. Debresser (talk) 22:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Dashes in category names

Please see here. Comments, ideas, and suggestions would be welcome. Thank you, –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 22:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The discussion has been archived and is now here.--Cavrdg (talk) 05:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Heritage categories

In the first bullet point:

  • People are sometimes categorized by notable ancestry, culture, or ethnicity, depending upon the common conventions of speech for each nationality. A hyphen is used to distinguish the word order.
    1. Fooian Barians, nationality followed by heritage, such as Category:British Asians.
    2. Barian-Fooians, heritage followed by nationality, such as Category:Irish-Americans.

I don't think this reflects consensus any longer. To my knowledge, virtually every recent WP:CFD on heritage categories has concluded with a move to "Fooians of Barian descent", except a few U.S. ones like Category:Chinese Americans (which don't follow the hyphenation rule here anyway). E.g. the example categories here are now at Category:British people of Asian descent and Category:Americans of Irish descent

So, I propose that we update and simplify this bullet point to read:

Comments? I imagine there may need to be some sort of exception clause for some of the U.S. categories? cab (talk) 08:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this definitely needs to be updated. The rules as listed seem to be completely abandoned. "Fooians of Barian descent" seems to be universally preferred, but you're right it hasn't been extended to Americans yet. I've also seen exceptions made for those in Category:Armenians_by_country_of_citizenship; I'm not clear on why. For the American ones, the hyphenation thing seems to be coming out as follows: if it's a noun, no hyphen. "Chinese Americans". But if it's an adejective, hyphenate. "Chinese-American politicians". Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of this topic, why is the paragraph that starts with "In addition to the requirement of verifiability, living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage..." here? Neither verifiability nor any other criteria for inclusion in a particular category have anything to do with this page. This is just a page specifically about how to name categories or which categories should exist, not about rules as to which people should be included in them. That belongs elsewhere, by definition. Any objections to the removal of that paragraph? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality seems the more fitting place for this. In addition, I wonder if the sentence "living people must have self-identified as a particular heritage" is indeed our opinion on Wikipedia? Why not call an American born of parents who immigrated form Germany a German-American, regardless of whether he has "identified" as such? Debresser (talk) 13:35, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't say I agreed with that criteria. I don't know where it came from exactly. It doesn't make much sense. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Visual arts naming conventions

A quick note to anyone interested who watches this page but doesn't follow every CFD: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 8#Sculptures_by_artist is a proposal to change he convention set out in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)#Visual_arts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved to Wikipedia:Category names. Ucucha 20:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) → Wikipedia:Category titles — With the rename of Wikipedia:Naming conventions to Wikipedia:Article titles, this page should follow. This also eliminates the need for disambiguation. Note that Wikipedia:Category titles is a redirect to the current name. —Vegaswikian (talk) 00:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

  • Support for the sake of wider consistency - though I'm not convinced that 'titles' carries over as well for categories as it does for articles. An article has linked and dependent content within it. In that case the article name can definitely be said to act as a 'title'. Categories, on the other hand, are simply containers with no direct content of their own to 'entitle'. Anyway, for uniformity, unless someone comes up with a better suggestion, this seems the best choice. --Xdamrtalk 00:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Given that, as the poet has said, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", I now favour Wikipedia:Category names - enough editors have backed up my initial uncertain feeling to convince me that it was not simply an oddity of my own. This is, I think, the best, simplest, most obvious name. 'Category titles' is the consistent choice, but it is not the logical choice. --Xdamrtalk 17:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Support, with similar regret as that expressed by Xdamr. The current name is probably clearer in meaning, but we should go for consistency here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Would Wikipedia:Category names be less problematic? - Eureka Lott 03:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Support, though I would actually slightly prefer Category names, since technically we're talking about the names of categories, which translate into the titles of category pages.--Kotniski (talk) 09:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree with rename for consistency, but prefer "Category names". Actually I think that neither this nor Wikipedia:Naming conventions should have been renamed, but it is too late for that now. Debresser (talk) 11:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Multidimensional categories

We have in some cases very large super-categories that are partitioned on multiple dimensions. For example Category:Educational organizations has a rats' nest partitioning by place (country, state), discipline/faculty (law, medicine, music, tiddlywink dynamics, etc), level of study (university, elementary school, etc), affiliation (faith, denomination, etc, including secular and interfaith). It seems clear that there is a need for some structure that sequences these dimensions. We don't have Category:Notre Dame University under Category:Universities in the United States because it is under Category:Universities and colleges in Indiana. It is also under Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States. It is not under Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in Indiana nor under Category:Christian schools. So how do we go about establishing and agreeing upon such choices without having every article doing it differently? User:LeadSongDog come howl 21:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Do different articles do it differently? I would have thought that once we have the categories, the articles go into them quite naturally (see WP:SUBCAT).--Kotniski (talk) 06:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. Now I see {{Distinguished subcategory}} and {{Allincluded}}, but I think that I still don't grasp their proper use. For instance the former template is applied to Category:American silent film actors, yet John Aasen only appears in that category, not its parent. Should all articles tagged for the Distingushed subcategory also be tagged for the parent category? If so, is there a bot busy doing that? User:LeadSongDog come howl 17:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
For some that do it differently have a look at Category:Educational institutions of the Moravian Church. Should Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States be double tagged as a Distinguished subcategory of Category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in North America and of Category:Roman Catholic schools in the United States? User:LeadSongDog come howl 19:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
I guess John Aasen should be in the parent category as well, yes. But I'm not aware of any bots that look for this sort of thing. At first glance I don't see why the RC unis in the US should be a distinguished (now called "non-diffusing" at WP:DUPCAT, because of objections to the previous terminology) subcategory of either of those parents; looks to me like an ordinary, diffusing subcategory.--Kotniski (talk) 07:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps it doesn't need a bot. Perhaps {{Distinguished subcategory}} could just transclude the parent category or something of the sort. If we can establish that all members of the distinguished a.k.a. non-diffusing category are by definition part of the parent category too, then the rest is implementation mechanics. The thing is, once you start to apply compound tags to the article, rather than category:universities, category:schools, category:Roman Catholicism, category:United States, category:associations etc., then the selection of which ones to group together in the compound categories seems somewhat arbitrary. If the code supported it, it would be more sensible to have the category articles handle the compounding and keep the tagging of mainspace articles to simple tags. Then category:Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States would be defined in software as the set of articles bearing tags for category:Roman Catholicism, category:universities, and category:United States. But perhaps I have the wrong end of the stick. With simple tags, one must choose whether that institution is in Illinois or North America, unless it is to bear tags for only the most-specific simple tag applicable with the more general ones implicitly rendered somehow. User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Socio-cultural topics

As I was browsing through categories like Category:Culture by nationality and Category:Music by nationality, I noticed that the subcategories tend to not match the parent articles. For example: Category:Australian culture and culture of Australia; Category:Dutch culture and culture of the Netherlands; Category:American music and music of the United States; Category:French music and music of France. As far as Category:Culture by nationality goes, the CFD that took place was due to an "Undecided by country" section that had existed on this guideline at the time, and the current name of the category was chosen due to the fact that the subcategories used the Fooian culture convention. As far as Category:Music by nationality goes, the CFD just changed Music by nation to Music by nationality. A subsequent CFD took place to rename Music by nationality to Music by country, but resulted in no consensus.

Generally, category names should match its parent article, if there is one. For the subcategories of Category:Culture by nationality and Category:Music by nationality, they do have parent articles, but fail correspond by mirroring one another. Considering this, shouldn't the subcategories be renamed to match the parent articles (Fooian culture to Culture of Foo; Fooian music to Music of Foo), while Category:Culture by nationality be named Category:Culture by country and Category:Music by nationality be named Category:Music by country (which is currently a redirect), essentially undoing the two CFDs? — ξxplicit 07:20, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

  • Agree that we should choose one or the other and that categories and articles should correspond. The problem is we generally have two different groups of people who are choosing names for articles and categories, and the consensus in both groups don't always correspond. However, I'd be quite happy to say categories should generally follow the article names in cases where there is a difference in naming format. I'd support a change of the category names in these cases. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Prisoners and Detainees Questions

The main category is Category:Prisoners and detainees. I have two issues. First, does this category include only people who are currently imprisoned or detained, or does it include former prisoner/detainees? My assumption is only current ones, but the category is not clear. Regardless of the answer, I think the category and subcategories should be renamed to reflect the meaning, or at least the definitional text should say so. Also, many people in this category's subcategories are no longer imprisoned or detained (some are even dead). So, if the category means current, it should be removed from those people's articles. I just noticed that this has been discussed before at Talk:Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri#Category:Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States.

The second issue is the definition of a detainee. The category says: "In the present case, while Prisoners and detainees are technically synonyms, their connotations are different: a 'detainee' might be somebody under remand (and later proven not guilty)." This is not a definition - it's just one example. So, is a person who is civilly detained a detainee, i.e., a person who is involuntarily put in an institution as part of a civil proceedings? What about a person who is detained in a rehabilitation facility but as part of a criminal proceeding? A good topical example of such a person is Lindsay Lohan who was ordered by the judge to be transferred from jail to rehab. She's no longer incarcerated, but is she a detainee?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:47, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Categories are almost never meant to capture a person's "current" status. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:35, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Do categories include the disambiguator if the article they reference is disambiguated, even if the disambiguator is not needed for the cat? E.g. if you have an artist who is disambiguated (to distinguish from a politician and a philosopher etcetera), the cat artist albums could do without the disambiguation (the politician and so on will in general not have an albums category). To take the example which made me think about this; we have Jamie Walters (American entertainer), and the Category:Jamie Walters albums was recently moved to Category:Jamie Walters (American entertainer) albums. Is this in any way necessary according to the guidelines? It seems to me as if it makes things needlessly complicated. Fram (talk) 11:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

ENGVAR

Okay I don't see any conventions on WP:ENGVAR. To avoid confusion, it would make sense to have categories in a category tree have consistent spelling even if a category has strong national ties? For example: Category:Armoured fighting vehicles by country. Marcus Qwertyus 04:59, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

As a general rule, to avoid confusion, the categories in a tree are commonly spelled using the local spelling. Also in some cases where nomenclature is different, we will choose to follow local common usage. Basically with those exceptions, we follow WP:ENGVAR for the basics. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind using all British spelling if it would accomplish consistency. Marcus Qwertyus 07:16, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation of film franchise category names.

Someone recently renamed Category:RoboCop to Category:RoboCop (franchise). There is currently a CfD in place to move it back here. In this case the disambiguation seems unnecessary, as all articles relate to the same topic, and the high level Category:RoboCop seems more sensible. Is there a guideline/precedent for this. Anyone have anything to add to the discussion? --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Works of art categories by team-of-artists

If a work is credited, in some capacity (written-by, or directed-by, etc.) to a team of people (and of course, for the work in question, this credit a defining characteristic), may we create a category for each member of the team? E.g. if the credit is Written by X & Y, then may categorise the work as both Works written by X and as Works written by Y? Or only as Works written by X & Y? We currently seem to have a mixture of both approaches. The former (splitting the credit) seems problematic for a number of reasons, not least being the misrepresentation an official (legal) credit. Whatever the answer, clarification in the guideline would be useful. Uniplex (talk) 15:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we can. A mixture of approaches is probably best, and the songwriter categories are the best illustration of why. We also have "team" categories where appropriate, which can be subs of more than one members, eg Category:Songs written by Lennon–McCartney, a sub of both of their individual categories. But this is best only for relatively long term & prolific teams. We don't like "films by" type categories except for directors and screenwriters. Does that answer? Johnbod (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. However, I'm still a little confused! Are you advocating to ignore the official credit in some cases? Take, for example the album Bad, credited (and defined) as being produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson; is it appropriate to directly categorize this as being an Album produced by Michael Jackson? (We do currently.) Uniplex (talk) 16:24, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

search box broken

Hi, when I do a search on this page, it doesn't work - it seems to be inserting a spurious '/' to the end. Removing it, the search succeed. Does anyone else see the same result? I tried on two browsers. I also looked at the code but couldn't figure out what the problem was. One more thing - it appears the search doesn't search the archives, at least it didn't in a few tests I ran. --KarlB (talk) 16:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

That search box is meant to search through archived discussions, not the current talk page. However it seems all the archives are named after previous names of the Wikipedia policy page. Compare
I suggest moving all the archives under the current name, as hinted at WP:Move#Talk subpages. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 03:50, 13 April 2012 (UTC).

I moved everything in those lists except for the talk pages of WP:Naming conventions (categories)/Usage of American. Hopefully search should work in a day when everything gets indexed. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 08:08, 27 April 2012 (UTC).

Supranational / historical country categories

Note: I recently (neutrally) notified any editors who had participated in similar discussions on CfD to come to this page --KarlB (talk) 19:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to start a discussion, and I think this might be the right place, around the categorization scheme by country. The reason being, in looking through various category trees, allowing supranational or historical countries, while useful in some cases, has led to a lot of confusion and mis-categorization in others. It also leads to heated debates on CfD...

I wonder whether we could come to a general consensus, on a per-object basis (as this project proposes), for which sorts of things can go into 'supra-national categories', and which things should not.

Let me give an example. Category:Hotels in Ireland. What is the purpose of this category, and how should it be differentiated from Category:Hotels in the Republic of Ireland and Category:Hotels in Northern Ireland? If you study the hotels which are in this category, you will see that there is zero consistency - sometimes historical hotels are slotted into the modern state, and sometimes modern hotels are slotted into the 'historical' Ireland category. Rather than battle this out this cat by cat, I wonder if we might not just come up with some generic principles which would apply. I have some ideas, but first I want to hear from other eds, which principles exist already? When do we place something into a 'country' category that describes something that doesn't really exist except as geography (like a supra-national Ireland, or a supra-national China, or supra-national Korea) --KarlB (talk) 16:21, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Some useful references:

These are some of the countries where the challenge of confusing category trees will come up:

Here are some past discussions on this topic:


Discussion

  • Purpose Well, the problem here is that it's not clear what the purpose is of most of these category schemes--are they categorizing by a purely geographic region or a territory controlled by a state? This is the problem with having an article entitled "China" about the contemporary state the People's Republic of China. Note that some of these designations extend into antiquity (e.g. Armenia, Greece, India) and are not identical to our modern-day states (i.e. the Republic of Armenia, the Hellenic Republic, the Republic of India.) It's not clear what these category schemes are supposed to be doing and there is no centralized authority for determining the category tree, so it will inevitably be a hodge-podge. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

(Just commenting about Ireland - and staying neutral on the rest).

This is obviously better explained at WP:COMMONNAME, Wikipedia:Official names, and more specifically at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles.

That said, the pipe trick suggested at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles, doesn't help us for category names.

I think that we could use alumni of X categories for an example. Often schools get renamed, but we still categorise the people by whatever the name of the school is presently, rather than what the name of the school was when the person may have attended it.

And further, we tend to use the common name for a political entity rather than what is often a longer "official" name. To use a few US states for example: Commonwealth of Kentucky or State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations are not where the articles are located.

So I think we could use "Ireland" in category naming as long as the category doesn't need disambiguating between the RoI and NI. in which case, the more specific names should apply. - jc37 19:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

  • Oh what fun since we got a new one just last week - Azawad. More seriously, I think this needs to be done on a country by country basis, since I don't think it will be possible to create a universal rule. For example, China and Taiwan without a doubt should be categorized separately, but not Tibet, while the two Koreas should only categorize separately things that existing since 1945, and the most Irish places should just go under Ireland, unless it's government or history related. So, three sets of countries, three different solutions. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
    • I suspect that you are correct that a by entity categorization map will be required. Every case is close to unique and will require special handling. I ran into this in the religious building tree by forgetting the formation dates of various religions. So this issue is not restricted to this topic. Is there a list of how the countries evolved or is this really buried in the various articles that cover the area over time? If the latter, then would it be wise to create a table to guide category creators? Vegaswikian (talk) 22:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Note I removed Parishes in Ireland from your list since it did not pertain to the division of Ireland but instead to secular vs religious meaning of parish. As such, it's not relevant to this discussion. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 19:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I see no reason why China and Taiwan are more clearly distinct than North Korea and South Korea. In 1946 Korea was divided, yet the Republic of China was clearly not what would be designated as "Taiwan". I am not sure how Tibet comes into the discussion at all. My general take on this would be the following. 1- Use China to mean the People's Republic of China, and use it for the whole claimed area of China before 1949. Use Taiwan as the National designation of the Republic of China from 1949 on. If things are of a nature that directly connecting them with the Republic of China before 1949 makes sense, put them in that category and make it a subcat of China. 2- with Ireland, Ireland is used in common speech to refer to the Repbuclic of Ireland. For cases where Ireland before 1923 when it was unified is worth designating use that name. For other cases use Ireland for the Republic of Ireland. 3- Korea is much easier. North Korea and South Korea should be used for anything existing after 1945. Pre-1945 things should be lumped into just Korea. In general the rule should be if it exited when Korea was divided or came into existance later it should be classed as connected with North Korea or South Korea. The one exception would be people who had emigrated from Korea before that time but were still alive.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment I partly agree with you. Tibet's government-in-exile in India doesn't control any Chinese territories so categorization should be very narrow to topics related to Dalai Lama's efforts. Agree with Korea. Where do we put Northern Ireland; under UK with nothing under Ireland? China is one country with two governments which raises a challenge: if "China" means People's Republic of China, Taiwan doesn't fit under that nor is it a separate country. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Other possible issues are Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic/Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Italy, Yugoslavia/Serbia, Turkey/Ottoman Empire/Greece/other related countries, Saudi Arabia and how far back to use the term, Iran/Persia, Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Russia/Soviet Union/Ukraine/other countries, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Israel/Palestine/Jordan and Samoa. I think with Samoa we use Samoan for the nation once known as Western Samoa and American Samoa and American Samoan for that place, and insist that Category:American people of Samoan descent is distinct from Category:American people of American Samoan descent. Germany verses East Germany and West Germany is not too hard because the country is reunited. I would argue that we should not have holding categories like Category:1957 establishments in Germany but just have the East Germany and West Germany categories directly under Category:1957 establishments by country. For year or time specific categories befroe 1945 we should use the boundaries of Germany at the time involved. How to treat pre-1870 Germany in categories such as emigration categories like Category:German emigrants to the United States is a tough one. There are categories like Category:Bavarian emigrants to the United States, but there has been no consistent attempt to develop these categories. To a large extent it seems the pre-1870 Germany categories are used for "Imperial Germany minus Alsace-Lorraine since it is clearly in France". However in 1770 it is not clear that this is the best way to define the limits of Germany. On the other hand, there is a certain accomadation of present conditions that is justified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Emmigration Actually, with emigration I think we should focus on ethncity. If someone came from East Germany, Prussia or West Germany, they're German immigrants; if they came from Samoa, American Samoa, Western Samoa or German Samoa, they're Samoan. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Except if they moved from American Samoa to the United States they are not emigrants at all, they are not changing countries. If someone is a German national who moved to German Samoa while it was under German control, are they really a German emigrant? How would you deal with my Polish ancestors who moved from East Prussia to the United States. They were not by any ethnic definition German. Also would you class ethnic Germans who had lived their entire life in Prague and emigrated to the United States in 1900 as German Emigrants? What about ethnic Samoans, born in New Zealand, who then emigrate to Australia? Putting East Germany, West Germany and the German empire together probably works. However it can not be based on ethnicity, because if it is than we have to include emigrants from Vienna and all sorts of other places.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • On Italy I think classification by the modern boundaries normally works. People born in Austria-Hungary in what is now Italy, such as the South Tyrol region or around Trieste, and things connected with the pre-Italian phases in those areas should in general not be classified with Italy. There is the further issue of the Free Territory of Trieste. Then there is pre-1870 Italy. I am not sure how to treat things and people in the Papal States from 1861 when Italy becomes a functional country, to 1870 when Italy annexes them. Before 18761 it is probably best to use Italian for people who live in post-1870 Italy for such categories as Category:Italian writers and Category:Italian emigrants to the united States. Creating specific by nation categories like Category:Venetian emigrants to the United States and Category:Genoese writers is probably justified at some level. However I am not sure if we should put "Republic" in those names to emphasize they are not just connected with the cities by the larger political entities that bear the same name. The article is under Republic of Venice so maybe it should be Category:Republic of Venice emigrants to the United States. The term should not be used for anything after 1797. Republic of Genoa can last until 1815. The next mess is Austria. Austria since 1918 is pretty straight forward. Austria-Hungary from 1867-1918 is at least a workable category although how it should be connected with other categories is still open to discussion. I believe there is still a discussion on this that can be found if you go to Category:1914 in Austria and clikc on the link to the CfD proposal. If we move before 1867 we have lots of Problems. To begin with the entity is officially the Austrian Empire. This [3] ethnographic map hints at the problems we face. Bosnia and Herzegovina did not come under the rule of Austria-Hungary until 1878. How many article will be effected by this I do not know, but since it was a distinct place in the Empire after that date it can generally be put in a sub-category. The bigger problem is that the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia was part of Austria. If someone was born in Venice in 1817 and emigrated to the United States in 1840 what category should they be in. I would say Category:Imperial Austrian emigrants to the United States until we form the category Category:Lombardy-Venice emigrants to the United States. This is only one of 26 constitutent lands of the Austrian Empire.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Historical Examples Sure, there a number of historical examples but they don't tend to be controversial. I noticed some inconsistencies with some Vietnam War-era articles and cleaned up a few North Vietnam/South Vietnam/French Indochina categorizations without any crazy ideological attacks. We should probably gain consensus on what that approach should be though because these historical examples are inconsistently categorizedRevelationDirect (talk) 01:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • We do not want to focus on ethnicity in emigration. How will we decide how to classify emigrants from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Do we want to classify emigrants from the United Kingdom, born in that country, based on their ethnicity as Nigerian or Indian because of their parents place of birth? This is a real issue with someone like Alex Boye. Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Lebanon are also other places that ethnicity will be problematic. Do we want to even try to figure out the ethnicity of all the emigrtants from India? Are we prepared to get categories like Category:Gujarati emigrants to the United States? What about the various Fiji-born emigrants of Indian ethnicity (and that is even without subdividing them by proper ethnicity)? The classifying emigrants by ethnicity plan just does not work. It is much easier to classify people by the nation from which they emigrated, espeically because we are already classifying them by their destination country. Emigration is the movement of people from a country to another country. It only makes sense to do the classification based on what country they are coming from and what country they are going to.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • jc37's point about alumni of x categories has some exception. For example Category:University of Breslau alumni are so designated because the change of the University was so total at the time of Polish takeover in 1945 it was essentially a totally new institution. Armenia, Greece and India are really tricky issues. The easiest is Greece. Greece alone should refer to the modern nation state, and be limited to things within its boundaries from its formation in the 1820s to the present. Category:Ancient Greece and Category:Ancient Greek should be used for ancient Greek things. India is much harder to figure out. I think we should not put in Category:Pakistan and Category:Pakistani people anything not connected to post-1947 Pakistan. If someone was born in the United Kingdom to parents who immigrated there in 1945 they should not be in Category:British people of Pakistani descent. I think we should use India and Indian as the designation for anything in Pakistan, Bangladesh or modern India before 1947. Sub-categories that pay attention to the contemporary realities can also be used. The one exception should be areas under the rule of Afghanistan when they are such, which should be classified with Afghanistan if the article refers specifically to that time. Armenia is a very complexed issue. Most Armenians do not live in the current nation of Armenia. This is even true if we count all the parts of Azerbaijan controlled by Armenia. In some ways Armenian is almost as much an ethno-religious identifier as Jew, with the added complexity that there are at least 4 Armenian churches, Including the Armenian Catholic Church which is in full communion with Rome. Also, Armenian Mormons are more generally accepted as without question Armenians than Jewish Mormons are without questions Jews. I am leaning towards creating Category:Republic of Armenia and putting everything connected with the modern nation-state formed in 1991 in that category. Basically to try and use Armenian to just designate those connected with the modern nation state would be like using Jewish only for the inhabitants of Israel, with the one difference being that for good or ill the modern nation state was not named Judea.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:03, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I think we should make it two questions. The first question is that how we should deal with divided countries, such as the Congos, the Koreas, Samoa and American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas, Ireland and Northern Ireland, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the Chinas. The second question is how we should deal with territorial or border changes, such as Königsberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Corsica, and Istria. The solutions are probably quite different for these two cases. In my opinion 'supranational' categories should only exist for the first case. Jeffrey (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Divded versus Changed That may be a workable distinction. With Divided, we're potentially looking at broader supranational categories. With shifting borders we're looking at whether we include the original, current, or in-between countries in categorization.RevelationDirect (talk) 22:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • There's actually a third case - unification, amalgamation or annexation, e.g., Bavaria, Venetia, Sardinia, Sicily, Anglia, and so on and so forth. But I don't think there's anything to do with 'supranational'. Jeffrey (talk) 22:23, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I would not count the Congos as a "divided country". The historic Kingdom of Kongo was primarily in modern Angola, and it definantly never came close to holding significant percentages of either of the modern nation states with the name Congo. Thus us would never make sense to have a supra-national category for Congo, and I think we generally have a good sense of how to treat things related to the two different nations that use Congo as their name. Bavaria is a potentially complexed case, because it is a present state of Germany as well as a historical place which had varrying boundaries. It might be useful to create Category:Historic Bavaria as well. Anglia has not been a sepeate country in over a milennium, so we probably do not have to worry about that. Sicily and Sardinia are going to be tough cases because they are islands that have definable boundaries, but both have also been used at times as names for political jurisdictions that included parts of mainland Italy (and in Sardinia's case areas in modern France). However I think we can in general work with modern Nation state boundaries and then deal with things that really do not work in current boundaries. One category that someone might want to look at is Category:Madrassahs in Turkey. Most of the madrassah in that category stopped functioning not much later than the formation of the nation of Turkey.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal

I would like to suggest two approaches for this discussion:

1) We focus initially on finding a consensus that will apply, regardless of the country and political situation. In other words, that we strive for global rules - even if those rules don't apply to the whole category tree. I recognize there are some special cases, but I wonder if we might set those aside for now - and see if there is anything on which we can agree that would apply to all countries. Wikipedia is rife with standards, and most of them are not country-specific.

2) That we not take on, during this discussion, the issue of nationality of individuals. I think it is an important discussion to have, but if we tackle the 'by country' stuff first, and focus on categories which are not about people (who, as JPL points out above, have complex histories), we may be able to come to consensus more quickly. Then we could open up a discussion on nationality at a later date.

I now posit the following axioms:

3) Almost every square inch of the earth's land mass is under the domain of a single sovereign state. There are exceptions - i.e. areas that are contested or claimed by multiple states, or even perhaps areas that are not claimed, so we have to account for this. But in general, the majority of physical things lie within one or two modern nation-states.

4) Attempting to capture the complex history of any nation, and placement of buildings, etc within the historically correct place (as JPL has outlined for example for Austria) is so difficult that it is *NOT WORTH CATEGORIZING* at a level of detail sufficient to render the categories historically accurate, correct, and simple to use. Take for example a Cathedral. It will have survived 1000 years, and perhaps a dozen or more governments. Should we place it under each of those different rulers? or, rather, keep it in the modern state where it currently lives?

5) The goal of categorization is to aid navigation, not to serve as a history lesson. Thus, we should be willing to sacrifice historical accuracy (i.e. placing cave paintings in France, a nation-state which didn't exist until about 17,000 years after they were created) for clarity and ease of use. Any cursory glance at the current category system will dispel any myths that it is designed to teach - rather it can confuse things greatly as it currently stands. The articles themselves must serve the purpose of illuminating historical minutiae, overlapping claims, and sovereignty. The categories will *never* be able to do this on their own.

5.5) Just because an article has relevance to two places, it does not mean we need to always create a supra-national container category to contain it. The simpler solution is, add the article in question to both relevant categories.--KarlB (talk) 23:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Thus, I would like to suggest a few ideas:

6) We designate certain categories which will always be placed within a modern nation-state - irregardless of the history of the objects. This includes most objects which cannot move (e.g. buildings, rivers, archeological sites, etc). The key here is that for many objects, we don't focus on their history. What matters is, where does it sit? If you were writing a travel guide, which chapter would you put it under?

7) Some categories, such as culture and history, will require different handling. This is where we may come to some specific consensus decisions on a per-country basis - for example, the decision of which historical or supra-national entities to accept.

8) To start with, we can divide all of the by-country category trees into two:

9) The reasoning of this is that by doing so, we are avoiding POV. We are taking as given the broadly recognized sovereign states, and we are not taking a position on any eventual integration (or any claim that there is 'One' china or 'One' Korea.) We sacrifice historical accuracy (in the same way that we do so every time we place a cave painting in France), but we gain so much more - clarity and ease of use, and a simple, no-debate/snowball resolution to hundreds of categorization questions.

10) The point of categories is not to teach a history lesson, but to aid navigation. Now, for topics dealing with history and culture, that is trickier, and I think more discussion is needed on a solution. But I'm hoping we could consider coming to agreement on at least a classification of immovable objects.--KarlB (talk) 23:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Here is a first cut at how it could break down:

Category class Placement If exception tbd

Natural objects

Modern nation-state
  • If there is a widely recognized claim that the object in question lies in a territory claimed by two different states, assign it to both states.
  • If the articles in the category are likely to be about multiple countries, assign the category to both parent categories.
  • If there are individual articles about features that cross boundaries (such as an article for a mountain range), add the article to both country categories.
  • Do not assign natural features to any 'historical' or 'supranational' entity (i.e. a river should be placed in Republic of Ireland, not Ireland) || -

Man-made items

Modern nation-state
  • If there is a widely recognized claim that the object in question lies in a territory claimed by two different states, assign it to both
  • If the articles in the category are likely to be about multiple countries, assign the category to both.
  • If there are individual articles about features that cross boundaries (such as dam), that could be added to both country categories.
  • To consider: whether and how objects, like buildings, should also be classified under the 'culture' that created them. There is a continuum: Viking relics in Canada, and 'Chinese' buildings constructed in 1945 (thus before PRC). || -
Modern nation state For all government and political issues that are not historically tied to the extant state, place in 'Historical X' -
Modern nation-state If the company no longer existed at the time the modern-nation state was born, it should go in the 'Historical X' tree. -
Historical/supra-national entity, or modern nation state. Use discretion. Could dewey decimal help? - -

I welcome your thoughts, changes, re-writes, or even outright rejections... but if you reject, please propose a different scheme :) --KarlB (talk) 23:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal feedback

  • Alternate to your #4 I think we should categorize non-moving things like buildings for the modern country they sit in and the country/culture they originally were in. (This is in contrast to your proposal that we only use the current country.) So L'Anse aux Meadows should be categorized in two ways: as Viking and as Canadian. No reason to include the French and English who walked over it without knowing what was there. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:29, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
    • comment Yes, that makes sense - I think perhaps we should consider different rules for man-made and natural objects. But for man-made objects, as you get closer to modern history, it gets a bit more tricky. Do you classify a cathedral under the King under whose reign it was built? What about a building in Beijing that was built in 1934? There may not be a hard and fast rule here, but I also wouldn't want to have a rule that says 'always classify every building in the 'culture' in which it was originally built'. Any suggestions on how to moderate that?--KarlB (talk) 11:42, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Historical Basically, for historical articles we would have to say "use your discretion" because I'm not sure what rules we would set up. Maybe establish clear year timeframes? But the historical section will bleed out to other topics: historic ships, historic sports, historic trade unions, historic weapons, etc. That vaguenss makes me think the suprnational containers should be containers for national breakdowns rather than a rival tree. RevelationDirect (talk)
    • comment But how are the supra-national containers decided? For example, should we have a supranational category for 'Historical India', which comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh? If the cats exist (like Ireland) ok, but putting the modern-day states underneath seems a bit POV to me.--KarlB (talk) 14:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
      • Reply That's a fair point. Having a supra-national category grouping former colonies of France or Spain or of the United States of Central America would be a mess. Setting this up for "political situations where Wikipedia editors tend to get cranky" would probably be unencyclopedi if not POV per se. RevelationDirect (talk) 22:08, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Other point I think it would be a good idea to establish the guideline that category names should reflect the naming scheme of their relevant country articles. To do otherwise would hinder the purpose of categories, which is navigation. (I suppose this is general, as are all guidelines, and there could be some exceptions, but I think it will hold for the vast majority at the very least.) RevelationDirect makes a good point about how it's difficult to set up rules for history categorisation. This should focus on what Karl.Brown calls "immovable objects", which should be simple to resolve. The idea of a rival history tree needs it's own discussion I think, as it's treading on all the complications of History categorisation and adding some more. CMD (talk) 07:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment -- I think this discussion largely concerns Ireland and Korea, which have been divided; and Taiwan, which (except 1945-49) has been politically separate from China. I would oppose having a separate "Historical foo" category.
  1. Articles that solely (or principally) concern Korea before its 1946 (?) division should be in a "Korea" category; if principally after that date it be in a "North Korea" or "South Korea" category.
  2. Similarly, for Ireland before 1922; but "Northern Ireland" or "Republic of Ireland"
  3. For Taiwan, the date needs to be 1895; four years unity with a disintegrating mainland 1945-49 should be disregarded.
  4. Similarly India before 1947; and Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh after 1947. This presents two difficulties - that Bangladesh was East Pakistan until the early 1970s, but I think we can ignore than inconvenience; and that India has the same name before and after 1947, but that can probably be dealt with by referring to pre-1947 India as Raj India, or where appropriate Mogul India. Alternatively, we could decide that the present nation is called Republic of India.
Articles on specific places (or buildings) will tend to be categorised according to their county. The county (or state or etc) will be categorised according to the present sovereign polity. Accordingly, where to place a "hotel in Ireland" shoudl not arise. If in County Mayo, it should be in "hotels in county Mayo", and County Mayo will be in a Republic of Ireland category. Conversely if in County Down, it would be in a category for that county in a northern Ireland tree. However, a "History of County Mayo" category, could properly be included both in a "History of Ireland" and a "History of the Republic of Ireland" category, because it would straddle both periods. It will probably be necessary to place a template on the categories for the unified (i.e. pre-partition) countries to the effect that articles should only appear if primarily about a subject before partition. I know that Irish tourism is currently being marketed on a whole island basis, and this is part of my reason for encouraging splits by county.
The guidance cited by KarlB probably needs some expansion, to deal with this issue. I think I am largely supporting the proposal above. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:01, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • What about the List of presidents of the Republic of China and Constitution of the Republic of China? In the first case it's a continuous line from 1912 to 2012, and for the second case it was brought over from across the strait. Further there are islands that weren't part of Taiwan between 1895 to 1949. For many purposes, such as ROC's high court, prosecutions, and highway systems, these islands are still not part of Taiwan, like Northern Island is to Great Britain. Jeffrey (talk) 22:59, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I think this works for most things. I think "Historical X" is not necessarily the best choice of name. I guess I would accept "Historical Indian", but I think the already used "Russian Empire"/"Imperial Russian" forms, and the "Ireland (before 1923)" form might be workable. However I guess in principal I would accept "Historical X" as the default name unless we have something better (but what is "Historical Armenia", this is going to be truly tricky). The other exception is actually companies, orgianizations, hospitals, churches and other things that are often more institutions than buildings. What if we have a company that is formed in one country, and then moves its headquarters to another? Do we classify all companies by their current location, or do we also classify by historic headquarters if they have moved? The same applies to universities, hospitals and several related things. I think with universities by state we have the precedent that if a university or college physically moves from one state to another we classify it in both say Category:Universities and colleges in Illinois and Category:Universities and colleges in Wisconsin. I can not remember the name for sure, but I know there is at least one institution in both these states, and Ave Maria Law School at least ought to be in both the Michigan and Florida categories. Then there is the University of Strasbourg.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, the University of Strasbourg was in Germany for 45 years. I think we probably should put it in Category:Universities and colleges in Historical Germany. One advantage of this name with Germany is we can apply Germany as it was understood at the time in question. We should use this name for everything until the division in 1945. It will allow us to have a place for things in Vienna that stopped functioning in or before 1803.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Since during the German period it was known as Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität I made that a redirect to University of Strasbourg and then categorized that as being in Historical Germany. I also put University of Breslau (which is currently a redirect) in that category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:38, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I just discovered we already have Category:Universities and colleges in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This is another reasonable name. I am not sure if there are other past country categories like this.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • We also have Category:Universities and colleges in the Ottoman Empire.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Currrently there is Category:Buildings and structures of former countries. I would hesitate to delete any of these categories without good reason.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:04, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Supranational categories for divided countries: I think supranational categories should exist for a majority of topics for Ireland, Korea and China, and these supranational categories should be the parent categories of the corresponding categories for the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, South Korea, North Korea, the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. For topics that no supranational category is necessary, the ones named Ireland, Korea and China can be {{categoryredirect}} or {{category ambiguous}}. (China is a bit trickier than the other two, since many people think that the PRC is China, and Taiwan is just another country. The problem is that there are many ROC topics that don't belong to Taiwan, and there are also PRC topics that are having lots of POV issues for anyone to call them China outright. For the sake of consistency and easier navigation, and to avoid miscategorisation and spillover effects, all PRC-specific categories have been and should be named with 'People's Republic of China'.) Cases like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, West Indies Federation or even Sweden-Norway aren't divided countries in the same sense as Korea, the island of Ireland, or China. They are more often perceived as breakup rather than divided. None of these cases is perceived to be a single cultural or geographical region in the contemporary sense like Ireland, Korea, and to some extent China. The same is true for cases of secession, such as Eritrea or East Timor. They aren't considered part of Ethiopia or Indonesia anymore. No supranational topical categories should be created for cases of breakup or secession. Jeffrey (talk) 22:40, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Regarding the table: Some actual cases may be a lot more complex. For instance, in terms of rail transport the whole island of Ireland is one system, Great Britain the another. But then rail transport is definitely something man-made. The history-politics-culture group may actually go much further, for instance, cuisine, music, traditional medicine, and so on, as well as biographical articles of people who were born, active and dead before such countries were divided. Some old weapons and old ships may belong to this category too as part of military history. Jeffrey (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
    • The table is meant to be a guidance, not a hard and fast rule; so of course exceptions will have to be made. But I do think if we can come to agreement on *something* as a guidance, that will help things greatly. As for the supranational categories, I'm not sure by what justification we give special dispensation to China/Ireland/Korea (e.g. by listing them as 'countries'), but we don't have categorizations and projects and disputes about other Divided regions. That is why I favor a different approach, which is divided trees - one tree based on physical objects and things within the boundaries of extant nation states, and another tree based on historical national and/or cultural boundaries. This avoids POV (for example, suggesting through our categorizations that there is only one Korea, or only one China, or only one Ireland, all of which are *not* the current international consensus). --KarlB (talk) 23:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
  • KarlB, thankyou for connecting to the list. It appears that with both Yemen and Russia, the related categories should not be used for things that did not exist at all after 1989 (well, that is erring on the side of including things that get close to the cut off line). I noticed that Hungary, Austria and Armenia were not on the list. I really think we need to move to Republic of Armenia as the prefered name for things related to the present mation-state, because historical Armenia, which was the function meaning 100 years ago and arguably even more recently, included a large section of what is today Eastern Turkey. There is a reason why were have Category:French Armenians and not Category:French Russians.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:46, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Sorry for bringing up people categories, but they show so clearly why Armenia and Armenian do not work well for the modern nation-state.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Question why does the "of the Czech Republic" listing in the section CarlB linked to not say it refers to the modern nation state? My guess is because until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia there was no country generally refered to by that name, even under Nazi occupation it was the Bohemian Protectorate. I would also submit that "of Ukraine" like "of Russia" should be limited to things that existed on or after Jan. 1, 1990. Maybe a slightly later date would be a better cut off, but I am willing to err on the side of virtually associated with Ukraine.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:51, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • On the divided regions issue, there has never been one government ruling all of the listed parts of either Congo or Guinea. Somalia I think is generally all categorized under that country, since the seperate place is not recognized. Sudan and South Sudan are more like Indonesia and East Timor than the example of China or Korea. Ireland and Northern Ireland would be a lot like Sudan and South Sudan, except in Ireland the equivalency of pre-particion and post-particition government does not work the way it does in Sudan.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:57, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • On the Somaliland issue we have Category:Somaliland with Category:Airports in Somaliland as a subcategory of Category:Airports in Somalia. Somaliland is a de facto independent country where the central government of Somalia has virtually no power. I am not sure if the current set up of the categories is wise.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Some of the Category:Kashmir categories are placed directly into the "x by country" schema. One possible other issue might be a Category:Bengal to merge things related to East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal or to contain things connected with Bengal at some point prior to its division in 1947. This would be a much bigger problem if Bangladesh had chosen the name Bengal. We should be grateful to the founders of that nation for not creating a huge problem by doing so. Republic of Macedonia is another issue with a country using a semi-contested wider name, as is on different levels those of Armenia and Azerbaijan. I am not sure we have a good handle on how to use Category:Serbia either. On the other hand, despite Serbian nationalists operations in Bosnia at various times, I think we pretty much do not have any place that disputes Serbia's right to that name. That is the inherent problem with Korea and China, neither name is without question applicalbe to just one place, and yet especially with China there is a strong claim that the "common name" of the PRC is China, and it is some sort of political extremism to resist this "fact". Ireland actually probably has an even strong case for Ireland being the common name of the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland being a clear and distinct place, that no one would call Ireland. The IRA has not killed many people over this in the last decade, and there is a growing acceptance of the current political situation there by all sides. With Congo, no one realistically believes either country can claim the name to the exclusion of the other. China and Ireland see not just a belief that one country rightfully uses the name, but that the other area is actually part of that country. The PRC considers Taiwan to be a province of China, and there are many people in the IRA who consider all Ireland to be one country. Somalia is about the only other divided region with as many people believing it ought to be united, and we currently recognize this point of view here at wikipedia, despite it having been a fiction for over two decades.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Some divided countries still exist as concepts or cultural entities, such as Korea, China and Ireland. They aren't like broken up ones like Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, which are merely historical terms. Jeremy (talk) 10:40, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

x-language ys

Do we have somewhere that the rules on how to categorize people as say English-language singers, or French-language writers are spelled out?John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Noticeboard

Currently, category-related discussions tend to be spread out over the talkpages of WP:CFD; WP:CAT, WP:NCCAT; WP:CLS; and elsewhere. Awhile back, it seemed to me that having a category-related noticeboard might be nice, so I cobbled one together. Recently, some helpful person added a notice on WP:CAT about it. So at this point, I welcome others' thoughts on this. What do you think about it, and if positive, how and where do you think we should notify others of its existence? - jc37 06:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

"of country" vs. "in country"

Where is the logic for the convention naming some categories as "in country" and others as "of country"? --Bermicourt (talk) 20:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the "of" indicates a naturally occurring thing, whereas "in" indicates a man-made thing? This doesn't universally hold, but generally landforms are "of" and cities are "in", for example. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:16, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Landmarks

A new user, User:Ashamedant, has created a bunch of new categories for city landmarks and has added them to hundreds of articles. Examples of the new categories: Category:Albuquerque Landmark, Category:Riverside Landmark, Category:Santa Monica Landmark, and Category:San Diego Landmark. In the case of San Diego there was already an existing category, Category:Landmarks in San Diego, California; AshamedAnt has been removing that category from articles and replacing it with Category:San Diego Landmark.

I see a number of problems with the name of these new categories. It seems that most such categories are titled the way the San Diego one was, as "Category:Landmarks in City, State". Existing categories include Category:Landmarks in Chicago, Illinois, Category:Landmarks in San Francisco, California, Category:Landmarks in Seattle, Washington, Category:Landmarks in Omaha, Nebraska, etc. For that matter, even if the proposed new format "Cityname Landmarks" is to be used, it needs to be plural.

I have asked Ashamedant not to do any more with these categories until the name can be discussed and community consensus reached. I have posted a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#City landmarks. Please make any comments there. --MelanieN (talk) 15:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

#How to name the country

  • The guideline says that categories should use country names corresponding to the respective article name, and lists "... of the People's Republic of China" and "... of the Republic of China" as examples. However, the articles about both countries are now at their common names, "China" and "Taiwan", leading to inconsistency between the guideline and the examples.
  • The main list is rather long for a list of examples. If no examples can be removed, it could also be divided into "sovereign states", "dependencies" and "disputed".
  • The European Union is listed twice, once under "Supranational" and once in the main list. I think it should be removed from the latter.
  • The Netherlands Antilles dissolved in 2010, and could therefore be moved to "Historical". SiBr4 (talk) 22:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Seeking input regarding the naming / renaming of categories used by the new Lua-based citation templates

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:19, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Chicago, Illinois or Chicago?

You may wish to participate in this discussion Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_July_22#Category:Chicago.2C_Illinois which is proposing to rename all "Foo in Chicago, Illinois" to "Foo in Chicago". Note: no other cities have been nominated at this time.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:04, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Retention of (disambiguator) in cats

I'm wondering if some examples should be included:

In ictu oculi (talk) 05:29, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: Someone has just asked at my talk about the guideline for having the Category match the Article, including the disambiguator. I'm surprised to find it's not noted here, given that consensus at discussions seems to support it. (If anything Categories often retain disambiguation even if the article does not.) I'd support having it listed. Tassedethe (talk) 15:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Appropriate category?

Hi, can any other editor provide an opinion on whether the category "Northern Ireland cheeses" is applicable on Fivemiletown Creamery please? I started a discussion with User talk:Jerry Pepsi on his reasons for removal, but we have different opinions. Any help appreciated. Thank you. -- HighKing++ 18:10, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Women? Female?

  • I'm sure this isn't the first time this issue has ever come up, but...when it comes to biographies of women on here, why do some categories state female while other cats state women? Shouldn't they all follow the same wording? Erpert WHAT DO YOU WANT??? 07:14, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, we had a big CFD on it a few months ago, the consensus was, don't do anything. There are reasons for the differences, and there wasn't consensus to choose one or the other. For example, sometimes "Female" is used in cases where the contents are potentially children and adults (children aren't usually called "women").--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

IEG proposal on the category system in the English Wikipedia

I have submitted a proposal for an Individual Engagement Grant for the first phase of a project looking at the category systems in Wikimedia wikis. In this first phase I will research the nature of the English Wikipedia's category system, , including category naming, as the first step in designing ways to optimize category systems throughout WMF wikis. In later phases, I plan to

  • Research how readers and editors utilize the category system in the English Wikipedia.
  • Investigate the category systems in other language Wikipedias and in other WMF projects.
  • Explore the value and feasibility of using Wikidata as the basis for the category system across WMF wikis. If deemed appropriate by the community, work with the community to develop and implement this.
  • Utilize user-centered design methodologies to prototype various enhancements to the category system to improve the user experience. If deemed appropriate by the community, work with the community to develop and implement such enhancements.

If you would like to endorse this proposal, you can do so here. I would also appreciate any other feedback, pro or con, which can be posted here. Thanks! Libcub (talk) 06:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Defunct organizations

Should the naming conventions for national categories of organizations change based on whether the organizations are active or defunct? For example:

Is this appropriate or should these inconsistencies be corrected? Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically

As someone who has been doing this manually for years, I hereby dutifully beg of anyone who is technically proficient and knows how to create and run a bot that will:

  1. Automatically sort all Categories on each article and category page alphabetically;
  2. Create a uniform system for where to place categories on each article and category page that commence with numbers, such as years of birth/death, centuries, and any category that starts with a number/numeral.

Please see the centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 61#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 09:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Discussion re-opened at VPP

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech help required to improve categories

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#CatVisor and User:Paradoctor/CatVisor#Planned features if you are willing and able to assist this innovative WP project move along it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 23:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Naming convention for WikiProject articles

I think we should include the naming convention for WikiProject articles here. While somewhat self-referential, it does relate to categorization of articles and to the naming convention. I don't think there's an actual policy at the moment (Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments is inconsistent). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Aerial lifts/Aerial cableways/gondolas/cable cars

(I originally posted this at what is now Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transport/Archive 1, as well as Talk:Cable car. I didn't get a response in either location so I thought I'd try here.)

Regarding article and category naming, Which of the above names are preferred, and is the current categories structure correct? I notice there aren't many entries in a lot of the categories in this area, which makes me think either not many cable systems have articles, or the categories are wrong/confusing?

To follow on, I've gone through the "lowest common category" of these and have found the following layout - suggested changes in bold: (Note: may have changed since originally posted 2 months ago)

  • Vertical transport devices:
    • Cable railways
      • Cable car railways
        • Cable car accidents
        • Cable car railways in [country] (x6)
        • Cable liner people movers
      • Funicular railways
        • Defunct funicular railways
          • Defunct funicular railways in the United States
        • Funicular railways by country
          • Funicular railways in [country] (x31)
        • Underground funiculars
        • Water-powered funicular railways
          • Former water-powered funicular railways converted to electricity
      • Railway inclines
        • Railway includes in [country] (x5)
    • Aerial lifts
      • Aerial lifts by country
        • Aerial tramways by country Should this (and the one below) be in this category? Technically yes, since they are types of aerial lifts.. but would be good to avoid duplication
        • Gondola lifts by country
        • Aerial lifts in [country] (x7)
      • Aerial lift manufacturers
      • Aerial tramways
        • Aerial tramways by country
          • Aerial tramways in [country] (x16)
          • Cable cars in [country] (x9) < ^^ I assume these category names are different due to language differences in various countries?
      • Gondola lifts
        • Gondola lifts by country
        • Gondola lifts in [country] (x5)
    • Funicular railways Remove from this group - is in "Cable railways" above
    • Ski lifts
      • Aerial lifts Remove from this group - is in "Vertical transport devices" directly - not all aerial lifts are ski lifts
      • Ski lift manufacturers
      • Ski lift types
      • Surface lifts

My comments focus on the aerial systems: 

              /-- Aerial tramways
             /
 Aerial lifts --- Chairlift
             \
              \-- Gondola lifts

Note there is no category for "chairlifts" - is it because they are generally not notable enough to have an article, or are they a type of gondola lift (in contrast to the "chairlift" article)?

There is also confusion in that both "aerial tramway" and "gondola lift" articles state that they are also known as "cable car", yet the gondola lift article points out that the two are very different.

Just rambling thoughts... any comments? -- Chuq (talk) 04:18, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

One factor is that terminology varies. For example, in North America one talks of aerial tramways; in Europe they are cable cars. "Defunct" is also a US term; "former" is used elsewhere. So it's fine to have Category:Aerial tramways in the United States as well as Category:Cable cars in Austria because that conforms to regional usage. Essentially in Europe there are: cable cars (2 large cabins, 2 carrying cables, 2 hauling cables), gondola lifts (many small cabins on a continuous moving cable), chair lifts (many 1-8 man open chairs on a continuous moving cable), funiculars aka cable railways (2 cars or trainsets running in opposite directions on a single railway), rack or cog railways and drag lifts (T-bar or button lifts). There may be a technical difference between funiculars and cable railways. So cable cars, gondola lifts and chair lifts are not the same. I've amended the gondola lift article, but the cable car is confusing because it's conflated aerial and surface transport and gondola lifts. Is that American usage? Bermicourt (talk) 14:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Categories by language

I'd like to suggest establishing some general principles for this. The world has thousands of languages, and most "X by language" categories soon end up sprawling masses of hundreds of subcategories.

I would suggest a rough taxonomic approach:

  1. large families such as Indo-European should be grouped in their own categories.
  2. areal units like "indigenous Australian" would also be acceptable.
  3. on the contrary, fine-grained taxonomic division - definitely anything less than 10, probably even anything less than 30 - should be discouraged here. E.g. Category:Iranian words and phrases should be kept directly under Category:Indo-European words and phrases, as currently; and not stashed away under Category:Indo-Iranian words and phrases.

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:55, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

manufactured is factory-made; rename to human-made

I mean Wikipedia talk:Category names#Manufactured objects. Fgnievinski (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Film scores

The category Category:Film scores almost exclusively contains articles on film scores, but virtually all of the categories under its subcategory Category:Film scores by composer contain articles on films themselves, not film scores. Would the music by composer naming convention still apply, or would it be more appropriate to rename those categories something like "Films scored by X"? --torri2(talk/contribs) 22:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for detailed but extensive change in category names

Hello, please participate in my proposal to include brackets in category names for more clarity, here: Proposal. Regards, CN1 (talk) 01:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Hyphen-minus with spaces around

I do wondering on why I not found a recommendation for the usage of Hyphen-minus with spaces around, because this would be a typographical mistake, instead of using EN DASH!? → User: Perhelion 11:59, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Found at MOS:DASH. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:21, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, can we add a short mention to this on this page? → User: Perhelion 01:44, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
This page really focuses on naming issues that are specific to categories rather than issues that apply to all Wikipedia content. We don't need to repeat the entire manual of style. I would ask what is it about categories that means we should single out the hyphen/dash issue? Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
I'll be concrete, I come from Commons. This issue is there a big problem, there are hundreds or thousands of such names. In fact, the category-naming is the fully right place to mention this. Thanks again for your response. → User: Perhelion 23:25, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
This policy page is not used as a policy page by commons, is it? I thought that commons, being essentially multilingual, hasn't been as focused on manual of style issues. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:29, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Many policies are identical, especially the English naming convention. → User: Perhelion 22:10, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
OK, so if commons has policies and conventions, and the concern is with commons categories, shouldn't we be adding it there, not here? I'm just trying to figure out why we need to single out one particular English-language guideline here, in the guidelines about categories. Using hyphens instead of dashes in categories in the English Wikipedia is not a pressing problem, as far as I can see. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

People by X and Y

Where intersection categories are aggregated in two ways, the current naming convention is e.g. Category:People by nationality and occupation and Category:People by occupation and nationality, where the first thing (X) named in the parent category (by X and Y) is the first thing named in its sub-categories (e.g. Category:Algerian people by occupation, cf. Category:Academics by nationality). This was chosen at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 11#Category:Occupations by nationality.

However, editors are still finding this "ambiguous and imprecise" (e.g. this CFD). I have learned the convention, but agree that it is not intuitive.

One current exception is Category:Scientists by occupation (and by nationality), which was renamed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 July 27#Category:Types of scientist by nationality.

I suggest renaming all such parent categories to a different form, "People by X and then by Y". – Fayenatic London 09:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

  • I agree that it's currently not super clear but on the other hand it may not worth the effort to change it. After all, these are mostly container categories, not being used directly in articles. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:14, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
  • What about just "People by X and by Y"? The "then" is a little awkward, I think, as are the parentheses. But maybe adding a second "by" is not going to really help those who are confused by the current format. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
  • isn't this just "people's x by y" ? Is there a better way to phrase this? And further is this triple intersection? Should maybe all such cats be deleted on those grounds? (Sincere question - I'm curious as to everyone's thoughts.) - jc37 20:37, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to expand the "How to name a nationality" section

I've done a bit of work towards the goal of expanding the section on how to the name a nationality, since it currently doesn't provide much specific guidance. My draft is here. I thought I'd post it here before I added it, since it significantly expands the section. I believe it reflects current consensus. Comments can be made here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I've added the proposed text to the policy, and deleted the draft linked to above. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:20, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Wildlife Management Areas

Hello, I have started creating articles on wildlife management areas, specifically at this time in Louisiana, and there is no category: [[Category:Wildlife Management Areas of Louisiana]], as a sub-category of [[Category:Wildlife management areas by state]]. Also, I added relevant "Geography of" categories and found that [[Category:Geography of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana]] does not exist. I would appreciate it if someone would give me some information about this. Otr500 (talk) 11:38, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&sechttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#tion=2#https://en.wikipedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&secthttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#ion=2#ia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#



https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tithttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#le=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Category_names&action=edit&section=2#

Rename Category:Utilities for MacOS to Category:Utilities for macOS

I am proposing to rename Category:Utilities for MacOS to Category:Utilities for macOS as "MacOS" refers to "macOS". I need help making this technical move request. I believe the page Category:Utilities for MacOS already exists. Somerandomuser (talk) 20:51, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Can there be more than one category with the same name?

Sometimes its tempting to, for example sort images of french churches into a category which is simply named "Churches" and make this a subcategory of the Category:Buildings and structures in France‎ (or similar); especially in Wikimedia Commons.

I expect that it is not allowed to have several categories named "Churches" (one for each country that is). But I have never actually come across that rule. It is neither mentioned in C:Commons:Categories nor here.

If this rule exists shouldn't it be mentioned early on as one of the more prominent rules.

By the way, it is also not explained what the selection of countries is based on which are listed in the passage: "Wikipedia:Category_names#How to name the country".

And what does the recurrent "FOOs" in the list of countries in the passage "Wikipedia:Category_names#How to name a nationality" stand for? And what names are given in the brackets behind the adjective and the term "FOOs"? It mostly seems to be the name of the country. But in the case of Azerbaijan and Lithuania it is not.

thanks for explaining, KaiKemmann (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Renaming suggested, current Category:ISI highly cited researchers name is out-of-date

The organization behind the annual Highly Cited Researchers list has changed during the years. It was (originally, I suppose) Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), then Thomson ISI, then Thomson Reuters. Nowadays it is Clarivate Analytics (per, e.g. https://clarivate.com/hcr/2017-researchers-list/ ).

There were some 3300 researchers listed by the latest list (Nov. 2017, per https://clarivate.com/hcr/worlds-influential-scientific-minds/). This Category:ISI highly cited researchers currently has just around 300 entries (in enwiki, maybe around +100 in other wikis altogether). My claim is, that many researchers are not categorized here due to out-of-date name of this category. Old name also works against including scientists of recent years. I would strongly suggest updating the category name. Maybe new name could be Category:Clarivate Analytics highly cited researchers? Besides, could there be some kind of redirect from the old (category) names (incl. ISI highly cited researchers, Thomson ISI highly cited researchers, Thomson Reuters highly cited researchers)? --Paju~enwiki (talk) 10:24, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Policy status

I have proposed that part or all of this page be downgraded to a guideline. Jc86035 (talk) 09:09, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Categories by century

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao:

I am wondering about the assignment of people to centuries. The section Time periods of this page now says that "Categories for people by century should be named Category:xx-century foos or Category:xx-century BC foos." OK, but how does one choose a century for the large number of people whose lives overlap 2 centuries. Or does one place the person in both centuries of their life?

As a specific example, a number of physicists have recently been moved from Category:American physicists to Category:21st-century American physicists. The second name in the 21st-century category is Benjamin Abeles. According to the article, Abeles was born in 1925, did his notable work in the 1960s, and retired in 1995. So why has he been categorized in the 21st century? Apparently because he is still alive.

My own preference would be to categorize people in the century in which they are notable, which would be 20th century for Abeles. As people who did notable work in two different centuries, I would categorize them in both centuries, since readers might be interested in either their work in the 20th century or their work in the 21st century (for example). But I appreciate that it is preferable to have a uniform policy on this question. What do others think? Dirac66 (talk) 02:25, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

@Dirac66: I tend to agree with you on both points. I do try to categorize people in multiple centuries where possible. I also recognize that my current plan is imperfect (viz your point about living people, for instance). My feeling is, when cutting down the number of people within a parent category, I would rather move them to one subcategory rather than none. It's a start...and it can be built upon by others. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Categorizing people by year and month

I am working with Andrew Gray on diffusing some of the English MP bios in the subcats of Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707), and we've so far settled on a schema for one category per parliament assembled e.g. Category:English MPs 1407. This solution works fine as long as there is no more than one parliament assembled per year, but an issue we are running into is that sometimes two separate parliaments would be assembled in the same year, for example looking at 1404 in this table, we can see two parliaments for that year. Our solution in these cases to disambiguate those two parliaments is to have two categories in that year; so Category:English MPs January 1404 for the parliament assembled in January of 1404 and Category:English MPs October 1404 for the parliament assembled in October of 1404.

As I was going through and tagging MPs to these categories, I noticed it would be easier from a HotCat-search-drilldown perspective if the category naming convention was "English MPs YYYY Month", but I couldn't find any guidance on this page about acceptable date formats for including year and month in a category name. Examples of some ideas we've discussed so far:

  1. English MPs January 1404 --> this is the existing solution that is a little awkward when using HotCat
  2. English MPs 1404 January
  3. English MPs 1404 (January)
  4. English MPs 1404, January

With option 1, an editor typing "English MPs 140.." would not see "English MPs January 1404" come up as a HotCat search suggestion, whereas the idea with options 2 through 4 is that those would show up in a HotCat search. Any feedback, particularly on options 2 through 4, or reference examples of other category trees would be welcome. -Furicorn (talk) 05:44, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Edit: per MilborneOne's response added some clarifications and additional links. -Furicorn (talk) 20:36, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I dont see anything wrong with your English MP January 1404 and English MP October 1404 having a category for all 12 months would not seem to be of much use. If it was a long parliament then MPs would have lots of categories added for each month they served. I believe most MPs are categorised by Parliamant not in the month they served. MilborneOne (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@MilborneOne: Don't worry - it's just a disambiguator term to cope with the problems of two distinct parliaments in a single year. (Most of them took place over a couple of months, in reality, but naming them by the month of assembly seems to be the generally used scholarly approach). We certainly won't be putting multiple categories on for all the months of a year! Andrew Gray (talk) 20:03, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
OK no problem, thanks for making that clearer. MilborneOne (talk) 17:35, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Is this a proper category?

I wanted to categorize court cases related to the civil rights movement. I created Category:Civil rights movement case law. Is this a proper format for such a category? Mitchumch (talk) 22:22, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

On v In categories

There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islands#RFC "on" v "in" categories about names of island (and other landforms) categories. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Czechoslovak(ian) things

It seems we have 795 categories of Czechoslovak Foo and 230 categories of Czechoslovakian Foo. Alarmingly, most of the categories following the latter convention are related to aircraft (so about 20% overall, wtf). ―cobaltcigs 09:32, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: if you are proposing a mass CfD for these categories to be renamed, I can tag them for you with a bot --DannyS712 (talk) 04:54, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Category names#How to name a nationality appears to be silent on former countries. I wasn't sure where to discuss this (and figure out for sure which direction the renaming should actually go, before attempting any mass CFR), so I chose this talk page.
I don't have a personal preference other than that they should be consistent. I've posted both lists (complete as of 2019-10-01) on pastebin.com and linked them in my previous comment above.
My hunch is that "Czechoslovak" will prevail, as it seems to be the status quo for a wider range of sub-topics.
Note that some of these are actually category redirects—not from one adjectival form to the other, but from a title with a hyphen to one with an en dash within the same list. So in addition to renaming these, their respective {{category redirect}} targets would also need to be updated.
Perhaps we should also have 1,025 category redirects from one adjective to the other? I mean, if they are in fact equally valid translations of the same word. Do the bots have any problem with "category double-redirects" (one correcting punctuation, followed by another correcting terminology)?
Also note that in some cases the demonym adjective is actually part of a compound proper noun, which may or may not matter. If they are all meant to be literal translations of phrases coined in Czech and/or Slovak (with zero English-based preference to preserve), perhaps they too should reflect the "one true way" to write Československá in English.
My hope at this time is that other users more certain about this subject will review the above lists and decide what to do about them. ―cobaltcigs 07:59, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

"Don't categorise by property"

Sometimes I need the existing guideline that says: "Don't categorise by property" (don't categorise: "Substances that are fluid at room temperature").

I arrived at this page, but did not find any hint (#Special conventions maybe?). I propose to add that guideline (by link or in text) to this page. And yes also, right here to help me going today ;-) -DePiep (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

People of Foo

Should Wikipedia:Category names § Occupation refer to "People from Foo" instead of "People of Foo", for consistency with the remainder of that paragraph (e.g. "People from Georgia...", "Fooers from Boo")?

(See also my comment in categorisation discussion that "X of Y" are not automatically "X from Y".)

Mitch Ames (talk) 03:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguators in category names

Page watchers may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion § RFC on including disambiguators in category names. Izno (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

For the record, this was never formally closed, and is now archived at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 18#RFC on including disambiguators in category names. It clearly leant towards using a disambiguator in category names if it is used in the name of the main article on the topic, and this specifically includes "(franchise)" or "(series)".
However, there was a strong consensus at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 September 28#Art of mythology against using disambiguators in category names for the subject of works of art or architecture. E.g. Category:Paintings of Venus was kept, rather than following Venus (mythology), even though the parent category is Category:Venus (mythology).
Disambiguators for the names of writers should follow the article on the writer. However, categories for paintings use the usual name used when stating the artist, and need not follow the name of the article on the artist. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 September 28#Various author and painter categories. – Fayenatic London 18:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Visual arts

@Johnbod:: in 2009 you changed [4]

Subcategories of these categories are named "Type of work"/"Works" by [artist]".

to

Subcategories of these categories are named [Artist] "Type of work/"Works", with exceptions for artists with articles on more than one type of work.

stating "The current convention". That may have been true then, but it is no longer being applied now in either Category:Paintings by artist or Category:Sculptures by artist, so can we revert the above change?

I think the rider about exceptions may have been intended to refer to using the word "works" or a more specific type such as "paintings". If any such wording is still needed, can we be more specific?

As for Category:Portraits by artist, usage is split between the two above conventions "[Artist] portraits" and "Portraits by [Artist]". Would you foresee any objections to a bulk nomination to rename using the latter format? – Fayenatic London 22:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

On the first, I've made a change - how is that? On the second, yes, quite possibly. Johnbod (talk) 01:19, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
On the first, that will do, thank you Johnbod.
On the second, thanks Aza24 for Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 November 30#Artist portraits. – Fayenatic London 22:14, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I have now added guidelines at the end of the page, on name of the artist (disambiguation or not) and name of the subject, amalgamating the conclusions of various discussions at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 September 28. – Fayenatic London 22:17, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks, Johnbod (talk) 22:22, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Heritage and residence by city or region

Over the years, we've deleted a fair number of categories about people by city or region; many/most of them have been decent and migrant categories. Most recently:

Under Heritage:

  • Categories that intersect heritage with occupation, residence, or other such categories should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right, .... These categories should not be created without a substantial and encyclopedic well sourced head article describing the contents (not just a list). Such categories should be treated....
  • Heritage categories (such as decent or diaspora) should not also contain any individual migrant, emigrant, nor immigrant; instead, that person should be diffused to an appropriate subcategory.
  • Heritage categories should not be created by former city or region.
  • The heritage of grandparents is never defining and rarely notable.

Under Residence:

  • The residence of parents and relatives is never defining and rarely notable.

William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

As raised in discussion, "BARian people of FOOian descent" is confusing because FOOian is used for nationality in the preceding Occupation section. Propose swapping to "FOOian people of BARian descent" to match, and adding "BARian people from Boo" to match countries with an established {{Fooers from Boo}}.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:35, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

  • I'd like to see an article to justify any categories about descent. Rathfelder (talk) 10:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • How about:
  • Such categories should not be created without a well sourced main article describing the contents.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:01, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Such categories should not be created without a substantial and encyclopedic well sourced article describing the contents not just a list.

To clarify that lists are, by WP:OCEGRS specifically called out as insufficient, and drawing some of the narrowing language from that policy. The policy states in the subjunctive ("cannot be written"), but the onus is on the proponent of the category and recent activities have indicated that it is wise to put them to their proofs. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:45, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

  • @Rathfelder and Carlossuarez46: I've merged your stricter guidance under Heritage above, as it would be placed in the existing paragraph. Naming Conventions were once policy, but have since been downgraded to guidelines.
    William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:24, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Category:Israeli people by ethnic or national origin

Currently, the Heritage section specifies:

An exception to this format is the subcategories of Category:Israeli people by ethnic or national origin, which use "Israeli people of FOOian origin".

I'm unable to find discussion in the Talk archives. Currently, over a decade later, there are no subcategories matching this pattern.

Category talk:Israeli people by ethnic or national origin#Proposed guidelines references an archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel circa 2009, but does not mention "origin".

@Good Olfactory: could you please shed light? Should this exception be removed?
William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the Israeli exception was just a reflection of what existed in the categorization scheme; acknowledging the exception wasn't meant to be an indication that the exception was a good idea. For Israeli categories, "origin" was chosen over "decent" in this 2010 CFD. In any case, it's moot now, because the Israeli categories were changed to "descent" in a 2012 CFD. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
After almost 9 years, I'm surprised that folks forgot to remove the exception. Done.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:17, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Paintings by collection

For some time I've been trying to iron out inconsistencies in the names of the subcategories of Category:Paintings by collection. At the moment, there are 155 category names with the style "Paintings in the collection of [a museum, etc.]" and 35 with "Paintings in [a museum, etc.]" – see the full list below.

Subcategories of Category:Paintings by collection, as of 16 October 10 November 2021
"Paintings in the collection of [...]"
  1. Category:Paintings in the collection of El Escorial‎
  2. Category:Paintings in the collection of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum‎
  3. Category:Paintings in the collection of Mumok‎
  4. Category:Paintings in the collection of National Museum Cardiff‎
  5. Category:Paintings in the collection of Royal Holloway, University of London‎
  6. Category:Paintings in the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich‎
  7. Category:Paintings in the collection of Sheffield Museums‎
  8. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna‎
  9. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery‎
  10. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum‎
  11. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago‎
  12. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum‎
  13. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art
  14. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Ateneum‎
  15. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art
  16. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts‎
  17. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Beaux-Arts de Paris‎
  18. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Belvedere, Vienna‎
  19. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum‎
  20. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum‎
  21. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Castelvecchio Museum‎
  22. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Centraal Museum‎
  23. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art‎
  24. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art‎
  25. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art‎
  26. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art‎
  27. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts‎
  28. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco‎
  29. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum‎
  30. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Galleria dell'Accademia‎
  31. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Estense‎
  32. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro‎
  33. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
  34. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Galleria Palatina‎
  35. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art (Florence)‎
  36. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Geelong Gallery‎
  37. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Kassel)‎
  38. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Glass House‎
  39. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Hermitage Museum‎
  40. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum‎
  41. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery‎
  42. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Imperial War Museum‎
  43. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art‎
  44. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum‎
  45. Category:Paintings in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum‎
  46. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum‎
  47. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich‎
  48. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum‎
  49. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel‎
  50. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum‎
  51. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Lenbachhaus‎
  52. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Leopold Museum‎
  53. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Louvre‎
  54. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation‎
  55. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Mauritshuis‎
  56. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art‎
  57. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum‎
  58. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Moderna Museet‎
  59. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts‎
  60. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Munch Museum‎
  61. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Condé‎
  62. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée d'Arts de Nantes‎
  63. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée de l'Orangerie‎
  64. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon‎
  65. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen‎
  66. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg‎
  67. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes‎
  68. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai‎
  69. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay‎
  70. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Fabre‎
  71. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Jacquemart-André‎
  72. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet‎
  73. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Picasso‎
  74. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musée Rodin‎
  75. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Musei di Strada Nuova‎
  76. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica‎
  77. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Civico di Sansepolcro‎
  78. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce‎
  79. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Siena)‎
  80. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo del Novecento‎
  81. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo del Prado‎
  82. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte‎
  83. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Horne‎
  84. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía‎
  85. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Nazionale di San Marco‎
  86. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo‎
  87. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Poldi Pezzoli‎
  88. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museo Soumaya‎
  89. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya‎
  90. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen‎
  91. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum Catharijneconvent‎
  92. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)‎
  93. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston‎
  94. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent‎
  95. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston‎
  96. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon‎
  97. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes‎
  98. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Grenoble‎
  99. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)‎
  100. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Nara National Museum‎
  101. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Gallery (Norway)‎
  102. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark‎
  103. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria‎
  104. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Gallery Prague‎
  105. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Museum, Kraków‎
  106. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Museum of Ancient Art‎
  107. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Museum, Poznań‎
  108. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Nationalmuseum Stockholm‎
  109. Category:Paintings in the collection of the National Museum, Warsaw‎
  110. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art‎
  111. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Neue Galerie New York‎
  112. Category:Paintings in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art‎
  113. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum‎
  114. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek‎
  115. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Ordrupgaard
  116. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Palace of Versailles‎
  117. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille‎
  118. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Petit Palais‎
  119. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art‎
  120. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana‎
  121. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera‎
  122. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli‎
  123. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna‎
  124. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara‎
  125. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo‎
  126. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne‎
  127. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Polish Army Museum‎
  128. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Pushkin Museum‎
  129. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando‎
  130. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Rijksmuseum‎
  131. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Royal Castle, Warsaw‎
  132. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp‎
  133. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Rubenshuis
  134. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum‎
  135. Category:Paintings in the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art‎
  136. Category:Paintings in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art‎
  137. Category:Paintings in the collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art‎
  138. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Slovak National Gallery‎
  139. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum‎
  140. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum‎
  141. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Sorolla Museum‎
  142. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe‎
  143. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Städel‎
  144. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art‎
  145. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art‎
  146. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Timken Museum of Art‎
  147. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum‎
  148. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art‎
  149. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Uffizi‎
  150. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Vatican Museums‎
  151. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum‎
  152. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Villa Stuck‎
  153. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts‎
  154. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery‎
  155. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Walters Art Museum‎
  156. Category:Paintings in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art‎
"Paintings in [...]"
  1. Category:Paintings in Christ Church Picture Gallery‎‎
  2. Category:Paintings in Palazzo Abatellis
  3. Category:Paintings in Schloss Charlottenburg
  4. Category:Paintings in the Berenson collection
  5. Category:Paintings in the Borghese Collection
  6. Category:Paintings in the Delaware Art Museum
  7. Category:Paintings in the Devonshire Collection
  8. Category:Paintings in the Ducal Palace, Mantua
  9. Category:Paintings in the Dulwich Picture Gallery
  10. Category:Paintings in the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection
  11. Category:Paintings in the Frick Collection
  12. Category:Paintings in the Galerie Neue Meister‎
  13. Category:Paintings in the Galleria Sabauda
  14. Category:Paintings in the Hamburger Kunsthalle
  15. Category:Paintings in the Harvard Art Museums
  16. Category:Paintings in the Hirschsprung Collection‎
  17. Category:Paintings in the Musei civici di Padova
  18. Category:Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy‎
  19. Category:Paintings in the National Library of Wales‎
  20. Category:Paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, London‎
  21. Category:Paintings in the National Portrait Gallery (United States)
  22. Category:Paintings in the Old St. John's Hospital
  23. Category:Paintings in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
  24. Category:Paintings in the Philbrook Museum of Art
  25. Category:Paintings in the Pinacoteca e museo civico di Volterra
  26. Category:Paintings in the Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena)
  27. Category:Paintings in the Royal Collection of the United Kingdom
  28. Category:Paintings in the Royal Palace of Madrid
  29. Category:Paintings in the Sforza Castle
  30. Category:Paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
  31. Category:Paintings in the Vejle Museum of Art
  32. Category:Paintings in the Wadsworth Atheneum
  33. Category:Paintings in the Wallace Collection
  34. Category:Paintings in the Wellington Collection
  35. Category:Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art
  36. Category:Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery

This is the result of multiple CfDs with inconsistent results, most notably this one (which, as originally proposed, would have changed all instances of "Paintings of" to "Paintings in", but instead changed them to "Paintings in the collection of" as that phrase had more support) and this one (intended to make all instances of "Paintings in" consistent with the new style "Paintings in the collection of", which was unsuccessful).

The arguments, in a nutshell, are as follows: "Paintings of" should be avoided for these categories as it can imply the subject of a painting, not its location (Category:Paintings of Versailles is a good example, moved to Category:Paintings in the collection of the Palace of Versailles in July); "Paintings in" could be inaccurate if a painting is on loan, etc.; and "Paintings in the collection of" is precise but was considered too verbose in the 24 July CfD. Note also that WP:VAMOS advises against using the phrase "in the collection of" (or, rather, "is in the collection of", which is near as damn it). "Painting collection of" was also suggested, which seems much too clunky to me, and if applied further down the category tree would result in things like "Diego Velázquez painting collection of the Museo del Prado", when "Paintings by Diego Velázquez [...]" is what follows Wikipedia:Category names#Visual arts.

My feeling is that the "Paintings in" is the best of the two existing styles, as the most concise. Category names only get longer the further down the category tree any convention is applied, and "the collection of" is probably unecessary verbiage. I don't think we need to be hyperprecise; for article titles the policy (WP:PRECISE) is to be precise enough to be unambiguous about the scope, but no more precise than that, and I can't see why that wouldn't apply to category names as well. As another editor said in July, It is reasonable to regard a picture as "in" a museum, even if it is in practice out-housed in a remote store or even on loan to another museum.

There hasn't been consensus at CfD, so I'd like to resolve this and find agreement on a single style somehow. Ham II (talk) 07:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should subcategories of Category:Paintings by collection begin with (A) Paintings in [a museum, etc.] or (B) Paintings in the collection of [a museum, etc.]? Ham II (talk) 07:48, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

  • A, per my comments immediately above this subsection. Ham II (talk) 07:48, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
    Comment I'm wondering if there are other options, such as, say, "Paintings displayed in ..." Iskandar323 (talk) 08:56, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
    That's pretty close to "is on display at", which WP:VAMOS also says to avoid. Pinging Johnbod, who I believe wrote that section of VAMOS. Ham II (talk) 07:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes - one can usually say that eg "the Mona Lisa is on display at the Louvre", but there are lots of paintings and other objects that aren't usually on display - drawings in particular. Many more that are generally on display may disappear for several months for conservation or loan to an exhibition. So I think that terminology is best avoided in both articles and certainly in categories. There is also the case of bodies with lots of sites, like the Royal Collection and Spanish Patrimonia Nacional (hope I've got that right), who periodically play musical chairs with their objects. We're never going to keep up with such changes. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
  • A, per Ham. Paintings "in" also has the advantage of being right for long-term loans to museums; some pieces in British museums have been on long-term loan for a century or more - eg the Raphael Cartoons since 1855. Johnbod (talk) 15:59, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts. Ham II (talk) 08:19, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
  • A for brevity, without a significant change of meaning. Note: in the CfD discussion that ended in favor of option B there weren't any strong arguments for either A or B, so that needs not to be taken as leading. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:06, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
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