Wikipedia talk:Categorization

See also: Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

Preventing othering with non-diffusing categories

User:Clovermoss added [1] on January 17 the following clause (in blue text) to the non-diffusing categories section: Subcategories defined by gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality should almost always be non-diffusing subcategories to prevent othering. with the edit summary: being bold and giving a reason for why this rule exists. I reverted it today, and PamD reverted my reversion. Note that the green text was already there; Clovermoss just added their reason.

I don't think this should be here. A single user can't come up with a reason for a preexisting rule, and this reason is not exactly strong. We don't design content structures on Wikipedia to "prevent othering"; we do it to organize content in a way that is meaningful and navigable. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 19:36, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I'll note that the ruling at WP:GHETTO explains that a person should not be categorized only by ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability, without also being placed in other more general categories. In almost all cases, such categories should be non-diffusing. This wording is much better and doesn't point at any lofty ambitions (like avoiding otherizing people). ꧁Zanahary꧂ 19:50, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

If the goal were merely "to organize content in a way that is meaningful and navigable" then this rule would not be necessary. In fact the reason for making these sorts of categories non-diffusing is pretty much as Clovermoss stated, to prevent othering. Perhaps you might try pondering why the abbreviation for your link is "WP:GHETTO". —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I haven't come up with anything new here, there's a long history and some ANI threads that took place about this very issue. I could try to try to find links if you don't want to just take my word for it. But that's genuinely the reason why this is one of the few circumstances where categories are universally non-diffusing. This is even a matter that received outside media attention in places like Invisible Women. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:37, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I’d love to see those links, thank you! What would you think of making the prose here better match WP:GHETTO? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 01:45, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

@Zanahary: I think the phrasing I used is already in line with the spirit of that and is less offensive than saying the name of the section you linked. It's possible this is a cultural difference but using the word "ghetto" to describe a concept tends to be very offensive where I live. I think linking to othering gets the point across much better and is also concise.

Regarding examples in the past, I found this one: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive796#The CfD result regarding American women novelists ignored at Amanda Filipacchi. There's discussions linked within it and is probably the most "notable" historical context I can give. I think I could find other threads if you truly want to read them, though. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:05, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I don’t intend to use the word ghetto. Thanks for the link; I’ll draft something soon. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 05:06, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Based upon the above, I think the whole "final rung" section from WP:CAAP probably should be merged to WP:CAT#NON-DIFFUSE in some way, possibly as a subsection. It seems to me that it could apply to more topics than merely articles about people. But to do that, I think we may need to look closer at that section and think about the underlying reasons about what we are trying to do and to not do there. And if that means a complete re-write, so be it. But I sincerely would like to see what others think about this. - jc37 18:25, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

The final-rung rule even as written is too little used. It should be regularly invoked to upmerge categories at CfD, and should not be ignorance by finding sources that support the category. If American women science writers is a final rung, no amount of reliable source coverage of American women science writers as a group should be able to overcome its violation of our basic guidelines. That said, the non-diffusimg rules are complex and take quite some time to learn. Some of the stuff above uses overly harsh language to attack those who at times do not fully follow them in a clear failure of the general guidelines to assume good faith. We need to avoid language that comes off attacking editors for their sincere and well-meanimg attempts to build a coherent and usable Category system.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:46, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

Section name

I'll admit that I haven't been comfortable that our guideline on this uses the phrasing of wikt:ghetto.

We also have final rung, which isn't the best either, as categories are more trees than ladders.

I see that othering is also a proposed wording.

Are there any other suggestions for what to call the section, that could be useful? - jc37 18:25, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

The edit being discussed above was actually about WP:DUPCAT. The link to the diff is broken so I'll place it here [2]. Those fews words are what Zanahary tried to remove before being reverted by another editor. That said, I already expressed my misgivings about the name of that other section above. I'm trying to go on a wikibreak of undetermined length, so if this is something you feel strongly about, I'm probably not going to be of much help. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:56, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Categorizing incidents as Massacre, Mass Murder, Murder, Crime, or Terrorism?

It feels like there has been some pretty transparent POV pushing in systematically putting attacks made by Israel into categories for "massacre", "mass murder", and "crime" I've been cleaning some of it up and I've been very conservative with my approach.  I've only removed these categories if the article and it's sources make no mention at all of these things.

Now, someone has started reverting my changes.  I took it to talk, and they say that they know what a massacre is and thus they can categories things as massacres irrespective of what sources say.  They rejected an argument that this violates WP:OR.  I don't want to get into an edit war, so do you have thoughts on how to proceed?

That discussion is here:  Talk:October_2024_Deir_al-Balah_mosque_bombing#Bad_categories

Also in terms of the bar going forward, I think a better approach might be only categorizing things as massacre, murder, crime, or terrorism only if at least one SECONDARY sources has labelled them as such. A single person being interviewed saying "That was a massacre" or the IDF spokesperson saying "That was terrorism" shouldn't be enough to justify "massacre" or "terrorism" categories.  Thoughts?

P.S. The RFC page seemed to indicate that I should start here before creating a RFC. -- Bob drobbs (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Update, someone shared the Wikipedia:Categorization#Verifiable page with me. It seems to give a lot of clarity in cases like this:

Verifiable: "It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories"

Neutral: "... Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial; if the category's topic is likely to spark controversy, then a list article (which can be annotated and referenced) is probably more appropriate."

Defining: "Defining characteristics of an article's topic are central to categorizing the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently refer to[1] in describing the topic..."

Based on these standards it seems very clear that no one should be using categories like "mass murder" unless it's very clear from a preponderance of the sources that the incident is mass murder. Bob drobbs (talk) 23:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Yidan Prize

I am doing paid work for the Yidan Prize Foundation, so will someone please create both of:

• Category:Yidan Prize for Education Research laureates
• Category:Yidan Prize for Education Development laureates

(or combining those, create Category:Yidan Prize laureates ) and apply them (or give the go-ahead for me to apply them) to all their respective winners listed at Yidan Prize.

With a cash prize of HK$15 million and a project fund of HK$15 million, as well as a gold medal, the prize is surely as deserving of a category as, say, Category:Lorentz Medal winners and Category:Nobel laureates in Physics - I note that both of the latter are used on Carl Wieman, who is also a Yidan Prize laureate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:15, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done. Created at Category:Yidan Prize laureates, since there are only a dozen or so recipients. I don't know if I chose the best parent category; categorization is not my strong suit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:15, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I've added Category:Award winners by subject, and applied to to all the relevant articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:43, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I've removed that parent category as inappropriate. The subcats of that category are, just so, subjects: agriculture and food, arts, aviation, human rights, translation, etc. I think that Recipients of the National Book Prize, United Nations award winners and Wikimedians of the Year also stand out as not being analogous to the others. I think that there being only three like that when literally every other of thousands of series of awards comparable to them is not included there highlights that they're out of place.

I think the problem is that Category:Education awards should be paralleled by Category:Education award winners, which would be an appropriate subcat under Category:Award winners by subject. Then the Yidan winners category would go under that. Largoplazo (talk) 16:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Largoplazo. I had the same thought before I saw your reply. I have created that category (Education award winners) and sorted out the categorization, I think. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:38, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

"Defining" contradiction

Two things about Wikipedia:Categorization#Categorizing articles:

1. The bulleting of the fourth item in the list is illogical. The list continues from "In general, categories of articles must be:". So, categories of articles must be verifiable; they must be neutral; they must be defining; and ... they must be "for non-defining characteristics ..."? No, this is just an elaboration related to the third item, it should be connected to it.
2. The reason I didn't just fix it myself is because I think even more needs to be done, so for now I've left it as is. The issues: We just got through saying that applied categories must be defining, and then immediately say (paraphrasing) "Using your judgment in selecting non-defining categories". So which is it: categories must be defining or they don't have to be defining? Also, the admonition to use our judgment specifically when assigning non-defining categories implies that we don't need to use our judgment when assigning defining categories. I think we're meant to use our judgment regardless.

Largoplazo (talk) 10:27, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see how that bullet is confusing. I think it is trying to say that there are occasional exceptions to “defining” (ie there are a few cats that are non-defining)… I have taken a stab at clarifying (in a bold edit… Feel free to revert). Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Ok… I was reverted… let’s discuss. Blueboar (talk) 21:14, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Should biographies go in non-biographical categories

It is pretty clear that biographical categories should only have biographies. I have definitely seen people argue biographies should not go in non-biographical categories. Is this an actual guideline though? I think it should be, because it often ends up opening up a lot more categories. I really think we should A-exclude people from History of location/place categories. Either they are from there, and go in a people from x Category, or it is not defining enough. B-I think we should exclude people from place/location in x year/decade century categories. This just opens up too many categories. We have from categories split by time where justified. 3. I think we should exclude people from eponymous categories for others. Either they are in a category of a defined relationship, family of, students of etc. Or the relationship is too loose to make it reasonable to create a category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:38, 25 May 2025 (UTC)

For context, John Pack Lambert has been indiscriminately removing non-biographical categories from biographies as he comes across them, which results in people whose work is relevant or even essential to the topic of the category no longer being included in those categories or any subcategories. As a concrete example, Jeremiah Horrocks was removed from Category:Transit of Venus, a category which is clearly relevant. I reverted that specific change and I asked him to please stop doing this, as in my opinion it is inappropriate and harmful to Wikipedia, and it turns out that his reason was a (mis)interpretation of this page.

I would like to see this page more explicitly state that it is fine to include pages about people in non-biographical categories, to avoid future confusion. –jacobolus (t) 00:54, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

In general people contribute to a lot of things in their lifetime. Categories are supposed to be defining to the individual. Horrocks was an astronomer and is categorized as such. Most astronomers contribute to many things. Defining them by all of them would lead to an excessive number of categories. I think it is best to define people as astronomers and as available sub-cats.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:33, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

People contribute to many things, so what? People are also members of many arbitrary groups.

Wikipedia's category system is already generally overrun with an excessive overabundance of practically useless categories; the effect of your edits and suggested rule is to reject the most relevant categories automatically in favor of a plethora of weakly relevant categories based on miscellaneous affiliations.

As an example, Isaac Newton is listed under Category:History of calculus, which is a sub-category of Category:Calculus. Neither of those categories is biographical, but the inclusion is very helpful to readers interested in those topics, because Newton is a foundational character. Such a categorization is much more useful than Newton's inclusion in many other categories, e.g. Category:English Christians, which, while explicitly biographical, is absurdly broad including the majority of the population of a whole large country. –jacobolus (t) 04:29, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

The main statement is "keep categories on people seperate". I believe this means that biographies should in almost all cases be only in biographical categories. There may be rare exceptions. However they should in my mind be extremely rare.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:42, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Horrocks is definitely in the latter category. He is overwhelmingly relevant to the Transit of Venus as a category. Also ,by the way, is James Cook. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 11:12, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

If we are going to take this view we should include clear language. Either that or maybe we should make a "Category:People connected with the transit of Venus". Although I am not sure what the best naming of that Category is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 11:55, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Transit of Venus should cover it. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 12:01, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

The existing category is fine, and creating a new one in the middle of this discussion is unhelpful and inappropriate. –jacobolus (t) 13:17, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Biographies are a subset of "all articles", but they're not equivalent to "all other articles". Biography articles, planet articles, mathematics articles, history articles, Pokémon articles, etc. all need to somehow fit together in the same overall category system, and sometimes a category is going to cover multiple of these groupings. CMD (talk) 13:14, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

While we're at it, John Pack Lambert, can you please clean up your own mess by going back over your recent history and self-reverting all of the changes improperly removing "non-biographical" categories from biographies? –jacobolus (t) 13:20, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

I will review my edits to see if any of the people in question really do belong in the categories in question.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:27, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

• This is not the appropriate place to discuss the appropriateness of an existing Category. Since Category:People who studied the transit of Venus exists it should not be unilaterally depopulated. It should be brought to a regular CfD discussion where proper notices and procedures can be followed if people feel it should be merged, deleted or renamed. I also think it is needlessly provocative to call a category someone spent time thinking up the name of "ridiculous".John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:03, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

  The existing category has very few entries, and does not need to be split. Anyone interested in the topic is better served by navigating to one category with ~30 entries rather than several categories with a few each (in the extreme we might imagine adding "Transits of Venus", "Observers of the Transit of Venus", "Artworks named after the Transit of Venus", "Expeditions to observe the Transit of Venus", ... in addition to "People who studied the transit of Venus"). The new category is not necessarily an accurate name, and is very verbose.

  As far as I can tell you split the category as a way to try to enforce your rule about people only belonging to explicitly biographical categories, in response to your removal of people from Category:Transit of Venus being reverted. Since that is under active discussion here (I believe this rule is your own invention based on a misinterpretation of this page), the category creation seems inappropriate pending discussion. If it is established as a consensus rule that people cannot belong to such categories then you should feel free to re-create some kind of awkward "people associated with" category.

  Such a rule would require quite a massive re-categorization effort affecting probably tens of thousands of pages if not more, so should be carefully considered. I think it's a bad idea. –jacobolus (t) 15:25, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

  It is not my misi terpretstion. It is a view widely shared by many editors, the plain meaning of the actual text, and is regularly used to justify the splitting out of People from foo categories when foo categories are not very large. Because so much related to categories happens at the CfD discussion that is where most people focus and this obscure talk page is under reviewed and not a good location to get widespread coverage. I still think we should make best efforts to spill off people from non-biographival categories. I think if we have at least 5 biographies connected with a topic in a defining way we should seek a way to create them as a seperate biographical category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:40, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

  Instead of enforcing your invented rule piecemeal, why don't you make an RFC to that effect and take it to the appropriate place where there will be plenty of eyeballs so you can find out what the community consensus is, somewhere like Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Or if this is already a rule that has been established as community consensus, there should already be a discussion somewhere to that effect; feel free to link it. I am not deeply familiar with historical discussions about categories, but in a brief skim I couldn't find anything like that. –jacobolus (t) 15:50, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

• I think you may be overthinking this. It is not inappropriate to list bio articles within non-bio categories (and vise versa) when the person is strongly connected to that subject. Yes, Sometimes this can be done via sub-categories (“Cat:people who…” or whatever)… but we also need to avoid over categorization (such as creating tiny cats with only one or two articles). Be flexible. The point is to help readers find related articles, and WP:IAR often applies. Blueboar (talk) 16:05, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

  I see your point. I will keep it in mind as I edit. I think if we do not in fact want to always seperate biographical and non-biographical articles we should update the language on categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:07, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Post end of nobility noble titles

Since Italy abolished noble titles in the 1940s and Germany I believe in 1919, should we then exclude people who lived after that time from German nobility and Italoan nobility and its sub-cats. We really have no business placing people in categories for positions and titles that thry did not actually hold.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:34, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

I would create a sub-category. Readers like to know who would hold a title if it were still extant.

Remember that the purpose of categorization is to help readers navigate Wikipedia and find related articles… not to “label” people. Blueboar (talk) 16:32, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

No I think that is an unwise idea. We should not categorize people by titles that do not exist. Titles that do not exist do not define people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:37, 26 May 2025 (UTC)