Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

See also: WT:CAT and WT:CFD

Category:2020s Mexican television series by genre

I created this category Category:2020s Mexican television series by genre back on March 4 and it shows the error message "Invalid page name. Template:Decade nationality television series category is for use only on category pages whose title is of the form "YYY0s Fooish television series", where YYY0s is a 4-digit decade and "Fooish" is a nationality (e.g. "South African" or "Japanese")." Can someone figure this out? Did I do something wrong or does the header templates not recognize 2020s series by genre? WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: It's nothing to do with the decade, nor with the nationality. The problem is the suffix "by genre". If you look at any of the other five "2020s Fooian television series by genre" subcategories of Category:2020s television series by genre you'll see that they all use {{Navseasoncats}} as does Category:2000s Mexican television series by genre. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Got it. I added the Navseasoncats. Thanks for the insight. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 18:36, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Black people in art depopulation

I just noticed this [1] edit. @Dancing Dollar, I see you're making many similar edits.[2][3] Why is emptying Category:Black people in art a good idea? I don't see the sense of it. And other editors, do you agree it's a good idea? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:31, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

No, it's a terrible idea. All these should be rolled back, and the editor probably banned. Johnbod (talk) 16:50, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I was surprised...the category seemed useful, to me, appeared to have ~180 entries. I looked for some discussion but couldn't find one. I assume Dancing Dollar had a rationale, because they asked me why I thought the category was useful. Valereee (talk) 18:17, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

There are around 200 recategorisations here that should be reverted ASAP. I am assuming WP:GOODFAITH here and surmise that Dancing Dollar just got a bit carried away with AWB and made a mass change that seemed like a good idea at the time. A gentle warning should suffice. Cnbrb (talk) 20:01, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: it looks like the user is now self-reverting in response to the discussion. No major damage done, we can all move on. Cnbrb (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Glad to see this reversion - I'd already reverted the one change which showed up on my watchlist. PamD 20:16, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Yup. WP-categories are their own special little world. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:55, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I hope so. Just for future reference, if you don't like a category for some reason, put it up at WP:CFD for deletion, merging, renaming or just discussion. We are actually very poor at dealing with out of process emptying, which circumvents all our processes, & should be strongly resisted. Using AWB as an excuse isn't adequate imo. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

See Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Nothing about categories there. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:08, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

People categorized by nationalities that didn't exist during their lifetime

Olaudah Equiano is in Nigerian people categories, but Nigeria didn't exist until long after his death. Is this permitted? I assume it is permitted for names which were in use before the modern state existed, like "China" or "Germany", but I don't know what is preferred in a situation like this. (Did the name "Nigeria" exist in the 18th century?) —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 03:25, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Conside Barum woman from about 7,000 BCE: I think it's reasonable to include her in Category:Swedish women. I think we can allow "Category:Fooian people" to include "People from the area which is currently Foo" - though I don't know quite how we handle the many Europeans who have lived in several different countries without moving house, as borders have changed around them. PamD 06:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we normally accept, or we should, that Germany and Italy existed as well-understood geographical & linguistic entities long before politics caught up, and in Eastern Europe etc generally allow for more than one option. I don't think "Nigeria" was a concept in the 18th century, but that's still ok. Johnbod (talk) 02:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

@Lights and freedom For instance, I created the Category:Assassinated politicians from countries that no longer exist, because large empires span many current countries for example (I don't know if the powers that be will delete it though). In other cases I have categorized them in existing countries if their former realms were entirely contained in said countries. Be advised I am kind of new to categorization and I haven't exactly received a warm welcome. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:20, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not ideal, but in the absence of a category that would actually encompass whatever else he was, categorizing him as "Nigerian" on the basis that he was from an area that constitutes part of Nigeria now is certainly better than not categorizing him as anything at all. Bearcat (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Strange misuse of WikiProject categories

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T338360

I've been coming across a recurring issue of late which I wanted to bring to the WikiProject's attention. I've previously posted about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France, but got no response there,

For the past several months, there have been at least two or three cases per week of Category:WikiProject Europe articles and Category:WikiProject France articles showing up (virtually always together) on mainspace, draft or user sandbox articles instead of on the talk pages. Now, obviously, established Wikipedians know how those categories work and would never do that at all — but by and large, these articles are created by new users, and it's rarely if ever the same new user twice.

But it's incredibly unlikely that genuinely new users would even know about the existence of WikiProject categories in the first place, and even more unlikely that so many different new users would repeat the same error over and over again all by themselves unless they were somehow being told that they were supposed to do that. No other WikiProject category ever sees this happen anywhere near as often; Belgium occasionally shows up in the polluted category reports but usually does not (and if it does, it's inevitably also paired with WikiProject Europe on the same page), and it's exceedigly rare for any other "WikiProject [projectname] articles" category to ever show up there at all, but Europe and France have become categories I have to check daily for misfiled articles. (There isn't always a page there every time, but it happens frequently enough that I can never just let it slide a day without checking.) The French Wikipedia does not, as far as I can tell, place WikiProject categories on articles, so this isn't simply a carry-over from established French-Wikipedia practice either. So really the only thing I can think of is that some kind of documentation somewhere is somehow giving new editors the mistaken impression that those categories belong on the articles.

So does anybody have any ideas about this, and how we can make it stop? Bearcat (talk) 20:13, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Any idea if it's the same editor(s)?

My other thought is that it could be automated tools mis-set, or gone awry... - jc37 20:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

The most recent one is Draft:Ziak (rapper), right? That user looks like they've been around for almost a year, but the categories they added aren't from the French article they say they translated from. Does French Wikipedia have a policy of putting project categories on drafts? Or is WP:CXT somehow doing that?

The other possibility that springs to mind (which is why I haven't tagged the user here) is that it's a sock adding categories to articles that are promotional or have had spam links added to them, to make those pages more likely to be found. Not that adding project categories would help that, but spammers often also do ineffective things first to test if they'll be detected. - car chasm (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

There are several categorisation tools, such as HotCat, and I think that AWB can also add cats. Perhaps one of these works from an incorrect list, or is not correctly detecting whether a cat is appropriate for mainspace or not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Both HotCat and AWB could still really only add categories that the user of HotCat or AWB knows about — they don't add categories all by themselves, they add categories that a user manually programs them to add. So that wouldn't really account for the problem at all, because the categories are still only there if a human user actively put them there. Bearcat (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I didn't say that HotCat and AWB were the culprits, I said that it could be a categorisation tool, and gave HotCat and AWB as ecamples of tools that exist. There are others, and as noted below, ContentTranslation is high on the list of suspects.

As a parallel, there are tools that add WikiProject banners to talk pages, and at least two of these (I think that one of them is called Rater) works from a predefined list, and if that list gets out of date (such as by a WikiProject template being deleted at TfD), the tool can still add that WikiProject to talk pages, which then gain a redlink instead of a banner. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:39, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I can't categorically state that it's never been the same editor twice, but it's usually been a different editor each time I've seen it, generally a brand new one with little or no prior edit history (although Ziak obviously proves that that's not always the case either). Socking had occurred to me, but the problem is that since there's generally one or two articles each time I see this, but then I move on and do other things, the incidents become a lot harder to find again in my edit history in order to collect them for an SPI check. (It would be so helpful if there were a way for me to search my contribution history for specific edit summaries I may have used!) Ziak was a draft, yes, but this doesn't only hit drafts, and also hits mainspace articles sometimes as well.

I'm not sure the French Wikipedia even has draftspace, to be honest — certainly if I go to WP:AFC and click on its French interlang, I don't get taken to an "Articles pour création" queue filled with "drafts", but to a page for requesting review of userspace sandbox pages. Bearcat (talk) 12:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, the French Wikipedia does not appear to have a draft namespace. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I just confirmed that these categories come from ContentTranslation and filed phab:T338360 * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

So if the French article has portal links on it that seem to match up with a WikiProject category, then it "translates" the portal into the WikiProject category. That makes perfect sense, and almost certainly explains what's been happening. Seems odd that this would only happen for French translations and virtually never for anything else, but such is life sometimes. Thanks for the catch! Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Input requested

Hi. I posted a question at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization#Category size question. If someone knows the answer it would be great. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 02:25, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Please don't post on multiple talk pages with the same question within a day of each other. The answer to your question can be found on WP:CATEGORIZATION, a page that you should consider reading thoroughly. - car chasm (talk) 03:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

@Carchasm: Thinker78 has not posted on multiple talk pages with the same question, so far as I can tell. They posted on one page, and left the above note directing people to that page. This is permitted by WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:43, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Assassinated American politicians by state

Hello. I was planning on creating the tree Category:Assassinated American politicians by state (under Category:Assassinated American politicians) and populate it with subcategories like Category:Assassinated California American politicians. My intention is for subcategories not about politicians born or resident of a given state but who were serving or served a jurisdiction in the given state. But given that some of my created categories have proved controversial and been subject to CfDs, I decided to ask for opinions on the matter beforehand. Thoughts? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Categories views

I noticed that the Category:Assassinated American politicians doesn't get many views. Maybe an average of 5 daily. At first I was thinking it could be that the term is not searched much in engines. According to Google Books Ngram Viewer, there are no valid ngrams to plot. According to Google Trends, there is not enough data to show. One would be inclined to conclude that the search term is at fault.

But then I also noticed that the List of assassinated American politicians in contrast has an average of more than 200 views daily. Then my question is, why the difference in views? How do people land in the list more than in the category page? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 22:03, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Smallcat discussion

There is a discussion concerning changing the text and minimums of WP:SMALLCAT at Wikipedia_talk:Overcategorization#Definitions_of_WP:SMALLCAT,_potential_for_growth,_and_unpopulated_categories. - jc37 16:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Various category problems

I've come across many different category problems within tennis-related articles (though similar problems exist in other categories too). Here are some examples:

• Category:2004_WTA_Tour - duplicate categorisation - for example 2004 Italian Open (tennis) is in Category:2004 Italian Open (tennis) and also in Category:Italian Open (tennis). It's also in Category:2004 ATP Tour and so is its parent category
• Category:2018_Japan_Open_Tennis_Championships - the doubles are categorised under D, but the singles are categorised under R (for Rakuten presumably)
• WTA_Taiwan_Open is in Category:WTA_Tour and so is its parent Category:WTA Taiwan Open
• Category:2015_PBZ_Zagreb_Indoors - category keys not set, so the articles are listed under 2015.
• Category:U.S._National_Indoor_Championships - category keys all over the place - some articles listed by year, some by D for doubles or S for singles, one by K for Kroger.

Each of these examples is a just a representative of many similar occurrences. All of these problems can be fixed manually of course, but there are so many of them, and finding them and fixing them is a very labour-intensive process. Any suggestions on how to simplify or automate or semi-automate the process of identifying such problems and of fixing them?. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

• @Colonies Chris: with many articles having the same issue, WP:AWB can be of help. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:19, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm a long-time AWB user, but these sorts of issues don't fit well with AWB's capabilities. For example, detecting which articles have categories which duplicate a parent, or those where the category keys are missing, wrong or inconsistent between articles. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Tool exist?

Hello, is there a tool that, given a category that's well-populated on another language wiki, quickly populate the enwiki version of the category with articles that exist on both language wikis?

E.g. Category A on jawiki contains 100 pages and I just created the same category on enwiki, and I want to add all the pages that exist on both wikis to the enwiki version. toobigtokale (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Heads of government versus prime ministers

I notice we do not only have Category:Heads of government but also Category:Prime ministers. The biggest difference that I noticed is that the tree of Category:Heads of government also contains presidents subcats. If that is the main difference indeed I wonder if the heads of government tree is redundant and if we can just keep the presidents and prime ministers tree. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:25, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Nederlandse Leeuw: what do you think? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

It really seems like the head of government categories seem to exist so as to also contain prime ministers, as compared to head of state categories.

I wonder how many of the heads of government subcats could probably be renamed (or possibly split) to fit in one of the other trees. - jc37 06:35, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

With some exceptions, we may just purge presidents subcategories from the tree and rename the remainder from heads of government to prime ministers. For example Category:Assassinated heads of government and Category:15th-century heads of government already exclude heads of state. The challenge is in the many top level categories in the tree, but after we tackle the lower layers that should become more easy too. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:46, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes. I was just being less specific about it : )

Depending on the category it could probably be a rename/merge in one direction or other. - jc37 07:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

@Marcocapelle @Jc37 I also favour just calling heads of government who weren't also simultaneously heads of state (like the POTUS or some other president) "prime ministers". Some countries like Germany and Austria prefer calling them "chancellor" etc. but "prime minister" or "premier (ministre)" (or "first minister" in Scotland and Canada, or "chief minister" in Sierra Leone) are by far the most common titles for this office. List of spouses of heads of government provides a handy overview.

Marcocapelle and I already discussed this in May 2023 on my talk page at User talk:Nederlandse Leeuw/Archive 2#Spouses of national leaders, leading to the Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 May 13#Category:Lists of spouses of national leaders CfS on 13 May 2023; Marco already created Category:Spouses of prime ministers on 12 May 2023‎, and we split off Category:Lists of spouses of prime ministers on 26 June 2023.

Although in some countries the head of state (president or monarch) is largely a ceremonial position and less powerful than the prime minister (e.g. the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria etc.), while in other countries the prime minister is clearly subordinate to the head of state (president or monarch; e.g. France, Thailand, PR of China etc.), we may assume that in countries where the president is both head of state and head of govt, the head of state function is the more important one. (E.g. being commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces arguably falls under the head-of-state Powers of the president of the United States; this is not something that they need to agree on with other ministers in their government, let alone Congress, although he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments.)

I think it was established in an earlier CFD, if I am not mistaken actually the 2010 CFD nominated by BHG, that we shouldn't categorise presidents as "heads of government" if they are also already heads of state, the presumption being that the latter is the more important function. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:12, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmm I can't find it at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 27, so maybe that decision was made somewhere else.

Anyway, as I said on my talk page: I was thinking I could also BOLDly create Category:Lists of spouses of prime ministers (as a child of Category:Spouses of prime ministers) already? Or should I wait with that? Some people may object that not all heads of government are called "prime minister", even though like 95% are. The advantage of calling every head of govt who isn't simultaneously head of state a "prime minister" is that there can be no confusion whether it also includes presidents who are also head of govt. It won't. That clarity is what we should strive for.

Marco and I indirectly agreed on that later: At this point I'm in doubt whether we need Category:Spouses of heads of government by country, because Category:Spouses of prime ministers/Category:Spouses of prime ministers by country seem to already cover this purpose, and not in need of a "heads of government" parent. Its parent Category:Spouses of heads of government still hasn't been created, even though Category:Spouses of heads of state has following yesterday's split. @Marcocapelle are you still planning to do that? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:44, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

No, I agree that Category:Spouses of prime ministers suffices. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:49, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:29, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I think maybe there is far more than prime ministers in history. No need to circumscribe the category only to modern countries or the history of industrialized nations. Who were the heads of government of the Aztec Empire for example? What about polities in ancient Muslim societies? The Roman and Greek republics? The Persian Empire? Ancient African nations? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:28, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

• @Thinker78: except for Athens and Rome the answer is simple, the monarch was the government. Neither in Athens nor in Rome there was an office "head of government". Marcocapelle (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

  There is no office "head of government" in the USA either. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:41, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Disagree. Head of Government is a good general name for heads of government, particularly those who aren't head of state. Depending on the system, a president could be a head of state or a head of government and head of state. I think it is a mistake to rename to "prime minister" heads of government with other titles. Newystats (talk) 05:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I just realized this is about heads of government and not assassinated heads of government. If you see the actual category it is populated with many pages besides prime ministers and presidents. Therefore, I don't agree with the proposal. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 19:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Fractions in category names

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Fractions in category names. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Black markets by country

 Courtesy link: Talk:Black market in wartime France#Other countries

Although we have Category:Black markets, "Surely there were black markets in other countries?" (quoted from the link). Shouldn't we have, Category:Black markets by country under that? Please advise. Mathglot (talk) 23:06, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth § Should SmallCat continue to be a guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth § Should SmallCat continue to be a guideline. A smart kitten (talk) 11:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Question

What is the protocol for categories that only have one page in them? While doing some work for WP:Louisiana I noticed someone create a new category for something that only has one page that could go inside. Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer features the information for former coaches which in turn is in the catevory created today that I am concerned about is "Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters soccer coaches".

Ktkvtsh (talk) 23:00, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

"Template:R from deadname" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Template:R from deadname has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 30 § Template:R from deadname until a consensus is reached.

I’m notifying WP:CATP as one of the options is to turn Template:R from deadname into its own rcat, which would then result in the creation of Category:Redirects from deadnames or similar. Best, A smart kitten (talk) 17:45, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

"We Didn't Start the Fire" Category

I was thinking about creating a category for events mentioned in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire," but I can definitely see how that could be considered trivial. Certainly the election of Harry Truman is not most notable for its inclusion in a Billy Joel song, but there are song events that are arguably best remembered for their inclusion in the song (Syringe Tide comes to mind). I feel that this could be a useful category, but would like others' input. Remainsuncertain (talk) 21:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)