Category talk:Category needed

Question

Is there a way that the structure of Category:Better category needed could be improved or revised to accomplish any of the following things?

1. Enable a user to flag which specific category or categories need to be improved?
2. Have the system automatically tag articles which are added to certain categories (e.g. anything added directly to Category:People would automatically have Category:Better category needed added to it as well, instead of sitting in the category until somebody actually discovers it (which can sometimes be months later) and manually tag it?
3. Make certain categories impossible to directly add to articles?

- Bearcat (talk) 19:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

1. I don't know how this could be implemented without subcategories, which I would be opposed to, since the category has a low population (and probably always has, at least AFAIK). Would it really be necessary anyway?
2. This is a great idea; I recommend mentioning it at Wikipedia:Bot requests.
3. I'd oppose this, since there will always be articles that belong to such articles, like computer software and software law in Category:Software. A broad (yet correct) category is better than no category at all (although this is arguable), and eventually someone will give it a better category. ~EdGl ★ 20:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

1. For what it's worth, I've occasionally tagged an article as better category needed, and had people come back to me later and ask which category I thought there was an issue with.
2. Thanks. I'll work on a proposal and then bring it back here for input.
3. What I'm thinking of, in particular, is Category:Biography — there's always a small set of users who mistakenly think that the intention of that category is "biographical articles about people". But that's so far removed from the reality (it's actually for "articles and categories pertaining to the literary genre of biography") that it doesn't even meet the standard of being broad-but-correct. And there are still people (mostly German, interestingly) who think that Category:Men and Category:Women are meant to contain every single article about an individual man or an individual woman (they're not). I've learned from experience, however, that I'm very nearly the only user on all of Wikipedia who actually checks those categories for inappropriate additions on anything even vaguely approaching a regular basis — I really, really need to spend far less time having to do that, but there's nobody else doing it. I certainly wouldn't propose such a mechanism without some kind of control in place to whitelist the articles that actually do belong in a "blocked" category — but there really does need to be a way to make it harder to apply certain categories in the first place, because there just aren't enough people actually doing category cleanup anywhere as systematically and comprehensively as it needs to be done. Bearcat (talk) 04:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

1. Perhaps you could make a template, similar to {{catimprove}} (you may even want to name it that and change "catimprove" to "morecats" or something). The template would say that a better category is needed, add Category:Better category needed to the article, and specify which category needs to be replaced.

3. Maybe proposing a task force for either assigning better categories to articles or watching problematic categories would be appropriate. ~EdGl ★ 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Contradiction!

Wait, if I put on a page Category:Category needed, it would have a category and hence I would need to remove it. But once I remove it, the page would genuinely need a category and I would need to add this category back. Attinio (talk) 13:13, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

It is explained on the page that maintenance categories (like this one) are considered only "temporary" categories, and a permanent category is required. --Mysdaao ^talk 14:21, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Don`t worry, this is exactly how Russell's paradox work. --212.50.31.210 (talk) 09:34, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

How are uncategorized articles found?

How are uncategorized articles found? Is there a way to automatically generate a list of all uncategorized articles? —Lowellian (reply) 18:15, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I found the answer at Special:UncategorizedPages. —Lowellian (reply) 18:25, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You may have better luck with Category:Uncategorized pages. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized. -- œ^™ 03:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Reminder

Just a reminder to everyone, especially now that the "uncategorized articles" queue is down to just a few hundred articles, that we also need to deal with Category:Articles needing additional categories. That seems to have fallen behind somehow; while I've been trying to whittle down that backlog by removing the {{cat improve}} tag from articles that don't really need it, as of right now it's still backlogged all the way back to September 2010. Could we all try to spend some time on that queue as well over the next few weeks? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 20:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Bot for tagging uncategorized articles

Hello! A BRFA has been filed for having a bot automate this task. Essentially, a bot will scan for Untagged Uncategorized Articles, and add {{Uncategorized|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} to them. Your comments are appreciated here. ^Avic_ennasis @ 18:51, 18 Av 5771 / 18:51, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

CatImprove

This page doesn't mention anything about {{catimprove}}. It probably should, right? OlYeller^Talktome 18:04, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Reminder 2

Once again, a reminder to everyone involved in this project that we must also deal with Category:Articles needing additional categories. That category is currently backlogged all the way to August of last year. Bearcat (talk) 06:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

YET AGAIN a reminder to everyone involved in this project that we MUST also deal with Category:Articles needing additional categories. That category is currently backlogged more than a year, with only three months having been cleared out since the last time I posted a reminder ten months ago. Bearcat (talk) 02:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)