Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Eponymous RFC

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Discussion on the drafting of this RfC has been moved to WT:Categorization/Eponymous RFC/Draft. Previous discussion on the topic can be found at WT:CAT#Eponymous cats.

Please state your views here on the question asked on the RfC page. Please remember this is not a vote, there is not necessarily one universal best solution, and alternative suggestions are welcome. --Kotniski (talk) 12:58, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

My own view is that articles should never be excluded from categories just because they have an eponymous category - I support "possible answers" 1 or 2, depending on circumstances. I believe it is highly confusing to readers not to see the categories they would expect at the bottom of an article page like France. It wouldn't be so bad for categories like "European countries" to be absent from the eponcat page (Category:France), since (a) according to the logic generally used for categories, it doesn't really belong there; (b) on a category page it is easy and natural to explain the catgorization system used and give an explicit indication of where other categories can be found.--Kotniski (talk) 13:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • (edit conflict) I feel that the articles should be categorized as they normally would, and the eponcats should be categorized alongside them. Isn't this already common practice? hmwithτ 13:52, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is in some areas, but not others. Current practice with countries is very inconsistent - compare the categories at the bottom of France and Category:France, you'll see a fairly random selection of the possible categories in each case. It's this inconsistency I'd like to sort out.--Kotniski (talk) 13:56, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My first thought when I saw this RFC was option 1, categorize France and Category:France in the same parent cat. But then I looked at the categories each of them are in, and now I'm not sure. What exactly is the Eurpoean country? It's France, not a collection of France-related topics. Category:French people, a subcat of Cat:France, is not a European country. Neither is Category:French law, or any of the other subcats. So why should Cat:France be in Cat:European countries? I don't think it should. If I'm going to Cat:European countries, I'm expecting to see articles about European countries. From there, if I want to know more about France, I can scroll to the bottom and click on Cat:France. But I'm always going to want to start at the article. --Kbdank71 14:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Readers should have the option of starting at either the article or the category, just as they should have the option of proceeding from the article France to France-subtopics in Category:France or to groupings of which France is a member, such as Category:European countries.
The article France and Category:France are both surrogates for the topic of France, so both are equally members of Category:European countries and are both defined by the classification that defines that parent category. Obviously the member articles of Category:France are not countries, but no one would think they are because the category name does not assert that. Category:France is a member of the group of Category:European countries, and easily signals a taxonomic shift, from European countries to subtopics of a particular European country. The alternative is to have a completely disjointed category structure in which one can't go from the most general (e.g., Category:Europe) to the most specific (e.g., Category:French law) without hopping back and forth arbitrarily between articles and categories. Or we could have a completely unnecessary extra step, Category:European countries categories, which is just about as necessary as clarifying that Category:People doesn't literally contain people, and so should be renamed Category:People articles. Postdlf (talk) 17:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. When I use wikipedia to find information, I'm going for the articles. Even if I know it exists, Cat:France isn't going to tell me jack about France, it's going to show me what else I can read that is France-related (other articles about French Law is nice, but it isn't France). While I can start at the category, I'm not going to. I'm only going to the category if the article doesn't give me what I need, or I want to read about something else.
Going back to Cat:European countries, again, if I'm there, I want to read about France, not see what other France-related articles wikipedia has. I might not have a problem with both the article and the category being in Cat:European countries, if the articles were listed first. But they're not. I want to see what I came for; France. I know I can get to anything France-related from there. So give me the best and easiest way to get to France. Don't confuse me by throwing up non-France items in my path.
I understand we want to give readers the most options on how they can get the information they want, but sometimes too much information gets confusing quickly. --Kbdank71 18:21, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If someone just wants a broad overview of France, then yes, they will be most interested in the article France, which should be the lead article in Category:France and easy to find in all applicable categories (Category:European countries) as well. But if a reader's interest is in a particular subtopic of France, such as its history, transportation, etc., just as the article France is subdivided into subtopics identified by simple headers, so is Category:France subdivided into subcategories, which should all be the most important subtopics of France. These show the breadth of articles about France, that our coverage is not limited only to what could fit into one single article. Both hypothetical readers should be able to navigate easily to what they are looking for. Postdlf (talk) 19:20, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to start at France's article rather than its dedicated category, then why are you category-surfing in order to get where you want to go in the first place, instead of just typing France into the search bar? The logic doesn't work, because the user who needs that particular outcome wouldn't have used this process to get there — and the user who did use this process isn't going to be confused or deterred by the presence of Category:France instead of Article:France, because it's not an illogical consequence of what they've already been doing. Bearcat (talk) 05:05, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope this discussion will focus on ease of navigation for readers, which is what categories are for, rather than what is deemed to be logical by editors. The starting point will not usually be a category, but it is likely that a reader would want to navigate from, say, Andorra, to Category:European countries, and then expect to be able to go straight to either France or to Category:France if the reader is looking specific information about France. Proposal 1 would certainly seem the best way to help this reader. As with any guideline there is the possibility that there will be exceptions, but this should be the general rule. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Looking at the options provided, I think I prefer 1 or 2, oppose 3, and have no particular opinion on 4. 3 seems a poor choice, as I should think France should be the one article most likely to be in Category:France; removing a category's main article seems confusing and could muddy up navigation. 1 and 2 maintain coherence of navigation. I think the distinction between them is clutter -- if the eponcats clutter up a main category, then by all means put them into a subcat; if eponcats don't crowd out others, they might as well be alongside them. In the provided example, Category:European countries, the cat would be all but empty if we removed the eponcats; for some other categories, this might not be the case. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think you might be misunderstanding #3 if you think it contradicts your statement that France should be the one article most likely to be in Category:France — it actually says that France does go in Category:France, and then the category, but not the article, goes into Category:European countries. In fact, none of the options take the article out of its eponcat — the only difference between any of them is in how we combine article-filing with eponcat-filing. Bearcat (talk) 04:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Always include the articles (that is, France in Category:European countries). From a logical standpoint, 2 seems most natural (with Category:France being in something like Category:European topics by country), but that has to do with the distinction between list and topic categories which, at the end of the day, is very difficult to uphold (for example, it seems impossible however one tries to avoid New Caledonia, clearly not a European topic, being a great-grandchild of Category:Europe). So in actuality I don't care much between 1, 2 or even 4 (if read as "articles always, categories by discretion"). —JAO • T • C 05:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure you've quite understood - no-one's denying that France belongs in Category:France. The question is which other categories to place France and Category:France into. (It doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with naming conventions - the relevant current guideline is the WP:EPON section of WP:CAT, which excludes #3 - that may or may not change as a result of this RfC. Current practice is all over the place.)--Kotniski (talk) 21:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It excludes #3 only because you recently revised it (February) to exclude #3, without discussion. You were bold, perhaps — I'd say reckless. And that's the reason for all the complaints. At least you're trying to follow some process now.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 20:36, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, the guidance always excluded option 3 (except it used to be confusingly split between the old WP:Categorization and subcategories and the main WP:CAT page). There was nothing reckless - just rewrote it all to make some kind of clear sense, without changing the rules (in any case the rules weren't being followed, hence this RfC).--Kotniski (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think Option 2 is the most effective choice. One main point is to avoid inclusion of articles into categories that they don't belong in. So maybe the question is do we need to avoide including, say Napoleon Bonaparte, in Category:European countries by way of Category:France? I think the answer is yes. Another good example is a company category with maybe 50 articles that is listed in Category:1950 establishments. Well the main company is included there and it was established in 1950, but the 10 other companies were not and the products and the people clearly were not established in that year. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Napoleon is 7 layers and many, many category intersections down the category mesh from European countries. We already intersect country with people to make a separate subtree. Same with the subcategories of Category:1950 establishments. They are both 1950s, and something else, and the category intersections are important.
    --William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I don't think you've got the point. Napoleon's ending up under countries, or companies not founded in the 1950s ending up under 1950s establishments, are not the result of anything to do with intersections, they are the result of people making eponymous categories subcategories of categories of which they are logically not subcategories. We have to decide whether to tolerate this or not.--Kotniski (talk) 11:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Eponymous categorization is not making Napoleon a country. It's making him a historical personage who was prominent within something that is a country, which is exactly what he is. While it would be a terrible idea in practice, purely on principle you could wholly correctly combine every single article in Category:France into a single massive omnibus article titled France. Given that we've quite wisely decided to chop the topic up into manageable subarticles about individual subtopics of the country instead of one single omnibus article, however, the category is a way to keep those articles grouped coherently — but it doesn't fundamentally represent a different thing than the article does, because in the absence of space restrictions every single article in the category, including Napoleon and Agathoclea's singing poodle, could quite validly be merged into a single superdupercalifragilonglonglong article on France. It would be unwise from a technical and organizational standpoint, but it wouldn't be objectively wrong in any way whatsoever.
It's the difference between keeping your house key "categorized" on a key ring, or keeping it "uncategorized" loose in your pocket, or using an "omnibus" master key that would open any house in your entire neighbourhood — they're all the same thing (the key to your house), they're just different ways of managing it. Bearcat (talk) 04:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You've forgotten that every category should have a main article.
    1. Under option #1, the main article will always be in both its own category and its parent. Messy and duplicative, and contrary to standard {{parent category}} practice.
    2. Under option #2, each category with a main article will add another category to its parent; the main article will be in the parent, and the category itself moved to its parent "PAGENAME categories". That's category duplication on a massive scale. Every time we rename, we'll have to rename 2 categories instead of 1....
    3. Only option #3 (current practice) makes any sense at all!
    4. And there should always be room for documented exceptions, such as "distinguished categories".
  • Repeat after me: ideally, every category should be eponymous.
    --William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Repeat after me: ideally, every category should be eponymous. — Oh dear no, no, no. That is a gross distortion and misrepresentation of categorization on Wikipedia. Option 3 is NOT the current practice so far as I am aware and making is into the rule would result in a making categories even less easy to understand for general readers than they currently are. older ≠ wiser 13:30, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed. If there exists any guideline that leads to articles on European countries not being categorized as articles on European countries, it should be changed. —JAO • T • C 18:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I see William's philosophy, but it most certainly isn't current practice (in fact with the mess we have it's hard to claim that anything is current practice), and I don't believe it's the "only one that makes any sense at all" - the pros and cons of the various approaches are set out on the RfC page, and there are clearly faults with all approaches, including (especially) that one. --Kotniski (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd note that while I've frequently seen the argument that eponymous categories constitute an exception to duplicate categorization rules, I've never seen a remotely convincing reason why they should — only that they should because they should because so-and-so thinks they should. Not doing so makes them difficult to understand? No, it really doesn't. The average user is navigating by title rather than category? Then categorization is just plain irrelevant; that user going to get to France by typing France in the search bar and clicking "Go". One more click down the category tree isn't going to deter the user who was navigating via the category tree in the first place, and any user who would actually be deterred by the lack of double-filing wasn't using the category system to get to the article anyway. And on, and so forth.

I'd rule out option #2 — it would be deeply confusing and illogical for Category:France to not appear in Category:European countries — but for the sake of consistency and coherence we also need to rule out #4. So to me, the decision is between #1 and #3 — my own preference is for #3, because I've never seen a convincing reason why we should treat these as an exception to duplicate categorization rules, but enough people seem to be firmly convinced of the necessity of #1 that I'm willing to listen if somebody can come up with a more coherent rationale than I've ever heard before. Bearcat (talk) 04:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well it seems rather that #3 would be making an exception - not just from the duplicate categorization rule (which implies that an article does appear in a cat and a subcat if that subcat isn't part of a scheme for breaking down the parent cat into more manageable subgroups - and eponymous cats can obviously not be part of any such scheme), but also from the overriding principle that subcategories really should be subcategories. If we want to allow eponcats to be used as #3 (and indeed #1) implies, then we are really treating them other than as subcategories, and should perhaps ask for a MediaWiki change to replace the word "Subcategories" on category pages with "Related categories" or some such. Or at least do what I did at Category:Land counties of Silesian Voivodeship, for example, and document the fact that related eponymous categories are "listed as" subcategories.--Kotniski (talk) 07:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, I think there are at least three arguments for "duplicate categorization" in the case of eponymous categories. 1) Categories classify articles, such that France is not merely the defining member of its own topic, Category:France, but also a member of Category:European countries, Category:Republics, etc. 2) Readers should be able to see on the articles themselves in what parent categories that article belongs, not just to avoid the trouble of having to click through the eponymous category (a transaction cost however minimal), but particularly in the case of novice readers who otherwise might be completely unaware that those other categories exist to navigate through. 3) As most articles will never have eponymous categories, most categories will contain a mixture of eponymous categories and articles, so that if "duplicate categorization" is not followed, categories will present two split, incomplete lists of that category's contents rather than a single, alphabetized list of all articles that belong in it. Postdlf (talk) 08:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question Do I understand correctly that #3 is more or less what is mostly being practised nowadays? Debresser (talk) 07:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • My experience is that #1 is more common, although I don't have any actual statistics to back that up. I brought this issue up in the childhood of categorization (2004) and pretty much got the answer as being #1, plus an early attempt to differentiate between list and topic categories. After that, I haven't been involved in any discussions on the matter (although I am sure they have existed), and I have assumed #1 to be the rule, never reacting to any clear breaches of it—which it would be reasonable to think I would have if they had been common—until this, when I checked back here to read what the guideline says (I don't know what it has said in the past), and which is pretty much what led to this RFC. —JAO • T • C 08:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see now. You're right, #1 is more common. But #3 is what be requested by srtict adherance to the rule that articles should be placed in the most specific category possible. There is of course the duplicate categorization rule. In contect of geographic locations it seems logical to say that a country is a distinguished subcategory of a continent, and as such should not be listed in the parent category. Which is # 3 1. But intuitively #1 seems more proper. I find it hard to make up my mind, other than that it should be either #1 or #3. Debresser (talk) 09:23, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • You're confused somewhere along the line (perhaps because the rule is not written as clearly as it should be). If it's a "distinguished subcategory" then duplicate categorization is appropriate (that's the toll bridges within bridges case). But the categories in question are not a country and a continent; they are a country category (a topic category) and a countries-within-a-continent category (a list category). Logically neither comes anywhere close to being a subcategory of the other, distinguished or otherwise. Hence nor is either of them more "specific" than the other. So even if there were a rule (which there isn't) that articles should be placed only in the "most specific" category possible, then that still wouldn't answer our question.--Kotniski (talk) 09:35, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Thank you for catching that. So now I know for sure which rule I'd prefer. Thanks again. Debresser (talk) 22:45, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think all three schemes are in use in different parts of WP, and often without any consistency or stability (as shown by the France example and the discussion Jao links to). (Incidentally, there seems to be confusion over the meaninng of the term "list category" - which some think means a category of lists - perhaps we should switch to another term, like the once-proposed "index category", for the concept currently called list category at WP:CAT.) --Kotniski (talk) 09:21, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • And my observation is that Option #4 is what is mostly used. And with no dcumentation in nearly all cases of what articles/categores/whatever are supposed to be in any given category, the situation is just confusion. Which leads to edit warning, as different editors try to implement their personal vision of the category structure in the categories they personally work on. This is why this RfC. And the comments here just illustrate the confusion. Hmains (talk) 02:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • my head hurts. Just read the entire discussion thread. I'm finding myself surprisingly neutral on the issue. I've always wished there was a standard to implement, but I can also see the wisdom of #4. On balance, I think we should probably do something that will bring some consistency to how this "system" functions. I'll go with consensus! Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:21, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tried to get consensus for year/decade/century/millenium articles and categories a number of years ago, and had a resounding silence. In this system, I don't really care whether #1 or #2 is used, as long as 1990s is in some global category with the name Decade, and 1995 is in some global category with the name Year. (Or we create an article Wikipedia WikiProject Years/Raw list of decades and Wikipedia:WikiProject Years/Raw list of years which has only the decades and years, so that bots can identify them.) In other words the eponymous articles should be categorized, as should the categories. Whether the category names are the same doesn't bother me, except that in some contexts they clearly should be the same. Unfortunately, I agree with WAS that the duplicate categorization rule appears to exclude option #1, and strongly suggests option #3. (I also agree with the proposer that it shouldn't.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusion?[edit]

Have we reached anywhere as a result of this discussion? Clearly there isn't overwhelming agreement, but I would suggest that, if we break the issue down into two questions:

  1. Should (for example) France be in Category:European countries?
  2. Should (for example) Category:France be in Category:European countries?

then for both questions, the majority (both in this discussion and in the previous discussion at WT:CAT#Eponymous cats) would answer "yes". Given that this is in line with the current guidance at WP:EPON (which despite a change to the presentation has been the effective guidance for a long time), and that the questions really need to be answered with a consistent yes or no (at least, no-one has suggested any criteria for having them answered sometimes yes and sometimes no), AND that implementation of the "yes" answers will not lead to loss of information, I propose that the "yes" answers be considered to have been confirmed as guiding the way we should do things. (For example, that categories like "European countries" be repopulated with the articles that naturally belong in them.) Does anyone want to suggest anything different?--Kotniski (talk) 11:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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