Wikipedia talk:Special:Categories

Note: This discussion page is not for general or specific issues related to categories. It is only for discussion of the appearance and operation of Special:Categories. If you don't know what a special page is, you probably want to take your question or concern elsewhere:

For the guidelines on categorization of articles, see Wikipedia:Categorization
For the project which manages categories see, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Categories
To discuss a specific category, use the "discussion" page for the category.
To discuss categorization in general, see Wikipedia talk:Categorization
To rename or delete a specific category, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion

This is the talk page for the special page at Special:Categories.
For general information on this and other special pages, see Help:Special page.
For recent talk about special pages, see Recentchangeslinked/Specialpages discussion

Unusable

Just wanted to mention that this page Special: Categories has become unusable due to the number of categories. The only way to search it is a linear 'Previous/Next' search. I was looking for a category in the C's, but even at 500 lines/page it still would have taken all day. Although the page has a warning about this, I would suggest either providing an alphabetic tree search capability, or deleting the page and redirecting to Wikipedia:Categorical index. -Chetvorno 22:54, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

needs a frikin search button —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.17.228 (talk) 23:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this place could use a damn good search box. (Ofunniku 07:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Definitely... Fishdert 02:21, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A quick hack is to manually edit the 500 in the URL and make it 5000. Still a huge problem of course... —Noah 04:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Definitly needs a search box. Other wise its basically useless.--Royalmate1 (talk) 04:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can search in categories namespace using Mediawiki search. If you're not interested in the "number of childs", you can simply use Special:Prefixindex (choosing "Category" in drop-down box).

Also, it seems like we can create an "index box" allowing quick access to this list of categories, but starting with specific letter: A, B, C ... ∴ AlexSm 04:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:Categorical index is not good either as you have to hunt up and down the tree. Instead of a search though, I would prefer being able to giant-step to initial letter or perhaps initial two letters, (as AlexSM mentioned inside another thread mentioned) instead -- because search might not find a slightly different phrasing. Markbassett (talk) 07:52, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category "Skeletal anatomy" needed?

Crurotarsal has been tagged as belong to Veterinary Medicine. I created the article to support 2 paleontology articles, Archosaur and Evolution of mammals. So Crurotarsal may be relevant to but is certainly not a part of Veterinary Medicine. I don't even know if the term is used in veterinary medicine - most veterinarians deal mainly with mammals, all mammals have crurotarsal ankles, so I would not be surprised if they do not use the term "crurotarsal" for what is to them the default type of ankle. So I suggest "Skeletal anatomy" or at least "Anatomy" would be more suitable categories, but as far as I can see neither of these exists at present. Any suggestions, anybody?Philcha 18:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

category for companies involved in pyramid scheme

I have created an article on goldquest corporation which was involved in pyramid scheme, i want to know to which category it should belong? yingli green —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.9.129.85 (talk) 15:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Format

I found the following:

[[Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion| ]] on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion page.

My question is this: Is that vertical symbol, "|" followed by the space redundant, and just a mistake?

Or is it necessary?

Yours truly, --Ludvikus 05:51, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The vertical symbol separates the category name from its "sortkey" (see Help:Categories#Sort order). In this case, the sortkey is " " (a space). Now, take a look at Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the article Protocols of the Elders of Zion is separated from the rest.

That's because it's the "main article" of the category, and it is separated because its sort key is a space. Gracenotes^T § 16:39, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but your answer's unclear. I'm asking what's the deifference, if any, between the following two formats

    (1) [[Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]
    
    (2) [[Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion| ]]

Do you notice that the Bar & Space are missing after "Zion"? Yours truly, --Ludvikus 17:40, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did. Example 1 and example 2 behave differently. This is all about the idea of a sortkey. A sortkey determines the order that pages appear in a category. For example, in Category:Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the page "Public Ledger (Philadelphia)" is sorted after "Lord Alfred Douglas". "Boris Brasol" is sorted before "Vladimir Burtsev". Normally, pages are sorted according to the alphabetical order of their titles. However, if you define a sortkey, the natural sort order of pages in category is changed. For example, if you place [[Category:Mammals of India]] at the bottom of the article "Tiger", you will see "Tiger" sorted under "T" on the category page Category:Mammals of India. However, if you place [[Category:Mammals of India|Sap]] on the article "Tiger", you will see "Tiger" sorted under the letter S on the category page. That's because its sortkey, "Sap", begins with S.

To get back to your example: if you put the first format on the page Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the category will list Protocols of the Elders of Zion under "P". That's because the article name begins with a P. If you put the second format on the page Protocols of the Elders of Zion, however, then the category page will list that article without a header. The vertical bar separates the category name from the desired sortkey. Using a space as a sortkey will result in no header. If you look at Category:Wikipedia style guidelines, you'll see that the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style has no header. That's because, at the bottom of Wikipedia:Manual of Style, the category is included as [[Category:Wikipedia style guidelines| ]]. It is standard for the main article of a category to be sorted without a header, to make it stand out. That's why Protocols of the Elders of Zion should have the second format, rather than the first format. Short answer: having the bar and the space is intended, and not redundant.

If you're still confused, please read Help:Category. Hope this helps, Gracenotes^T § 18:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Latin words and phrases

Regarding the following: [[Category:Latin words and phrases| ]].

Is that verical line followed by a space necessary, or is it a typo?

Yours truly, --Ludvikus 16:36, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Lyrics

So, I've been thinking; Perhaps we should include lyrics to exact song pages. That, I think, would draw alot of individuals to search for songs on Wikipedia. Unless there already is an equivalent to this. Cuardaim 23:45, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be an invitation to massive copyright infringement - never a good thing, in my opinion. Warmfuzzygrrl | Talk 23:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bypass redirect

Does someone want to do that for Wikipedia:Categorical index? RichardF (talk) 01:28, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Pagecategorieslink

I think that Special:Categories is so useless that we should not even link to it from every article. I'm talking about Categories: link before categories list at the bottom. By changing MediaWiki:Pagecategorieslink we could provide a more appropriate link, maybe to something like Portal:Contents/Categorical index ∴ AlexSm 15:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No longer linked

Since this special page is fairly useless, I've change the "Categories" link at the bottom of every page to point to Portal:Contents/Categorical index, as suggested above. If this special page every gets improved, the link can be changed back. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 20:43, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it required a bit more discussion, there is a good possibility that this gets reverted. Also, I feel like it should have been another page, maybe specifically created for this purpose. This page would briefly explain what "Category" is, and then link to Portal:Contents/Categorical index and Special:Categories and Help:Category and all other relevant pages. —AlexSm 21:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I just noticed this, and I think it was fine as it was. However, I also see why Sam would want to change it. Perhaps find a way to include both? -- SonicAD (talk) 02:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, just checked on Special:Categories, and there's already a link to the Categorical Index at the top.-- SonicAD (talk) 02:34, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems pointless to link to Special:Categories as it offers nothing of value execpt the link to somewhere else. I would have no problem with there being a category introduction page. The closest we have to that is the category portal. The portal does have a description of categories, and I linked that description to Category FAQ. It seems that if we want there to be a place where users first find out about categories, that should be the category portal -- that is what a portal is. So rather than change the link, I think there should be some discussion about how the portal could be improved to accommodate first time exposure to categories. --☑ SamuelWantman 06:19, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't find the Categorical Index all that useful either. I looked at the above conversations on this page, and I understand why some see Special:Categories is useless though. It does need a search box. I'm not sure who to ask about adding that (please advise me), but I think if that were there it would be better than either other way. -- SonicAD (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had a discussion with Brion Vibber today about what to do with this page. He's promised to put a search box in Special:Categories. In the interim, we've added a table of contents. I'm going to add some more text to make it more informative, and relink it to "Categories". Watch for improvements soon... -- ☑ SamuelWantman 03:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements complete. Do people think that the search box is enough and the TOC is redundant? I kinda like both. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 22:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ambiguous Category

[[Category:American Baptist ministers]] is ambiguous. This could refer to any Baptist minister within either of the Americas, or it could refer only to those ministers who are affiliated with the second-largest Baptist denomination, American Baptist Churches (which would include minsters primarily, but not exclusively in the USA.

My feeling is that the category should be renamed, perhaps to any one of the following:

Category:Baptist ministers in/from the United States
Category:Baptist ministers with the American Baptist Churches, US
Category:Baptist ministers in/from the Americas/North America/South America/North and South America

Just a thought.

SonPraises (talk) (contributions) 02:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the best place to discuss this. The best place for comments about a specific category is the talk page for the category.-- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:13, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested change

{{editprotected}} (Well, that probably isn't the right template, but I don't know how else to get attention.) Since readers come here if they click "Categories" in the category box under an article, I think a link to basic reader-oriented information on categories is in order. I've created such a page at WP:FAQ/Categories; I suggest linking to that page from here rather than WP:FAQ/Categorization (which is mainly for editors). Editors have only one click from there to get to their FAQ (or include both links here, if you like, if the difference is explained).--Kotniski (talk) 15:36, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done, seems reasonable. For the future, you can usually find the part that needs changing if you search Special:AllMessages. In this case it was at MediaWiki:Categoriespagetext. Cheers, Amalthea 17:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks!--Kotniski (talk) 17:18, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested New Category

If this is not the right place to discuss, please provide a pointer.

I have been working on Ricky Nelson, and I noticed that he is related both by family and marriage to a lot of other performers. I think it would be useful to have a category that puts all of these people together, something like Nelson family: american performers.Jarhed (talk) 09:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is not the right place to discuss this. :)
General outlines about categorization are at Wikipedia:Categorization, and questions about new categories should best be asked at the talk page there, WT:CAT.
Cheers, Amalthea 10:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested New "RS" Category

I have been working on a few political articles, sometimes the lines are blurred as to what news sources can be WP:RS, see Talking Points Memo(I'm still confused as to that one). What I propose for all media, especially web-based news outlet, their could be a Wiki-RS approved category to avoid much confusion, and add greatly to the wiki standards and help all editors."--Ducha mps_comb MFA 22:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Misspelling

If someone misspells the name of a category, how do we fix it? We can't edit the category pages. AlbertSM (talk) 17:04, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can ask for the category to be renamed. See WP:CFD.--Kotniski (talk) 09:33, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dividing up the world as claim to fame

HI. My query is - strictly speaking - about regions of the world, not categories. I am posting this here, as it is probably the best place to attract the attention of the kind of people that normally sort out people into categories. I was reading on women presidents in Latin America and invariably there is a claim to being the first, second, third etc in a REGION. That's where the problem lies, as some use the Americas, others the Western Hemisphere others yet the New World. Latin America is also used, but that is quite clearly defined and at any rate is part of all of the above, so that is fine. Can we agree on one term? I would suggest we stick with "the Americas", as this will avoid the problem with different definitions for Western Hemisphere (which includes parts of Europe and Africa, at any rate) and New World, which is more a historical term, whereas heads of government/ state is in the geo-political arena. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 11:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

category graphs

Why don't all categories use the "category graph" ? Here is one that does: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Mathematik (see "Kategoriegraph (png/svg)" on the right hand side). But lots of categories don't! The category graph tool can be found here: http://toolserver.org/~dapete/catgraph/ thanks for any answers --boarders paradise (talk) 10:31, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Need way to navigate up category trees

If you click on a category, you get a list of its children, so you can navigate down to "leaves" in the tree. There doesn't seem to be a way to go upward in the hierarchy. It's needed and might be the best way to find out what other categories need to be added to an article. LADave (talk) 12:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To navigate upward, you just click on the categories on the bottom of the category page, the same way you click on them on article pages. Libcub (talk) 17:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Wikipedia

Need more interlinking with the Russian wikipedia to improve autotranslation via Meta:Babylon and Meta:Babel. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to achieve this? As I can't read Russian, I won't be much help for this.

Grevenko Sereth 219.90.202.164 (talk) 08:17, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioned in a Monty Python sketch category

What do I have to do to suggest this category? It would include a diverse list of people and things such as E.W.Swanton, Minehead, Purley, wainscoting and Gerald Nabarro.