Wikipedia:User categorisation

For the User Check, see Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser (WP:CHECK).

This is a new Wikiproject dedicated to revamping the system by which users may categorize themselves. In the past (and partially for now until the new system is entirely in place) user categorization has been accomplished through hundreds of unsorted lists that are growing very large in some cases and are almost entirely unmanageable. The English Wikipedia is one of the few still using this defunct system. It has been proposed (and is currently being implemented) that these lists be replaced by a system of organised categories. Thus was spawned the WikiProject for User Categorisation.

The old system

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Note: this information is outdated

Visit Wikipedia:Wikipedians to see the old system of categorisation. There is an extremely large and unwieldy Wikipedia:Alphabetical list of Wikipedians list, and many subpages for listing by region (for example, Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Argentina). These pages are entirely unsorted, voluntary listings that do not automatically reflect on user pages. They do offer annotation, which in the new system will be reserved for individual user pages (as it should be). The issue of being able to sub-categorise within countries and states has been raised, but there is no problem! Simply create sub-categories within the state you wish to break up (for example, in Canada, or large states like California there is good cause to create many sub-categories).

The new system

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The 'master' category is Category:Wikipedians, with the bulk of the changes being made through its sub-category Category:Wikipedians by location which will eventually replace all of the regional listings through Wikipedia:Wikipedians. This will allow for the replacement of many unwieldy, unsorted voluntary-listing pages and also allow that categories a user is added to will reflect on their user page, which would not happen under the old system of lists.

Participants

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Please list yourself here if you are going to help work on this project. Some users have had their names added by others because of large contributions.

How to help

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See To-do below for detailed list of pages that need attention.

Thanks to all who lend a hand! To follow progress, please visit Wikipedia:Wikipedians and its subpages, where more instructions are temporarily provided according to the specific page.

The instructions on this page are also always open to clarification by anybody willing to help!

Creating new categories

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If there are subsections within these pages, they should be reflected by sub-categories to the category that will be replacing the parent pages.

See below on how to populate the new category.

Every user category page should use one of the Usercat templates to insert a standard message to the category description.

Most pages will want to use Template:Usercat:

{{Usercat|Albania|.}}

This inserts a standard message like this:


This page is replacing Wikipedians/Albania. See User categorisation for more information.

Classification: Wikipedians | By location | Albania

Wikipedians who live in or are associated with Albania.

To add yourself to this list, insert the following on your user page:

[[Category:Wikipedians in Albania|{{PAGENAME}}]]

The third argument, in this case a period, is added to the end of the description, so you can add regional noticeboard links, etc.

For subcategories, use one of the Usercat-x templates, where x is a number. An example:

{{Usercat-1|Alberta|Canada|Canadian Wikipedians|Canada|.}}

The arguments are: Country name, the Wikipedia:Wikipedians subpage the category is replacing, the parent category link, the parent category visible link part (i.e. the parent country name) and the description, as in Usercat.

The Usercat-x templates with x bigger than 1 use a similar style for arguments, with the first, second and last being the same, and the arguments in the middle being parents in different levels (i.e. China | People's Republic of China | Mainland China).

Populating existing categories

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  1. Make sure that the new category page is using one of the Usercat template as described above in Creating new categories.
  2. Visit the page that is being replaced (some of the new categories listed below do not have a page they are replacing, but the category page itself still needs formatting). The link to the left is generally the one being replaced.
    1. If there are subsections to that page they warrant the creation of new subcategories (for example, on Wikipedia:Wikipedians/New York, there is an explicit New York City section that warrants a sub-category to Category:Wikipedians in New York (state)). If those subcats are not listed, they should be added to the list below until somebody adds them to help the community work out issues.
    2. Visit the user pages listed and leave them a message on their talk page with this contents: {{Usercat_msg|country|category}}, where country is the country page the user was listed on and category is the new category that is replacing the list. This way, users can choose themselves whether they want to add their names to the category system or not, instead of rudely editing their user pages. Remember, you still have to sign the edit.
    3. After the above two steps have been done, the page should be entirely erased except for a notice stating that the page has been replaced by the category (redirects to categories don't work correctly because of a bug in the MediaWiki software). Use an edit summary like Removed and redirected as part of [[Wikipedia:User categorisation]]., so if someone is watching the page, they won't get a knee-jerk reaction to revert. Use this notice:
 This page has been replaced by [[:Category:Wikipedians in Acadia]].
  1. Once those steps are completed, the list below should be modified to reflect the completion by striking (<s>striking</s>) the replaced link and making the finished category bold ('''bold''').

To-do

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Regional pages

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The link on the left is a subpage of Wikipedia:Wikipedians that is to be replaced by its right-hand counterpart, which is a sub-category of Category:Wikipedians by location.

Category:Wikipedians in Belize

Other conversions

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Categories to remove

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There are some duplicates and misc. other such garbage lying around that needs to be taken care of at some point. If you are an administrator, it would be greatly appreciated if you would consider deleting some of the pages listed below. Also, if anyone sees red links in the left column, the line can be removed. Thanks!

Categories named differently from others

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It has not been agreed what to name these, but they are different, and should be renamed once a consensus on naming style has been achieved (see Wikipedia_talk:Category_titles).

Use Usercat templates

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Alphabetical sections, mark bold when everything under that section is using the Usercat templates (except those listed below):

#A #B #C #D #E #F #G #H #I #J #K #L #M #N #O #P #Q #R #S #T #U #V #W

These don't have Wikipedia:Wikipedians subpages, so can't use templates on them while a link to that is shown.

These need to do country link disambiguation:

These pages (and several others) need to handle several parents.

Cleanup

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The pages we are replacing will need some cleaning up as things come along. For example, the Wikipedia:Wikipedians page has the full listing of countries with links to its subpage lists and also accompanying links to the new categories. This should eventually be cleaned up to reflect the new system so that the page doesn't look like such a mess (that is it should simply refer to Category:Wikipedians by location rather than having a huge list of pages). For now, however, it might make sense to leave the list up as a reflection of the progress being made here. That said, as things are completed through this project, the changes should be noted not only here, but in the appropriate page where the old list was linked.

It will also be a good idea to check out the What links here pages and try to correct any links to pages such as Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Acadia by replacing them with a link to the new category, in this example Category:Wikipedians in Acadia. This will help from creating such a chaotic mess of dysfunctional links while this project is still in progress.

Please see Wikipedia:User categorisation/link cleanup for this.