User talk:andrybak

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Categories by 2 parameters

Hi, re [1], you're welcome of course. But – "Commons and Wikipedia schemes again, which are opposites of each other" – I was not aware of that difference before.

What a mess! Commons:Category:Categories by country by subject has some that are named "by country by subject" and others named "by subject by country" – the mixture doesn't look as if it can be right by any scheme. Commons:Category:Categories by subject by country starts again with a mixture named both ways round, and then it has the set beginning "Categories of Afghanistan by subject‎" – as you say, the opposite of enwiki usage. Is that scheme firmly established on Commons, then? – Fayenatic London 22:00, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

@Fayenatic london, yes, as far as my experience on Commons has shown this is the most commonly used scheme. When writing my reply at CFD/S, I went to Category:People by posture by country and Category:People by country by posture to confirm. Although exceptions exists, e.g. People by nationality and occupation and location uses "and"s with opposite direction of parsing.

To be honest, I like the Commons scheme more. Their scheme is left-associative. With parentheses added for clarity one is supposed to read the names of categories as Category:(People by posture) by country and Category:(People by country) by posture – the first "by" gets higher operator precedence than the second. This makes it easier to parse the names of categories – just take the rightmost attribute and categorize by it. In Wikipedia's scheme one needs to find the "by" in the middle of the category name and read from there – a much harder task than just taking the last word in the name (in rare cases, a phrase, such as "country of origin" and "country of location"). Wikipedia's scheme can't be easily clarified with the aid of parentheses.

Commons sometimes has to use more than two parameters. Examples: Category:((People by name) by country) by occupation, Category:(((Beam bridges by function) by country) by material) by type. —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

As a follow up, I found a relevant guideline on Commons that is marked as historical, but is still linked from the header of c:Category:Meta categories (aka container categories here on enwiki). —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Thinking about it more, I think my mathematical metaphor breaks down depending on how one thinks about categorization – bottom-up (clumping things similar in some way together) or top-down (splitting big groups into smaller ones by a chosen attribute). In any case, for Commons, it would be better to include the word "Category:" in the parentheses too:

1. (Category:People by posture) by country
2. ((Category:People by name) by country) by occupation
3. (((Category:Beam bridges by function) by country) by material) by type

—⁠andrybak (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

@Fayenatic london, I hope my ramblings make sense. I've tried to fix miscategorizations on Commons that you've pointed out as best as I could. In both categories the word "Categories" in the name is basically another hidden "by <attribute>", but the two categories peel their attributes in different order.

The bigger of the two: c:Category:Categories by subject by country – the alphabetical list in this category splits "by country" first: from Afghanistan till Yemen. But then a level deeper the words "Categories of" is taken out, e.g. c:Category:Categories of the United States by subject goes from altars ... by subject till videos by subject. And at that, third level, the categories are finally split "by subject", e.g. c:Category:Videos from the United States by subject is split into subjects like Armed Forces and transport.

In the smaller c:Category:Categories by country by subject the word "Categories' is taken out first – the category splits into Children/Men/historical images/Awards/Maps, all of which still have both "by"s – "by country by subject". On lower levels these two "by"s are then peeled as I explained in previous messages. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:31, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

O…K! Yes, you have improved the categories that I mentioned; let's hope they now fit the right pattern. After looking at these I'm now getting a brain freeze when I try to think them through! I'll just pin a link to this on my own talk page, and remember that Commons is not the same as enwiki… not at all. – Fayenatic London 21:17, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

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Minor "fixes" on my user page

Hi, I didn't notice until now the "fixes" you made last August on my user page. I'm wondering why you felt it important to do so. Thanks, YoPienso (talk) 04:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Yopienso, hi. In Special:Diff/1105706652 the main goal was the same as in an edit in August of 2019 – Special:Diff/910933298 – to remove incorrect categorization of the user page. The other changes are just wikitext cleanup. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:13, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Neither of the two edits is marked as minor, for the record. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:14, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. I don't understand your reply, however. What does "remove incorrect categorization of the user page" mean? I don't see what needed fixing. I don't see how you improved the encyclopedia. Since I don't understand why you feel your changes were important, they look like minor, picky things. Yet you came back to inform me they weren't minor. ???

Was there something wrong with the userboxes I copied or modified or created? If so, what? If so, what harm was done by my user page? Frankly, I feel invaded. YoPienso (talk) 14:37, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Yopienso, just to make sure we're on the same page:

1. Userboxes are a kind of template. In particular, userboxes are a kind of "user template".
2. Templates can be categorized.
3. Categorization is done using pages in the namespace "Category".
4. Category:Alaska college and university user templates is for user templates about higher education in the state of Alaska, as the name suggests.

Your user page, i.e. the page User:Yopienso, is not a template. As such, it is incorrect for the page User:Yopienso to contain categorization into Category:Alaska college and university user templates or any other category not intended for user pages.

I hope the above answers your questions What does "remove incorrect categorization of the user page" mean? and Was there something wrong with the userboxes I copied or modified or created?. It is a common mistake for editors who copy-paste wikitext of user templates to select too much of the wikitext and paste incorrect categorization into their page.

I understand that it might be hard to see the removal of this categorization in Special:Diff/1105706652, because the edit also includes a lot of wikitext cleanup. Edit summary of my edit is "user page is not a template: removed Category:Alaska college and university user templates using HotCat, cleaned up wikitext" – the last part after the comma is about this cleanup. This wikitext cleanup was done semi-automatically to make the wikitext cleaner.

Since I don't understand why you feel your changes were important – I hope it is obvious that having correct categorization on all pages is important. Otherwise, the whole categorization system will be chaos.

they look like minor, picky things. Yet you came back to inform me they weren't minor. ??? – the phrase "minor edit" has a very specific meaning on English Wikipedia. In my message – Neither of the two edits is marked as minor, for the record. – I meant this technical, specific to Wikipedia, meaning of the word "minor".

As for Frankly, I feel invaded – correcting such errors on user pages of other editors is allowed by the guidelines.

For more details, please see the pages that I've linked. I'll gladly answer any questions if you have any. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:38, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm assuming the answer lies buried somewhere in this: "Your user page, i.e. the page User:Yopienso, is not a template. As such, it is incorrect for the page User:Yopienso to contain categorization into Category:Alaska college and university user templates or any other category not intended for user pages." I'm mildly interested in understanding how my page offended--not least to avoid making an error in the future--but your explanation doesn't tell me how. The history of the Category:Alaska college, etc. page doesn't show my name or use page ever having been there. I honestly don't understand at all why you felt obliged to edit my page. The diff shows you removing blank spaces. Way too picky, imo. Anyway, thank you, I guess, for saving us from chaos. YoPienso (talk) 13:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm mildly interested in understanding how my page offended--not least to avoid making an error in the future--but your explanation doesn't tell me how.

Yopienso, it seems that you are not familiar with how categorization works in MediaWiki. Please consult the page Help:Category and Wikipedia:FAQ/Categorization.

To see the wikitext that was causing the issue on your userpage, please go to the page Special:Diff/1105706652, use the "Find on page" or similar functionality in your browser and search for Category:Alaska college and university user templates. First search result would be in my edit summary and in the second search result you will see the line where the incorrect categorization was removed.

To avoid such errors in the future, please pay closer attention to what kind of wikitext you are copying and which categories appear at the bottom of your userpage (see screenshot at Help:Categories).

The history of the Category:Alaska college, etc. page doesn't show my name or use page ever having been there.

Due to the way categorization is implemented, one cannot see the history of categorization on the page of the category. The problematic wikitext was in your userpage. It was introduced in your edit: Special:Diff/1097120261.

I honestly don't understand at all why you felt obliged to edit my page.

Because your userpage is not a template, as I mentioned in the edit summary of Special:Diff/1105706652. If you look at the top of the page Category:Alaska college and university user templates, you will see a banner with text: Templates relating to Alaska colleges and universities. The pages listed in this category are meant to be user templates, including userboxes. Your userpage does not belong in a category for templates. Examples of pages that don't belong in that category:

• User:Yopienso, User talk:Yopienso, Main Page — because they are not userboxes, they aren't even templates
• Template:University of Alaska Fairbanks – a template about a university in Alaska, but it is not a userbox
• Template:User Alaska – a userbox about Alaska, but not about a university or college
• Template:User MIT — a userbox about a university or college, but one that is located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, not in the state of Alaska

Examples of pages that do belong in that category:

• Template:User UAAnchorage
• User:L'Aquatique/Userboxes/UAA
• Template:User UAFairbanks/GradStudent

Using appropriate categories on pages is one of the main principles of the guideline Wikipedia:Categorization. Editors who use the category system to search for userboxes about colleges and universities in Alaska would be surprised to find the page User:Yopienso in the Category:Alaska college and university user templates. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:43, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Categorisation Barnstar
		For your work on properly categorizing the templates on Wikipedia, something very little attention is often given to. Your work is noticed and appreciated greatly! Johnson524 (Talk!) 04:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Andrybak, I hope you're doing well. I'm not sure if you like barnstars or not, but after seeing your amazing amount of recent categorization work, I felt it would only be right to show my appreciation in some way more than a simple 'thanks'. Thank you for all you do, cheers! Johnson524 (Talk!) 04:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Muisca people

A tag has been placed on Category:Muisca people indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)