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There is a discussion at Template talk:Infobox that could use input from this project. It regards the categorization and naming of infoboxes. Primefac (talk) 13:14, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
WikiProject collaboration notice from the
Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.
Portals are being redesigned.
The new design features are being applied to existing portals.
At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.
Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.
I notice that Japanese Wikipedia has a very nice breadcrumb trail at the top of each category page. For example, Google Translate shows the breadcrumbs for Category:スポーツ競技 (Sports competition) as Main category > Culture > Entertainment > Sports > Sports competition. This would be a very nice feature for English Wikipedia as well.
To some degree, this would run afoul of the very messy categorization in English Wikipedia I describe in several discussions (see Special:Contributions/RVS). There are many extremely deep as well as cyclic categorization link chains, unfortunately.
However, it's probably sufficient to deal with this by simply showing just the previous 4 or so links. Probably this is what is done in Japanese Wikipedia, and/or perhaps there is not as much of a problem with messy categorization links there. RVS (talk) 20:18, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah, too bad it's not automatic. Otherwise it's easy for that to get out of sync. I suppose since the categories are not a tree, an automatic version would sometimes have to choose among multiple parents. But that would still seem to be a step forward compared to manual. Still, I suppose it's possible that it's really not manual, that the Japanese version might have a bot that keeps these in sync? RVS (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I think it would require some sort of manual curation. Which parent do you follow up the tree (or down the banyan)? How far do you go? Plucking Category:American singers out of the air and repeatedly following the first listed category took me via Humans, Fossils and Earth to Biology, at which point I entered a loop. I know that Category:Fossils should be omitted as irrelevant, but that's a difficult judgement for software to make. Certes (talk) 09:44, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I would not object to categories such as those, but only for cases where certainty as to date is impossible even within 100 years. In general there have not been enough centuries to require anything higher, such as millennium categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
Surely millennium categories are more appropriate than century categories for prehistoric archaeological cultures, where the dates are fuzzy (like Longshan culture and Baodun culture), or states from traditional folk-history, whose very existence is disputed (like the Xia dynasty). Kanguole 12:38, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
My comment was largely echoing the problem and that we have to investigate if other related categories are that much accurate or not and this CFD can become an example. The categories that you named are going to stay though. Excelse (talk) 11:11, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm still a bit hesitant about this discussion. If we are going to selectively delete millennium categories, it will not be too straightforward at what point we would start deleting. We should also consider that there may be separate needs per continent or even by region. For example in the Americas, south of the Sahara and in northern and eastern Europe we will probably need millennia at least including the 1st millennium AD, while we could refrain from millennia in a way earlier stage in e.g. Egypt and Mesopotamia. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
The millenial categories which seem entirely superfluous are those which relate to organisations or products which did not exist until the industrial revolution, or later, so there are less than four centuries to be included. Rathfelder (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
One of the problems are templates like {{
WP:SMALLCAT to say that date categories should have scope for more than 12 entries - ie years should not be catted in decades, and decades not in centuries and centuries not in millennia (plus there's often a dis/establishment pair).Le Deluge (talk
) 22:40, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
What about a rule that says, "Do not create a millennium category where 3 or more "by century" categories exist and they contain all the articles that would otherwise be contained in a "by millennium" category"? Laurel Lodged (talk) 21:38, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
A rather incomprehensible rule. Millennium categories are supposed to be parents to century categories, allowing readers to locate articles relevant to any given millennium. Ideally they should themselves contain no articles or very few articles. Dimadick (talk) 23:33, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm unhappy about templates which populate the categories. They are very inflexible.
There is an extensive set of categories named according to this pattern, which seem to have been added without any thought of supplying a sort key. Consequently, they end up using the default sortkey, the article title, so the articles mostly appear in the 'xxxx-related lists' category index unhelpfully under 'L' for 'List of ...'. (See, for example, Category:Texas-related lists, where only one of the items under 'L' actually belongs there.) I've no idea how to even find all the categories of this type, nor the easiest way to fix the sort keys. I'm just doing this manually as I come across them, but it really needs a planned approach. Any suggestions? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
AWB could sort them out if we can specify a rule such as: insert the article title before the ]], replacing "List of " by "|". Alternatively, we could add a DEEFAULTSORT, but that could have a wider effect. Certes (talk
) 12:53, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Would it be possible to further refine the search to (a) only articles that are named "List of ..." and (b) only where the category doesn't already have a sort key, and (c) to bypass articles where DEFAULTSORT (if present) has a value different from the article title? That should cut down the numbers a bit. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:15, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
(a) I don't think so (intitle: doesn't do what it's told to), but
User:The Transhumanist/SearchSuite will do that for you. (b) I hope I've already done that, by requiring ]] immediately after the category name without an intervening |code. (c) I hope I've already filtered out articles with any DEFAULTSORT at all (thereby failing to find articles with a rather pointless DEFAULTSORT|List of Foo). If you can see any lists which filters (b) and (c) fail to remove, let me know their titles and I'll look at why they're appearing. Certes (talk
) 17:10, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
One more question; I've got this search up and running in AWB, so the next step is the text replacement. I know how to set up a find-and-replace regex in AWB, but how would I insert the article title before the ]], replacing "List of " by "|" ? How can a regex pick up the title and manipulate it in this way? Colonies Chris (talk) 10:18, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I think it's best to manipulate the title before. JWB (and, I assume, AWB) has a handy feature where you can specify a page name as Foo|Bar, causing it to edit page Foo with special variable $x set to "Bar". (Normally $x is just the page name.) So you could edit List of These|These and List of Those|Those, changing ]] to |$x]] in each case. An alternative (but something of a hack) is to change ]] to |Distinctive string $x]] using the full page name, then in a separate regex change "Distinctive string List of " to blank. Certes (talk) 10:44, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I've used the AWB filter to select only "List of ..." tities from the search results, and I've set up a pair of regexes, the first to change [[Category:xxxx-related lists]] to [[Category:xxxx-related lists|%%title%%]] and a second one to change [[Category:xxxx-related lists|List of yyyy]] to [[Category:xxxx-related lists|yyyy]]. That does most of the job and any further tweaks I'll do by hand. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:37, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Discussion on the use of Portal links in categories
Let’s settle this once and for all: the top of its page says “Note: 'African Americans' are citizens of the United States of Black African ethnicity or ethnic descent — they are listed at Category:African-American people.” That in itself distinguishes who is actually African-American and the white people in the category with trace amounts of African ancestry (which, some of you argue, could apply to every human on the planet since humanity originated in Africa). What I’m getting at here is this; why is Johnny Depp, a white man, whose page says Ancestry.com found he has a very distant African ancestor (from 400 years ago) or Ty Burrell, a white man, whose great-great-great-great-grandmother (do the math...) was an African woman, in the same category as actual black Americans such as Forest Whitaker or Eartha Kitt? It doesn’t make sense. It’s too ambiguous. Therefore in my opinion this category should be reserved for the Johnny Depps and ”African Americans' are citizens of the United States of Black African ethnicity or ethnic descent — they are listed at Category:African-American people.” should be in the respective African-American categories as they are. In my view, anyone who has at least one parent that is African-American they should be in the African-American categories, not this extremely vague category.Trillfendi (talk) 02:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
Trillfendi, there was a very long RfC at
Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#RfC on categorizing biracial people where the consensus was you need a reliable source to include people in Category:African-American people if only one parent is African-American. So many people were moved out of that category and moved into the broader Category:American people of African descent instead. We probably need to update the category descriptions to match that. StAnselm (talk
) 18:35, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
talk
) 07:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Template:WikiProject Categories
Template:WikiProject Categories is currently transcluded just 3,312 times, yet surely every category is technically within the scope of WikiProject Categories. Should we be looking to roll out this template to every Category Talk page, e.g. via a bot, or is that not its intended use? --Jameboy (talk) 15:58, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
There is a parallel at Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates/Template:WikiProject Templates which should be placed "on the talk page of relevant Wikipedia, Help or Category pages, but generally not on the talk pages of templates". Exchanging category for template, we might say that Template:WikiProject Categories should be placed on the talk page of relevant Wikipedia, Help or Template pages, but generally not on the talk pages of categories". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:27, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
That makes sense now. I've updated Template:WikiProject Categories/doc accordingly. Perhaps we should agree a guideline as to which types of categories can be tagged with the template before setting about removing any inappropriate transclusions from category talk pages. --Jameboy (talk) 00:15, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
The only category talk pages that should be tagged with the template are things like Category talk:Wikipedia categorization by topic. All the categories for articles and wikipedians could/should be untagged. DexDor(talk) 20:15, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Catholicism
There has been almost obstructive feedback on requests on this category tree branch below, as seen on
It is not helpful starting a discussion with 'almost obstructive'. CFD/S is meant for entirely obvious renames only and rejection at that platform just means it is not entirely obvious. Better avoid CFD/S entirely for cases like this and just calmly post these nominations here right away. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:11, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
OK.
talk
) 13:00, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
@
Chicbyaccident: I moved this discussion to this other platform, since it is not an actual nomination suitable for CFD. Marcocapelle (talk
) 13:05, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Is there an actual proposal here? Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:12, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Ordering items on a category page
I was wondering if there is any category equivalent to
MOS:ORDER
, which specifies the standard ordering of items within articles. There are a number of different elements that can go into a category page, for example:
navigation bar (especially for years)
main article for this category...
notices about maintenance categories, hidden categories, container categories etc.
commons category
portal link(s)
this category is for...
NOGALLERY
parent categories
...and probably many more that I've forgotten or don't know about. The ordering of some of these elements can affect the appearance of the category page (sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly) so I thought I'd check to see if there is a standard ordering. Many thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 09:37, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Generally, follow MOS:ORDER unless you have a reason not to. Is there some object that is commonly found on a cat page, but which is not covered by MOS:ORDER? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
No, @Jameboy: is right, MOS:ORDER doesn't really work for categories ("navigation should be at the bottom of the page") etc. My general rule is "whatever looks neatest", although there doesn't really seem to be any good arrangement for eg a Project articles category with all the trimings. In general that means a bit of an "inverted triangle" to the overall look. There's one order for commons/portal/navseasoncats that looks dreadful, all spread out, whereas there's another where all the floats work together and it's much tidier - but other navboxes need a different order because they are aligned differently. So FWIW, I generally use something like :
NOGALLERY
notices about maintenance categories, hidden categories, container categories etc. (the pagewide coloured boxes)
portal link(s)
commons category
navigation bar (especially for years)
main article for this category...
this category is for...
TOC (but only if there's >400 articles)
parent categories
but don't take that as gospel. Le Deluge (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
That's useful thanks. I didn't even have a rule of thumb before. Now I can at least use the above as a starting point, with the understanding that it isn't an exact science and tweaks may be needed. --Jameboy (talk) 16:03, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Years and decades in continent categories: High and Late Middle Ages
I am considering a CfD nomination to upmerge years and decades in continent categories to global years and decades categories for the period 1000-1499, very similar to this earlier nomination about the period 500-999.
Generally speaking, most years in the period of 1000-1499 have a European subcategory, way fewer years have an Asian subcategory (even less with establishments and disestablishments) and only in exceptional cases there is a North American subcategory. Since this is going to be a massively huge nomination I prefer to play a bit safe and would be eager to know if there might be any objections against a nomination like this that I possibly oversee. Most specifically if there is anything that applies to the period 1000-1499 that didn't apply to the period 500-999. Feel free to comment. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
WikiProject History and WikiProject Years have been notified. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:12, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Object. Thanks for the ping, @Marcocapelle. As discussed at your recent nomination of Irish categories, I have reversed my view of these mergers, and will oppose this one if it is proposed.
This is not the place to debate to debate the merits, but in summary my objection is that the benefits to navigation of these mergers have been vastly overstimated, while the downsides of requiring multi-categorusation of each page have been way under-estimated.
In this case, the High and Late Middle ages are a well-dpocumented era in European history, so there is plenty of scope for expansion. I have les knwoledge of Asian history, so can't comment on that yet. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 03:03, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree with BrownHairedGirl, and include the Asian categories in that agreement. I see little benefit in the mergers, and a fair number of downsides. Please ping if you reply to my comments as I don't watch this page. ···
Join WP Japan
! 16:15, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose this nomination would not really achieve anything other than hindering navigation. Tim! (talk) 16:33, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Oppose in part -- I still support the principle of eliminating a lot of these small categories, but this nom is not the way to start. This is going to need a long process. At this distant period, I do not think a Europe/Asia split is useful, so that I would support merging all the 1000 items into Category:1000 (except est/disest, which should be single subcategories) and upmerging 1000 om fooland to 1000s in fooland and Category:1000. When that is done we can see whether there is enough in 1000s in fooland to merit keeping it or merging to 11th century in fooland. Please provide statistics on the number of articles likely to be in the target after merger. Having to click through 4-5 layers of single item categories to find the single article at the bottom is not an aid to navigation. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:56, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Support Pre the Modern Era, the notion of continents was hazy and fluid. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:54, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
When I implement merges to multiple targets, I usually use
WP:CFDW
as normal to merge to the last target.
Armbrust can also do multiple merges with his bot. – FayenaticLondon 15:08, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
I would suggest that the normal test should apply: if there are at least five articles to populate the intersection category we can keep it. Otherwise it should be upmerged both to the ethnic and occupational categories. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:43, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Category:American husbands
We have this one, but do we want it? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
The discussion will consider how this proposal fits with Wikipedia's categorisation guidelines. Please add your comments at the Categories for discussion page. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007
A description of this category (added later) says, that this category is for articles about armoured cars introduced during World War II. Earlier cars should go to Category:Armoured cars of the interwar period. However, the name obviously suggests to most readers, that it covers armoured cars USED during World War II, what causes confusion. If anybody tries to search earlier armoured cars fighting in WW2, using this category, or to check what are other WW2-era armoured cars, he would be mistaken, that they don't exist on Wikipedia. As a matter of a fact, many authors of articles apparently treat this category as covering all armoured cars used during WW2, because it includes many of interwar armoured car articles, contrary to description. Therefore I suggest to delete descriptions of these two categories, so that they would cover armoured cars used in these periods. Otherwise it would be more logical to rename it as "armoured cars introduced during WW2". The same for Category:Armoured cars of the Cold War, although it could contain several surplus WW2-era car models used in Middle East then. Pibwl←« 18:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
A bit of background: Some years ago weapons (and other military equipment) were being categorized by conflicts in which they had been used which caused rather a mess (incomplete non-defining categories) (consider how many conflicts things like
CH-47 and AK-47 have been used in). Many of these categories were deleted (e.g. see this CFD
).
We retained categories for periods (e.g. interwar, cold war, post cold war) in which weapons were introduced. The WW2 categories would fit into that scheme. A rename of the WW2 categories etc to clarify this (rather than making them be about usage) would be useful. Note: there are also categories based on century/decade of introduction (which have the advantage of fitting with categories for vehicles etc) so maybe the period categories are themselves unnecessary. I'm sure there's more improvements that can be made in this categorization.
Categorization by usage could be messy. E.g. consider a French tank introduced in the 1920s - if the Germans captured a few in 1940 then would it belong in a used-in-WW2 category? (what if the Germans only used it for internal security, used the turret as part of static defences ...?). That sort of thing is much better handled as a list (e.g. articles such as List of German military equipment of World War II) which can contain notes and can also, unlike a category, contain redlinks where we don't yet have an article.
Note: We also deleted weapons-by-user categories (example CFD) (instead categorizing only by country of origin); that sort of information is better stored as a list. DexDor(talk) 06:48, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Church buildings by region and province in Italy
In Italy we have categorized church buildings in Italy by province (unfortunately a top category Category:Churches in Italy by province is lacking) combining a broader churches scope with a narrower geographical level (province), and we have also categorized church buildings in Category:Roman Catholic churches in Italy by region with a narrower churches scope (Roman Catholic) with a broader geographical level (region).
Just by itself there is nothing wrong with it, however in this particular case it leads to extreme duplication because 99% of church buildings in Italy belongs to the Catholic Church. It could potentially be simplified to:
renaming all churches in Italy by province categories to Category:Roman Catholic churches in Italy by province categories; and replacing the churches region parent category by a Roman Catholic churches region parent category; and moving out the very rare non-Catholic church buildings
With this solution every church building article in Italy will be categorized only once in a churches x geography category, instead of twice. Any comments? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Good. I think we have a similar view about the duplication of categories with no differing content. Rathfelder (talk) 09:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
Partial I agree with the first proposal but not the second. Civil regions in Italy are not synonymous with ecclesiastical provinces. See for example Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Region of Triveneto which covers multiple civil regions. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:30, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
Categories get tagged but the tag rarely gets removed when the category gets populated (although there is Category:Categories with incorrect underpopulated category template, which will automatically move categories with the tag to this category once there are 25 entries in such categories, but it's run by a bot and such categories are not moved in a timely manner when the threshhold is met).
Tagging is often inappropriate. Even if an article count for a category doesn't exceed 25, it's quite possible that no other candidates exist to populate it.
Sometimes, a category may have few articles directly placed in it but it has diffused subcategories which easily give the parent category enough articles.
The current count is over 12,000 categories and it seems to be just a few enthusiastic category creators who add the tag to every category they create with the expectation that other editors will populate it. Many of these tags go back years, so if they haven't been populated it is likely additional candidates don't exist (or if they do exist, the tag does not aid in getting them populated)
Sometimes, parts of a scheme get created (say a "by year" or "by country") to diffuse a parent category and the tag is added to request the creation of potential sister categories, which is not the point of the tag. For example, someone creates a category for "Foo in 2018" and parent "Foo by year" adding the underpopulated tag to the parent even though the only possible member is "Foo in 2018" since no others have been created. While there may be candidates to fill a "Foo in 2017" category and other years, it's not what the underpopulated tag is for. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 18:40, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
I agree its pointless. I'm as obsessive about categorisation as most people but I have never done anything in response to such a tag, and often they are completely inappropriate. I've removed quite a few. Rathfelder (talk) 09:21, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm glad I'm not the only one to think this way. I've removed over 1000 tags within the last month, either because the category was well populated or because there was little else to populate it with. Some of the tags had been added as far back as 2011. Is it the {{Underpopulated category}} template that needs to be nominated for deletion though, since the category is just a tracking category? Thanks. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 18:31, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Non-Gregorian observances by Gregorian month
The discussion about Category:Non-Gregorian observances by Gregorian month has been closed as manually disperse. After the closure I have created and populated Category:Jewish_observances_by_month and subcats, which was explicitly addressed in the discussion. However, there are still a huge amount of South Asian and East Asian observances left, scheduled according to a variety of calendars, which I am not capable of dispersing and so far nobody else is working on it. What is the best next step, should we re-nominate the category? Marcocapelle (talk) 10:21, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Commune Sub-categories of Category:Articles needing translation from French Wikipedia
It seems French communes are a large part of the nine thousand article of this category while sub-categories exist for communes of specific French regions and departements needing translation from French Wikipedia, while a lot of them may assurely not fit in the already existing commune categories, there is the example of Castifao not being put in the same category as Cagnano all the while both are communes of Haute-Corse needing translation from French Wikipedia, an example among many others.
What appears to be as problematic is the fact a number of these sub-categories are not hidden, all the while being just as the main category maintenance categories that should be hidden on the pages they are added too.
As such, I would like to establish consensus about the need of a large migration of articles before moving them in the appropriate geo sub-categories, but also the need of creating new categories for those that do not fit in the ones already present. I seek approval for this as it would be a large migration of articles that could prove to be disruptive. Some of these region categories also need to be renamed, merged or deleted to fit the French regional reform. Sadenar40000 (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
I can sort of see how some distinction between these concepts might be possible in theory, but in practice, all seem to contain roughly the same articles and all contain each other as sub-categories, so I was going to take them to CfD for merging, but couldn't work out a) which title is the preferred one that the others should be merged to, or b) how to use the template for a multiple merge.
Any advice greatly appreciated!
Furius (talk) 14:59, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I am also uncertain here, but please note that most of Morocco's current population are of mixed Arab-Berber descent. 14 centuries of intermarriage between the previously distinct groups (since the 7th-century Muslim conquest of the Maghreb) have had quite an effect. Dimadick (talk) 16:20, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
In cases like this, I look at the parent categories, to see what the naming convention is for the sibling categories. Here, one thing that sticks out straight away is that these three categories have each other as both parents and children. That is to say,
Categorizing schools of cities in multiple counties, but in which one county has the lions share of the schools
One interesting thing I've wondered is how to deal with categorizing schools within a city that is in multiple counties, but in which one county has the majority of the land.
Houston is the county seat of Harris County, and almost all of Houston is in Harris County. However I did not wish to make
Lone Star College
campus there).
Atlanta has a similar issue: most of Atlanta is in Fulton County, but there is a section in DeKalb County.
Crim High School is in Atlanta and in DeKalb County, but every other Wikipedia-notable school in the Atlanta city limits is in Fulton County. You can see a map of Dekalb County and a map of Fulton County
to compare them.
So, should the Atlanta and Houston school cats be made daughters of their majority county-equivalents, or should they remain separate?
WhisperToMe (talk) 00:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
@WhisperToMe: If it really is a matter of lions share you'd better make them daughters of the county. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:43, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
@
Pin Oak Middle School in Bellaire) but the vast majority are in Houston. WhisperToMe (talk
) 10:54, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I think that would definitely be helpful. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:02, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Ok! I went ahead and did that! I also plan to connect Category:Private schools in Houston with the county category (I don't know any private schools in parts of Houston in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties).
). Three of the six Aldine ISD zoned high schools (Macarthur, Nimitz, and Benjamin O. Davis), along with their associated 9th grade centers, are also outside the city limits in unincorporated areas, while having Houston postal addresses.
"Organisation"/"Organization" in descriptive category names
I have opened an RFC about whether to standardise on the "Z" spelling in descriptive category names, i.e. to use "Organization" in all cases. I estimate that this affects the naming of about ten thousand categories.
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
Deaths from heart attack?
Is there a category for people who died of a heart attack please? This comes up a lot in obituaries. I know it is not a technical term...I just can't find the category for it. (Perhaps there should be a redirect?). Please ping me when you reply. Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 09:51, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
Zigzig20s, Why do you feel such a category might be needed? For example, the article about the monument links to the article about the (attempted) invasion and is in categories such as Category:Outdoor sculptures in Florida (which groups it with articles about similar things). Have you considered a navbox instead? DexDor(talk) 05:25, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
How many articles do we need to create those categories please? I do feel it would be useful for veterans especially, but also for other aspects like monuments/books...It would make it easier to find them. We have many categories about veterans of all kinds of wars and conflicts already...one question I have is that there were Cubans on both sides of the conflicts, those trained by U.S. forces and the Communist/Castro-trained ones, so how would we differentiate them?Zigzig20s (talk) 06:46, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I am more interested in the US-trained Cuban exiles.Zigzig20s (talk) 08:52, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
We generally don't categorize people by which military operations they took part in (as it would often be non-defining, some people have taken part in dozens of ops, it may be unclear etc). There is a list of commanders in the Brigade 2506 article (and the list contains redlinks, which, of course, categories can't). DexDor(talk) 20:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
@
WP:OVERCATEGORIZATION - I'd use categories such as Category:Cold War military history of the United States and Category:Cuba–United States military relations for the time being, and then split off a Bay of Pigs category if a significant number of articles start piling up in those. We don't need a separate category hierarchy for each campaign and as noted above, we don't generally categorise people by their involvement in specific campaigns. Le Deluge (talk
) 12:26, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
The Bay of Pigs Invasion is kind of a thing. See Bay of Pigs Museum, Bay of Pigs Monument, etc... Not all veterans are notable, but we are missing notable veterans for sure. There would be more sources in Spanish but potentially biased. I will inquire at WP:Military History...Zigzig20s (talk) 12:52, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
If you know the cat_id rather than the name then it's a join:
SELECT page_id FROM category JOIN page ON page_namespace=14 AND page_title=cat_title WHERE cat_id=229261
Many rows in the category table don't have pages, because they have been deleted or because pages were added in error to categories which never existed. Certes (talk) 15:57, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
thank you! It is bad then if I am making a category with invalid name (with HotCat), then database creating just empty record. Can be thousands and thousands empty records then :)--Estopedist1 (talk) 16:14, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
There is a huge category tree under Category:City councillors while local politicians aren't even notable (at least not as an automatism). Should we then categorize people by local political functions? Marcocapelle (talk) 16:07, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I think it's a useful category to have, as many national politicians previously served in local government. However, I think the name needs changing as not all councillors are from city councils, and the current name also seems to be limiting the scope of some subcategories, such as the UK one, which only contain councillors from local authorities that have "city" in the name (there is no such thing as a "city council" in the UK), creating an unnecessary fork from Category:Councillors in the United Kingdom)). Category:Local councillors might be the least limiting terminology to use. Number57 21:55, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking about detailing what I meant when I wrote it, but didn't as there were already too many subclauses in my sentence. But to explain, the UK has several types of local authorities – county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, London borough councils, metropolitan borough councils, parish councils etc. However, there is no such thing as a city council – only councils of the types above that are named "Footown City Council". Wolverhampton City Council is a metropolitan borough council; Westminster City Council is a London borough council; Salisbury City Council is a parish council.
That category should really be deleted as city councils aren't a thing in the UK, and this discussion suggests its existence may be confusing people into thinking that they are. Number57 22:15, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I agree that in the UK the term City Councillor is misleading. But to answer Marcocapelle's question - I think for some people being a local councillor is defining, and for others it isnt. I certainly dont think every local councillor should be regarded as notable. But equally I would not like achievements as a local councillor to be discounted. Rathfelder (talk) 22:59, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
@Rathfelder: I have put the categories up for deletion here. Number57 11:29, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
Hi, I have noticed that there are a number of chemistry categories, like "[Iron(Ⅱ) compounds]", that use precomposed single-character unicode numerals like "Ⅱ" and "Ⅶ" instead of plain letters like "II"and "VII". That is not good since those exotic character make the categories harder to display, type, search for, etc. It turns out that those precomposed characters were added to Unicode only to allow small Roman numerals to be included in vertical-mode Asian text, like 西西Ⅶ西西
The guys in the Unicode Consortium themselves recommend against using those characters in other contexts. Could those categories be renamed with plain letters, please? All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:09, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
20 categories are affected: search, minus the two Platinum redirects. Previous discussion: User talk:Certes#Iron(II) and categories. I support moving them and am happy to do the technical work, but I expect there is a tool that could do the job better. Certes (talk) 08:53, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
Category:American freedmen says, "former American slaves, who gained their freedom during the pre-emancipation era". However, in a discussion with User:Parkwells at Talk:William J. Sneed#Freedmen/former slaves, they convinced me that this is wrong, because the Freedmen's Bureau was established after the Civil War. We may need to rephrase the short description at the top of Category:American freedmen to include all American former slaves, recategorize formerly enslaved Americans currently categorized in Category:Former slaves like Elias Polk, and keep non-US formerly enslaved people there. The other thing is, should we really be using the word 'freedmen' as opposed to 'former slaves' for US individuals? What is the difference in the American context? Parkwells makes the very important point that there were free people of color, who were never enslaved, long before the war. Were they freedmen? User:Drmies, who has created articles about non-US former slaves like Ali Eisami, may be interested in this discussion as well. Sorry this is a creepy/difficult discussion, but an important one. Thank you!Zigzig20s (talk) 21:19, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
I think "Former slaves" is a kind of mother category, and needs to take in anyone who became freed from slavery. Will "Former American slaves" include those who became free during the colonial years? It would seem to include those who became free before and after the Revolution. In the colonies and US, slaves were individually manumitted by masters before and after the Revolution in the 18th century, as well as through the antebellum period, generally by will or deed. In addition, some slaves bought their own freedom from their masters, if they had saved money from being hired out or other means. After slave rebellions, some Southern states restricted manumissions and required individual legislative acts for each one, which effectively nearly ended formal manumissions. Sometimes, unable to free their mixed-race children in the South, some white fathers arranged for them to go to the North with friends or to attend school, such as in the
Healy family of Georgia
, but they were not legally freed until general emancipation by constitutional amendment, long after some of the sons were already studying at schools in the North and even in Paris.
After the Revolution, northern states abolished slavery, some by a gradual basis, which kept some persons enslaved into the 1820s. Under some such new gradual laws, children of enslaved mothers were born free (so were free blacks or free people of color in the general sense), but were required to be apprenticed until they came of age - at varying ages usually for young women and young men. Some adults who were enslaved when such laws were passed did not become free until the very end of the process. These cases would be hard to track unless documented.
The term "freedmen," while technically applies to any person who became free, even by purchasing their own freedom, was generally associated in the US with a specific history, namely, the mass emancipation of millions enslaved African Americans in the South via the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. All freedmen were former slaves, but "freedmen" means something specific as a category that is consistent with consensus in the historic community. Yes, four million African Americans were suddenly all "former slaves", but they were referred to as "freedmen", for whom the Freedmen's Bureau was established.
The free people of color are a unique group. Some mixed-race children were born into slavery if their mothers, whether mixed-race or not, were enslaved, and manumitted by their white fathers, who also freed the mother (thus they would both become "former slaves"). Over time, children born within this growing community of mixed-race ancestry were born free because their mothers were already free. Of course, not all white men freed their mixed-race children, but in New Orleans the system of plaçage developed as a kind of institution in which that frequently took place. Mothers of girls who entered into such relationships with white men often negotiated for freedom (if necessary) and a property settlement to benefit the young woman after the relationship ended. In the Upper South, a number of free families of color descended from unions between white women (who were free and whose children were born free) and African or African-American men in colonial Virginia. This term necessarily refers to the status of some individuals before the Civil War and general emancipation. (I changed some of my comments.) As I mentioned before, there were also free families of color formed by descendants of white women who had unions with Africans or African Americans, especially in the colonial period in the Upper South. They were also free people of color. Parkwells (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Do the "American" categories refer to people in the territory of the future US in both colonial and US times? That should be clarified. I think there are enough notable people for all four categories. A number of free people of color or former slaves were prominent as abolitionists and civil rights activists in the 19th c. and as elected officials in the South during Reconstruction, for instance. Is "Former slaves" international as a mother category? encompassing all those from the US and every other country that had slavery feeding into it?Parkwells (talk) 19:53, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, for example the African one that User:Drmies created a few days ago. He had no connection to America. Or formerly enslaved individuals from Brazil...Zigzig20s (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
Sorry--I wish I had the time and the focus right now to read all over these useful remarks and maybe contribute. The category that Zigzig points at how much work still needs to be done here, and how US-centric (and to some extent UK-centric) all this is. The extent to which much available material was incredibly underdeveloped, and the lack of available material in English and online, was really kind of a shocker. That Ali Eisami didn't have an article is indicative. Drmies (talk) 21:50, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
You're so right. I would be particularly interested in finding out about individuals formerly enslaved in the US South who were brought to Brazil by Confederate losers while it was still legal, then became free. Surely there must be memoirs/sources about them, but they may be in Portuguese. Anyway,
BTW, Parkwells, this is kind of crappy, but I will add a note that should show its relevance even to you; and as for Crowther, the source draws an explicit parallel between the two lives, so this is not irrelevant. Drmies (talk) 21:54, 16 May 2019 (UTC)