Wikipedia has articles for each decennial census of the United States but no individual categories for them. Commons has articles and categories (worth a look because they include some photocopies that we don't have). We have articles for all and some categories. Those, along with census pages for other countries, deserve to be standardized before we get too big.
See earlier discussions at:
There is a conflict between principles here. The "By location category scheme" says placenames should be at the end, e.g. Counties of Ohio rather than Ohio counties. But a practical principle is that we use Wikipedia and/or Commons names exactly, to save thousands of hours, unless there is a very good reason to depart from them. User:Phlox was keen on both principles but was unable to resolve the conflict in this case.
Wikipedia and Commons have page names such as "1880 United States Census". So do we, at present. But the Commons category has the same pagename, whereas our category for that example, following the "by location" principle, is Category:Census of the United States, 1880.
Which way should we go?
-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:14, January 2, 2013 (UTC)
- We cannot keep changing categories, because, if we do, all categories with the former names have to be renamed. In the case of census this would mean revising thousands of entries. I consider that the by location principle is correct and should be applied consistently. The wikipedia issue was known when the decision of applying the location principle was taken. I strongly object to changing the categories just to copy Wikipedia. 108.18.57.249 03:05, January 17, 2013 (UTC) (User:Afil)
- We CAN keep changing categories (and a bot can handle major changes), but nobody enjoys doing it. Where WP has a category, it's sensible to accept it because then we DON'T have to change it. I won't ask you to change any census categories, Andrei. As the US decennials don't have WP categories YET, and we seldom copy category names from Commons, I'm quite happy to accept the "by location" cats that we have. However, we want some consistency in other country cats, so it would be wise to check whether WP has any before creating any for them. As WP hasn't any decennial cats, WP could be thought unlikely to have cats for other US censuses, whereas we might want some soon and possibly have some already. The "by location" principle would suit them too. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:46, January 18, 2013 (UTC)
- We cannot keep changing categories, because, if we do, all categories with the former names have to be renamed. In the case of census this would mean revising thousands of entries. I consider that the by location principle is correct and should be applied consistently. The wikipedia issue was known when the decision of applying the location principle was taken. I strongly object to changing the categories just to copy Wikipedia. 108.18.57.249 03:05, January 17, 2013 (UTC) (User:Afil)