Wikipedia talk:Categorization and subcategories

Archive of previous discussion is here.

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Wikipedia talk:Categorization is a better place to have discussions about this page. Comments put there will be seen by many more people than comments left here. -- Samuel Wantman 11:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

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I have categorised a vast number of articles and I feel strongly that the emphasis here is all wrong. There are thousands and thousands of articles which need to be in a category and one of its subcategories because the appropriate subcategories do not all exist. The current phrasing puts the pressure on people to ignore this or to feel guilty if they don't. It needs to be more softly worded from the start, eg "ideally they should not but...". I doubt that anyone has looked at more categories than I have and the problem being addressed here just isn't a very big problem imo. However the lack of precise categorisation is, because few users have a broad understanding of what categories are available. We should be putting the emphasis on categorising accurately, putting all articles in whichever appropriate categories exist. CalJW 19:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Please feel free to make the changes in emphasis that you feel are necessary. -- Samuel Wantman 20:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Needs to be much clearer that duplication is fine in MANY articles

So I am going to change it a bit. The policy (well actually it's only a guideline so it doesn't matter much but people don't care about that if they think it backs them up) has just been quoted against me on totally false grounds. Golfcam 22:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I like this addition. While there are examples of articles that should be in a category and its subcategory, most of the time the practice should be avoided. The current wording essentially provides a blanket exemption for users who don't feel like following the guideline. Also, the example you provided was poor, as another user is insisting that the two categories are not related at all. - EurekaLott 19:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this page overcome by events?

Is this really the direction Wikipedia wants to go? I think in the last two years, categories have proven that the elusive "user complaints about circular paths" are as common as the mythical Jabberwocky.

I see lots of reasons enumerated as to why "duplicate" categories (being in a parent and child category) are good. I don't see any reasonable arguments for how they could be bad. I think the current recommendations of this page are sorely out of date. They reflect hypothetical arguments, from the time before categories were first implemented and when they were first introduced. I think this page may need a clean rewrite.

The only circular path I see, is that of people saying that putting articles in a parent and child category is bad. Invariably, they trace their reasoning back to the (nonsensical) recommendations made here.

--Connel MacKenzie - wikt 04:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Just a little background. It took a great deal of effort to get people to agree to even this amount of category duplication. There are still many people who think all duplication is a bad thing and leads to "category clutter". I lean towards your view, but I'm also coming to the view that the categorization system is broken and needs an overhaul. There are several competing views related to the purpose of categories. Some of these are at odds with each other. -- Samuel Wantman 04:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Secondary categorization rule

Please see here This rule as written seems vague and illogical to me. -Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:54, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorting of subcategories

I have made a proposal to change the software so that all subcats are placed at the beginning of the parent category, before any articles. So basically, subcategories will have their own alphabet that comes before the article alphabet (if that makes sense), so you won't have to click through each (next 200) to find all the subcategories. Please comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Sorting of subcategories. Thanks! JohnnyMrNinja 05:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Overhaul of this page

I have reworded it somewhat to make it more logical, but it still seems rather confused. Advice on how to find out if an existing subcategory is duplicated is mixed up with advice on how to decide if subcategories should be duplicated. If no-one else wants to have a go at rewording it, I will.--Kotniski (talk) 16:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Clarification of subcategories

I have clarified the obvious: subcategories are divisions of their parents and members should also be classifiable in their parents; this is often misunderstood. When some really narrow categories go to CfD it would be nice to have the alternative to upmerge them to their parents but if they are not true subsets, the work required often results in the deletion and the loss of the categorization scheme. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's not true, the way we do things at the moment. People put Category:France in a category of countries because France belongs in it; and obviously the things in Category:France are not countries and are therefore not classifiable in the parent category. It would of course be great if we could get people to agree to stop doing this, but sadly it's very common... --Kotniski (talk) 22:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

<sigh> True, true. But I hpoe that user error is not a reason to absorb it and therefore degrade the encyclopedia: people mix up "its" and "it's" (me, too, on occasion) and use "irregardless" but it is legitimate to fix those in article space. Also, many inexperienced users don't capitalize the way WP wants them to, but again it's not a reason to not (try to) fix it - fixing those is a common fix in CFD land. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

REWRITE AND MERGER

As you will see at WT:Categorization, I've produced a new rationalized text which takes in the present content of both the main categorization guideline page and this one. I'm therefore proposing that this page be merged into that one (i.e. this title would redirect to that page, probably to the specific section about Subcategorization). The proposed new, merged text is at User:Kotniski/Cat; please comment in the thread at WT:Categorization#REWRITE.--Kotniski (talk) 10:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)