Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories

See also: WT:CAT and WT:CFD

Alternatives to PetScan?

There seems to be issues with PetScan. Are there alternatives to it? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 05:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Glad to know I wasn’t the only one having issues with it. I thought I must have been using it incorrectly! Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 09:29, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Cirrus search, despite its limitations, has more features than many editors realise. AWB can also produce lists, even if the user has no intention of editing those pages with AWB. For editors familiar with SQL, there are Quarry and {{Database report}}, though both take far longer to code than PetScan. Of course, we have WhatLinksHere. Certes (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm constantly getting the good old ®exp_filter bug (i.e. if PetScan fails, check all the tabs and fields for "®exp_filter") that's still not fixed. 85.76.13.79 (talk) 12:19, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

That bug occurs when one copies the "Link to a pre-filled form...", pastes it into a wikitext or HTML page then views that in a browser (details). Certes (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but it also sometimes happens in other scenarios, too, e.g.:

• 1) I opened https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ (so not a pre-filled url)
• 2) Only filled the fields:

• a) Categories
• b) Depth
• c) Has none of these templates

• 3) Clicked "Do it"
• 4) Search failed and I found the "®exp_filter" in the "Links to" field

85.76.13.79 (talk) 14:03, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

That is surprising. I've not seen that behaviour before, and it doesn't fit the explanation I gave in the details link above. Perhaps there are multiple related bugs. Certes (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Since it's happening to me all the time now, I managed to make a quick video to prove that it happens: https://streamable.com/eltfm4 (link expires in 2 days). 85.76.13.79 (talk) 14:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd suggest reposting these details over at Wikipedia talk:PetScan, and then pinging or user talk messaging its maintainer, User:Magnus Manske. He edited a month ago and is still an admin, so may still be around. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Petscan acting out again

Tracked in github.com
Issue #155

Now the situation of Petscan is worse. Can't even access the tool and there is instead some message, "Wikimedia Cloud Services Error. This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project." Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Possible template to expand underfilled categories.

{{Import from list}}. Sometimes, a list article has more bluelinked entries than a corresponding category. The idea is that this template would be placed on the category page. Thoughts? Mach61 (talk) 02:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

You sort of didn't explain the use of the template. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 18:30, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Circular categories

Category:Fictional doves and pigeons is inside Category:Fictional Columbidae, which is inside Category:Fictional doves and pigeons. Given that "doves and pigeons" is the exact same thing as Columbidae, what should we do? Kk.urban (talk) 03:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

You can submit them for merger at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. Place Clichy (talk) 03:22, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

There are several other loops where A is a subcategory of B and B is a subcategory of A. I've listed them in User:Certes/Reports/Circular categories. In many cases, A and B are identical: for example, Category:1939 in gymnastics is a subcategory of itself. Can I assume that these are mistakes and remove them from themselves (except for esoteric metadata such as Category:Hidden categories which, being a hidden category, is correctly a member of itself)? Certes (talk) 23:36, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Cats that are subcats of themselves are reported at Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories, something that has only recently been updated after a fifteen-month hiatus. At one period, it was run weekly. The way to deal with these is indeed to remove the category from itself, but that's not the only action - you must also ensure that it has at least one appropriate parent category (example). There are a few categories which are intentionally members of themselves - two of these are by design: Category:Hidden categories and Category:Noindexed pages; there is also Category:Template Large category TOC via CatAutoTOC on category with 2,001–5,000 pages, as a side-effect of using {{CatAutoTOC}}.

Apart from those three, there are two main reasons that a category might be inside itself - one is that the person creating the cat page didn't understand the categorisation system (as with Category:Synchronized sound films), the other is because of a category merge (example). Regarding the latter, I have pointed this problem out before, see Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working/Archive 2#Incorrect cat changes and Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 17#Bad edits by Cydebot. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I just stumbled across Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories, as you kindly linked it in an edit summary which I found when trying to fix something you'd already fixed. I'd spotted two of the three deliberate self-categorisations and will make a note of Noindexed so I don't try to "mend" it. I've applied a few different solutions such as finding better parents or nominating the category for deletion, but will leave it to the experts in future now I know that someone with a clue is on the case. Certes (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

One for the experts is Category:Colleges affiliated to Bihar Engineering University. It consists of a template, which displays a huge navbox listing colleges that aren't in the category and categorises the category as its own single parent and only child. Certes (talk) 20:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

That one's easy, see these edits. I only added the cat to two articles because those were the only ones transcluding the navbox that weren't categorised properly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:50, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Returning to my first tangent, User:Certes/Reports/Circular categories now excludes categories which include themselves. In other words, it only lists loops of length exactly two, though loops of other lengths may also require attention. Certes (talk) 20:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I've started working slowly through circular category pairs. Does this sample of edits look helpful, or should I leave it to the experts? Certes (talk) 22:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

We also have User:SDZeroBot/Category cycles, which includes loops of any length. And your edits look good to me. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Some are clear-cut: A is a subset of B but not vice versa. However, most cases have a Venn diagram with two significant crescents. For example, Animals of Foo and Wildlife of Foo are similar but only the first includes livestock and only the second includes flora. These I have left alone, as neither category link is obviously better than the other, though there is a case for removing both. Certes (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

They both should be subcats of Fauna of Foo. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Really? I'd have thought that Animals was almost synonymous with (and hence redundant to) Fauna. Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area, so it could be interpreted as another synonym for Fauna or as a wider class including flora etc. which sounds like a parent category rather than a subcat. Perhaps the problem is that many categories lack precise definitions (or that I'm too thick to find them). Certes (talk) 22:04, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant Biota of Foo. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Message here BinaryBrainBug (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

List of all articles of a category and its subcategories?

Dear Categoryographers,

I know how to use Special:CategoryTree to find the tree of subcategories of a given category. But suppose I just wanted the list of articles that belong to a category or its subcategories? For a high-level category like Category:Mathematics, it's totally infeasible to construct this by hand from the tree; is there a better way?

Thanks, JBL (talk) 19:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like a job for WP:PETSCAN, but that service seems down at the moment. DMacks (talk) 19:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. It does seem to be down, but I'll check it again later. FWIW someone else has suggested to me that https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ can also be used for this purpose. --JBL (talk) 19:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It is not down, it is unstable—one moment up, next time down, five minutes later up. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Beware that some things that look like subcategories aren't. Most Many unexpected categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route. Certes (talk) 19:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Certes, as a person who does not think about categories at all (well, maybe on those occasions when I draft a new article), I'm afraid your comment is a bit obscure -- can you spell your meaning out more for me? (If the wmcloud massviews calculation can be believed (I'm not 100% sure), there are roughly 16,000 articles in Cat:Math and its subcats, so it couldn't really be true that most categories belonged in the Cat:Math tree in that case, right?) --JBL (talk) 19:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Examples:

• Voyagers! is in Cultural depictions of Albert Einstein is in Cultural depictions of mathematicians is in Mathematicians is in Mathematics
• Richmond Park is in Bertrand Russell is in 19th-century English mathematicians is in English mathematicians by century is in English mathematicians is in British mathematicians is in Mathematics in the United Kingdom‎ is in Mathematics by country‎ is in Mathematics‎
• Humpty Dumpty is in Category:Lewis Carroll characters is in Category:Lewis Carroll is in Category:19th-century English mathematicians (then as above)

Those articles might not be ones you would expect to find under Mathematics. Certes (talk) 21:41, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Certes@JayBeeEll Rather than Most categories are subcats of Mathematics by some devious route., I think what is shown here is that "Most articles are in subcats of Mathematics by some devious route." Not quite the same. PamD 22:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I started finding example surprising subcategories but then noticed that the original query was about articles. "Most" may be an exaggeration, but there are certainly surprising subcats. Some category examples:

• Mathematics > Mathematical constants > 1 (number) > Solo activities > Individual sports‎ > Category:Boxing
• Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Applied mathematics > Cryptography > Security engineering > Category:Prisons
• Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Dynamical systems > Electrodynamics > Light > Category:Vision
• Mathematics > Fields of mathematics > Elementary mathematics > Integers > 2 (number) > Duos > Category:Fictional duos
• Mathematics > Statistical concepts > Statistical regions > Statistical regions of Serbia > Vojvodina > Languages of Vojvodina > Category:Serbian language

These aren't isolated examples; I think a lot of the category tree can be traced back to Mathematics by at least one route where the individual steps are plausible even if the overall effect can be confusing. Certes (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Not isolated at all. quarry:query/75121 shows why the article Electrothermal-chemical technology is in the category tree Category:Opera. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Ok interesting, thanks. This seems like pretty compelling evidence that the 16,000 or so articles found by https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ are only a small fraction of the total; maybe it has a cutoff for how deep in the tree it looks (though it seems, based on Certes' examples, that even five levels deep is enough to find some stuff pretty distant from the core topic area). --JBL (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Somehow related

What we desperately need is a flag to say which categories record a strict is-a relationship and which, although still valuable, record an "is somehow related to" relationship. Then we can have trees limited to is-a links. However, I'm too lazy to spend the rest of my life adding those flags, so I can't really expect anyone else to volunteer either. Certes (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I would do it for the articles that I work on if it would work reliably, and probably for some others too, but it would indeed be an immense task. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

The vagueness of relatedness is a serious shortcoming of the category method. Wikidata handles such questions by separate properties such as "Instance of", "Part of", "Subset of", "Located in", "Author of", "Parent of", "Influenced by", "Employed by", and so forth. I figure supplementing the cat system with a lot of template flags would take forever and a day, whilst cooking up an easier way to look at the tree through WD might take only half the time. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I do not follow WD development closely, but is there a way to do the equivalent of looking a the category listing? On enwiki, we can walk up and down the tree, but last I knew of WD we could walk up from an article ("A is-a B") but not back down ("what else is-a B?"). DMacks (talk) 02:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The Wikidata Query Service can answer that sort of question but you'd need to write a SPARQL query. Certes (talk) 11:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@DMacks: A utility to show the Wikidata relationship tree in graphical form was written by Pintoch (talk · contribs), I don't recall how it's accessed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64: hi! I don't remember writing such a tool myself, but I can point you to a few which do that:

• the Wikidata Graph Builder is a very versatile tool to visualize the class hierarchy (see for instance their example about physicists).
• the Wikidata ontology explorer, which you can feed the Qid of a class you want to explore (such as sports league (Q623109)).
• the tool it is based on, Wikidata generic tree, which might be a bit less convenient to use because you need to figure out how to tweak the URL for it to do what you need

− Pintoch (talk) 10:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty of separating the last few replies into a new section. The big disadvantage of Wikidata SPARQL queries is that they are command lines. If we don't stay in touch with the ancient command traditions of Unix, DOS, and the like, we quickly forget how to do it. A year or two ago, WD had an "Entity Graph" feature. Click on the three dots to the right of the Q number. This created and ran a query to show every directly related WD item, and the Property that relates them, and some of the secondary (related to related) items if there was space enough in the window. The past few months, it has not worked; it always comes back as "Query is malformed". Seems to me the Entity Graph would be a useful feature, but it has been broken a long time. Perhaps a wide gulf has opened up, between WD and WP editors. Jim.henderson (talk) 05:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Categorisation dispute at Max Mallowan (and other biographical articles added at Category:Agatha Christie)

Please see the RFC at Talk:Max Mallowan#RFC about categorisation --woodensuperman 15:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

What constitutes a "Cultural representation"?

@Dimadick and I differ as to of what constitutes a "Cultural depiction", specifically whether a share of a 4 1/2 minutes children's television programme referenced in an article which is about a verse listing people by name counts as a "cultural depiction". (British monarchs, in Mnemonic verses of monarchs in England.) I.e. the point at issue is whether that article should be in every category from Category:Cultural depictions of William the Conqueror to Category:Cultural depictions of Elizabeth II. They added, I rolled back, they replaced. Any views? None of the tree of Category:Cultural depictions" and its subcategories includes any sort of a scope note defining the term. We've discussed at User talk:Dimadick#Cultural depictions .... I've posted a note over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Culture and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts, as those two projects are associated with the parent category "Cultural depiction". PamD 16:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

There are too many categories in Mnemonic verses of monarchs in England, see Wikipedia:Overcategorization. The per-monarch categories should all be replaced with the parent Category:Cultural depictions of British monarchs, which is appropriate here. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

But most of them are English monarchs, not British monarchs.Dimadick (talk) 23:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a contradiction between the list articles and the categorisation. List of British monarchs excludes List of English monarchs, but Category:British monarchs includes Category:English monarchs. You could discuss this conflict at Wikipedia:WikiProject British Royalty. However, we are discussing Wikipedia:Categorization, and Category:Cultural depictions of English monarchs is a subcategory of Category:Cultural depictions of British monarchs. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:08, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the last cmt. In general I'm fairly relaxed about what goes into "Category:Cultural depictions of Foo". Btw Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts is aws dead as a dornail; only the VA one has much life left. Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but just wondering about something!

Okay, hi! I'm really new to editing Wikipedia, so I'm sorry if this is totally the wrong place for this or if this is a subject that has already been discussed to death.

I've been using the "Go to a random page in Category:All uncategorized pages" link in the Wikipedia:Task Center to add categories to a bunch of pages (I've probably made a couple of mistakes, I'm sorry if so!) and the majority of the pages coming up are uncategorized Template pages. I wanted to put a dent in this issue so I went to look at Category:Wikipedia template categories, and it's... really confusing/overwhelming to look at. The Talk page is pretty dead (no new posts there since early 2022), so I came here to ask about it instead. Might there be some way to make this category less overwhelming to view/understand? It could be as easy as more clearly visually separating the first 5 items ("Wikipedia templates by...") from... the huge list of random templates.

I just wanted to raise it because clearly keeping on top of categorizing Templates is a bigger issue than categorizing Articles, and making it easier/more approachable might lead more people to contribute to this task!

Thanks for your time everyone :) KRKwrites (talk) 03:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@KRKwrites: Templates are a very mixed bunch,and I think it's probably more important, as well as simpler, to categorise articles. It might be best to just look at the category Category:All uncategorized pages and pick out the real articles to work on. PamD 06:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

And it looks as if WP:Petscan ignores templates, by default, so searching on "All uncategorized pages" gets 107 hits. (I thought PetScan was something terribly technical until I actually looked at it and found how simple it is to use!) PamD 07:48, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough! I'm certainly happy to give Petscan a shot. I was just asking because I was thinking I'd be down to go categorize a bunch of templates if that would be useful, but if categorizing articles would be more helpful I'll do that instead :) KRKwrites (talk) 08:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Dependent territories

An editor has been actively pursuing against the presence of dependent territories on Wikipedia. A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Macau. Please share your comments to what has happened. 113.52.112.27 (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I and @Marcocapelle have patiently explained to you that your handling of dependent territories is incorrect. And for the record, this is the same IP who has been blocked for edit warring Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive480#User:185.104.63.112 reported by User:Smasongarrison (Result: Blocked) Mason (talk) 15:04, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Listify

Quite a few WP:CFD discussions have been closed as listify and delete, these are listed At WP:CFDWM. Who can help making this happen? Marcocapelle (talk) 06:42, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

There's also a few that closed as delete, but still exist. For example, the report Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories still has Category:Deaths from sequels of suicide attempt, which I sent to CfD at 22:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC) and which closed as delete by Qwerfjkl (talk · contribs) at 13:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:00, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

• @Redrose64: there is apparently in delay in processing the list on Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working and that is really unfortunate because only admins can process these. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:37, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Propose: Allow individual category members to be annotated with descriptions or comments

I would like to request an option to allow individual category members to be annotated with descriptions or comments so they give clear context or elaboration for any specific entry. This would not only make it clear for the readers to learn why that page name was assigned to that certain category, but it would also save some categories being considered for deletion. For example, consider Category:Super Bowl MVPs. In this case, it would be better to list the Super Bowls that player's page name ("PAGENAME") received the Super Bowl MVP in parentheses: PAGENAME (#). For example: if PAGENAME was Troy Aikman who was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVII, then it would be like this: Troy Aikman (XXVII). Here, this means that Troy Aikman was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVII.

Abhiramakella (talk) 17:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

The category system does not support that. One alternative is to have a stand-alone list article. Because it would be a manually-written article, it could be formatted in any way and include whatever details and links are desired. We have a nice table in Super_Bowl_Most_Valuable_Player_Award#Winners that could be extracted and reformatted (you can already sort it by name if you like). Do we have a category MOS relating to use of a more-detailed/alternately-organized list in the header of a category itself? Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for a comparison of these methods. DMacks (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

If so, then why not have categories as stand-alone lists (Creating a template that combines both category and stand-alone list templates together ({{Category as list}}))? Abhiramakella (talk) 18:27, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for a comparison of these methods." There are pros and cons to each method, including technical, philosophical, reader-facing, and editor-related ones. Note that the category-as-list comment was added after this response of mine.) DMacks (talk) 18:36, 13 April 2024 (UTC)