Category talk:Countries at association football competitions

Discussion of this category's great-grandchild categories change

Latest comment: 7 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Background change

We recently had a lot of categories created with names in the form "<Country> at <association football competition of a specific year>". A couple of examples are:

The full list is at the bottom of this post.

The FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship are the only two competitions where I've seen this so far.

Before these categories were created (when they were still redlinked), one or more unregistered editors added 1) squad templates and 2) articles about individual players to them. The categories were later created by a different editor, possibly because they appeared under Special:WantedCategories with 3 or more entries. So now we have many categories that each contain one template and several articles about individual players.

The issue change

I don't think the players should be directly included in these categories. Links to the player articles are in the squad templates, and I think that's enough. For what it's worth, English Wikipedia doesn't include players directly in these categories.

If the player articles are removed, each category would be left with only a squad template.

Current structure change

Here is a partial category tree as things are now:

Category:Australia at the FIFA World Cup
  Category:Australia at the 2006 FIFA World Cup
    Articles about individual players who played for Australia in the 2006 FIFA World Cup
    Template for Australia's 2006 FIFA World Cup squad
  <more categories for Australia at the FIFA World Cup in other years, same content as indicated above>
Category:Belgium at the FIFA World Cup
  Category:Belgium at the 1982 FIFA World Cup
    Articles about individual players who played for Belgium in the 1982 FIFA World Cup
    Template for Belgium's 1982 FIFA World Cup squad
  <more categories for Belgium at the FIFA World Cup in other years, same content as indicated above>

Proposed change change

I propose the following:

Remove the players from the categories being discussed
Move the templates from these categories up to the "<Country> at the <competition name>" categories
Delete the categories, because they would be empty

Here is an example of the structure I propose for the content we have now. Other appropriate content may be created in the future.

Category:Australia at the FIFA World Cup
  all templates for Australia FIFA World Cup squads
Category:Belgium at the FIFA World Cup
  all templates for Belgium FIFA World Cup squads

Full list of categories change

Categories being discussed. Click on "Expand" to see full list

If similar categories are created after these, I'd like them to be included in this discussion.

Thanks for your consideration. --Auntof6 (talk) 10:58, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hello, I'm the user who made them from Special:WantedCategories. I have no strong objections from my side. I thought I was welcomed to make them per special:diff/9037050 (it starts with "Hi, Math. Thanks for creating all those sports-related categories.") I apologize if there is misunderstanding from my side. After making these categories, I made some (Decades) in (Country) and (Years) in (Country) by including such categories to pass the 3-entry guideline. Once the categories are deleted, then some of these would be underpopulated, in this case should I tag {{popcat}} for such (Decades) in (Country) and (Years) in (Country) categories? (I think I can find them by filtering from my contributions) Thank you for opening the discussion. MathXplore (talk) 11:24, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

You didn't misunderstand. I probably hadn't looked at the actual content when I left you that message. I only noticed this issue when I was looking through wanted categories for something else.

As for the related chronology categories: maybe we can address those after this first issue is resolved. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:32, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

OK. There is one more thing I would like to explain. 1 or 2 years ago, I used to be making categories about football managers, which include pages for football managers and a navigational box that link to them. I think this is similar to the current situations that we are discussing, and that is why I thought this is all right. Do you have an opinion about these? MathXplore (talk) 11:45, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The football managers seems to be "just enough kill". That is if we are talking something along the lines of template:Manchester United managers and the collection of target articles for that template. This is a set group with a strong connection which is likely to be looked for. Separating them to "ManU managers in 1989" would be over kill though. Same applies here to categorizing the player season by season. It is overcat'ing. The only issue im seeing is in "all templates for Australia FIFA World Cup squads". Rather than being lumped into the team cat. that grouping should be a subcat of the teams cat if there are enough templates to warrant a category. (cat:Australia FIFA World Cup squads templates) Pure Evil (talk) 06:21, 26 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

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