Conclusion

It is undesirable to categorize people by name.

Categories for names

This is an issue that has recently come up on WP:CFD with some frequency, and is erratically kept or deleted depending on who happens to be voting that week...

Do we want categories for people by name?

It is obvious that Category:Academy Award winning actors is a useful distinction, as are Category:English biologists and Category:Palestinian militants.

It is also obvious that Category:Blondes is not useful, and neither are Category:People who are six feet tall and Category:People with only nine fingers. Of course, some of these may be useful as lists, for instance we have a List_of_U.S._Presidents_by_height_order.

I assume you oppose categorizing by hair color because it's superficial. However, first names are equally so, because people can change them to their liking. Superm401 | Talk 20:30, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

In my experience, people tend to change their names far less often than they do their hair colour. Psychonaut 6 July 2005 21:47 (UTC)

The question is, do we need Category:People named John or Category:Andersons? This information would probably be useful in the articles on John and Anderson, but in general one person named Marc has very little in common with anyone else named Marc - nor is it useful trivia because it is obvious from the title of, say, Marc Anthony that he is named Marc.

Discussion welcome. R adiant _* 12:06, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinking we don't need categories for names, first or last. If people are notable enough to be in an encyclopedia, it will be for other reasons, and they will be in other categories. --Kbdank71 13:06, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

From WP:CG: "Is it possible to write a few paragraphs or more on the subject of a category, explaining it?" Name categories fail this condition, seeing as most of the articles in them have nothing to do with one another (which, IMHO, defeats the entire purpose of having the category). For that reason alone, I say we should delete them. --InShaneee 16:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Radiant and InShaneee. The point of a category are for objects/people/things that have something notably in common. Not for something this trivial or as an alternative for disambiguation. K1Bond007 02:40, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Concur with Radiant and InShanee. Barno 14:10, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Radiant and InShanee, although some categories don't meet the category requirements, mainly image categorization, it's due to the fact that these cat'd articles are not notable on their own. Hence, they are categorized for search and retrieval purposes. Categories such as Category:Academy Award winning actors and alike, are self definable in their purpose, and easy to locate. Do not feel we have to categorize other random traits or features about people. We can list the most notable of these people and have references to that list on their articles. On a smaller note, I wouldn't mind seeing Category:People with only nine fingers ;) - <>Who ?¿? 21:33, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A useful finding tool...

I feel strongly that we should have categories by last name. Since Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, we have to make it easy to use. If you don't know a person's full name, and particularly if they have a common last name, the search feature can end up turning up a lot of extraneous entries that make it cumbersome to use. I have been creating and editing a variety of biographical entries and I have frequently tried to find a person by last name and have wished that there was a good alphabetical list. There is a List of people by name, but to add entries to that list requires that a person doing (or editing) a biographical article go first to the top page of the list and then find the specific page the entry would go on, such as List_of_people_by_name:_Ham and then edit that page. People simply don't do it. I don't do it. The list is so sparse it is not even a useful starting place. Compare List_of_people_by_name:_Ham#Hamm with Hammond#People.

The real beauty of a category is that the entry can be added while you are creating or editing the article. If the category is missing, you can see it immediately.

A possible alternative might be to change the current use of the Category:People by surname to suit that purpose, but the size of the category could get overwhelming. Another possibility would be to set up a naming convention so that the person working on an article would automatically be able to create or add to a category without looking to see the alphabetical breakdown. Perhaps that would mean consistently using the first three letters of the surname, for example "Category:People by surname-mcd". Someone with the name McEnroe would not have to determine whether "mcd" meant "mcd through mce" or just "mcd" (as they do now). One drawback with that system (besides the possible problems with category size for some prefixes like "smi") is that some surnames have alternate spellings and could be grouped together in the current surname category scheme. Thus, many people would prefer to group MacDonald and McDonald together as they are simply variations of the same name.

For those reason, I think the current scheme, at least for now and the near future, is a very useful feature. DS1953 15:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like you're suggesting categories be used as an alternative to disambiguation pages .. --Azkar 16:31, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, it's a different use though admittedly they both serve the purpose of helping to find what you are looking for. Even if they have a similar purpose, an editor would still have to know that a surname page exists as an article and physically go that article and edit it to add an entry. Looking at the article in front of you. Those users familiar with "What links here" could find out fairly easily in one click on that link and another click on their browser's "back" button, but I think that assumes a level of familiarity that many users never reach. DS1953 16:53, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

For people having the same surname the disambiguation page is better. A disambiguation page doesn't add unnecessary text to the article's category section unlike a surname cateogry. You could still have a category for all the surname disabigation pages with warning "Don't create subacategories about indivudual surnames". -Hapsiainen 15:24, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

I think the clear solution here is to work on the Lists of people by name to make them more complete. Looking at that Hammond example it's a simple cut and paste job and a link. I'll do it myself; I've done it with other pages before. We have a page for John and it includes people known only by that name (ie no last name used), as it should, because having a disambiguation page for everyone named "John" would be a nightmare. Besides, no one's going to go looking up someone by such a common first name. These categories are a pretty bad idea. -R. fiend 03:32, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Look at the page Michael, which is undergoing a battle at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation since it contains a list of every person named Michael since the beginning of the world (the list may or may not be there when you look, depending on who reverted most recently). —Wahoofive (talk) 02:08, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not necessary

The logic of this argument would result in tens of thousands of categories being created. A category for a family has logic (like Category:Kennedy family) makes sense. But creating a category for every Robert in the world or every Smith, Baker or Kim is really not necessary.

And the logic doesn't stop with people. I've been noticing a creeping increase in categorization by titles as well (as in titles of literature, dramatic works, etc). Ex: Category:Operas by title. I don't see how this is, as others have said, a "taxonomic classification." --BaronLarf 19:08, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with BaronLarf. Categories are a neat feature, but the more categories the average article has, the less meaningful they become. R adiant _* 08:36, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to go into a list versus category argument here, but I think names tend to be more static and don't necessarily need a category. Furthermore, adding more categories to a category filled page doesn't really help. The last thing I want to see is a stub for someone's last or first name. This John-related name article is a stub. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:16, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

- I concur with the above two arguments. Think about it: If you're already on the page of the "Mr. Johnson" that you were looking for, what good is a "Johnson" catagory going to do you? The names in the catagories rarely have anything to do with each other, so it's not going to help you find any related information. So what's the point? --InShaneee 18:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

- - I'm in agreement with InShaneee. I don't see a point in having categories for names; the usefulness is very limited. Joyous 21:26, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

For instances where there are really lots of people with the same family name, a disambig page can work just fine (viz. Goddard). Having the same proper name is not a relevant organization principle since they are always fairly arbitrary. A category of Category:People by surname is too general to be useful — this is why we have categories like Category:Hungarian physicists in the first place. The proper role of a good taxonomic category is to have enough members to be useful (i.e. no single-member categories, which is too specific), and yet few enough members to be useful (i.e. not 500 members). Category:Operas by title makes sense -- it is a good place to find a list of articles about specific operas, arranged by title. Category:Operas by composer, with a million subcategories (most filled with a single member) does not (Category:Opera composers should have a list of all opera composers, and their individual pages should link to their works). --Fastfission 14:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since I appear to be a minority of one, I won't belabor the point too much. I happen to also have a long-held interest in genealogy, so my background may make me more oriented to surnames (even ones not in my own family tree) than the rest of humanity.

One small note: The comment (made several times) that disambiguation pages are a substitute for categories is not strictly correct. WP:D states "Disambiguation pages serve a single purpose: To let the reader choose between different pages that might reside under the same title. Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion." Therefore, for example, a page like Hammond is something other than a disambiguation page (even though I left the {{disambig}} notice there when I reworked the page, so I am guilty, too).

I surrender... DS1953 22:16, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Categories of first names would be absurd. Categories of surnames could be useful in limited circumstances, but a category of "Smiths" for example would eventually become so full as to be useless for searching anyway. A carefully cultivated combination of disambigs and lists serves the purpose well enough. -- BD2412 ^talk 01:42, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

The next step

Since there now appears to be a consensus that the English Wikipedia should not include categories by names, what is the next step? --BaronLarf 21:03, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

The next step would be that if/when such a cat is up for WP:CFD deletion, we can refer to this page to show the consensus. Radiant_* 07:46, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
- Is a formal vote or poll required for this to be considered a guideline, policy, semi-policy or whatever? Curious. K1Bond007 23:52, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
  - No, just a consensus (m:don't vote on everything, WP:NOT a democracy). And it isn't meant to be policy btw. But there are still people discussing it so I see no harm in keeping it for a while longer. R adiant _>|< 07:22, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm new here so this may have been discussed before but I suggest the biography info box be added to every biography. this has first name, surname, date of birth, date of death. That way when, some time in the future, the infobox data becomes searchable metadata then we will be able to do advanced searches. Does this make any sense? This should, I suppose, mean we can (one day) dynamically produce most of these list pages from infobox metadata.old joe 12:06, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, yes. You might want to file a request on Bugzilla to see if/when it can be implemented. R adiant _>|< June 30, 2005 14:41 (UTC)

I am also new here, but I would like you to know that many people in the east, in India dont have surnames / family names. Even great well known people (who may one day be listed in wikipedia when it becomes big enough to accomodate india) don't have surnames.

Here's the discussion with my webhost about the same http://lunarforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=22807 .--61.11.83.130 30 June 2005 14:33 (UTC)

- Okay. But that's not really the issue here. Of course, famous people from India should have an article (and please do write those if you know more about it than us!) However, the question is if they shuold be categorized by their name. It would make more sense to categorize them by their profession or origin, e.g. Category:Scientists from India rather than Category:People named Vijay. HTH! R adiant _>|< June 30, 2005 14:41 (UTC)

CFD

I'm glad to see that someone was bold and put this up on CFD (WP:CFD#Category:People_by_surname)--Baron Larf July 6, 2005 14:09 (UTC)

The matter has been raised again (by me) concerning Chinese/East Asian surname categories, see WP:CFD#Family name categories. The arguments in this case are somewhat different from those gone through above; if anyone is still watching this page, please join the current discussion. Cheers, -- Visviva 03:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]