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)

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)

History of instruction changes of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy

You are invited to join a discussion about history of CFDS at Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#History of instruction changes of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:41, 25 April 2024 (UTC)