Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Occupations

The following discussion comes from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, where it is currently listed as unresolved. It may be reviewed again in the future in the light of evolving standards and guidelines for categorization. 21:46, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category:Occupations and all its subcategories

This topic has some overlap with what is going on on wikipedia:categorization of people (e.g. "The Business Card principle") - as this discussion is however centered on a specific non-wikipedia classification system, I don't think useful to merge with "problematic categorization of persons" section --Francis Schonken 14:08, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse... This is a highly wordy collection of subcategories based on the Standard Occupational Classification System (that article has been strangely categorized under every subcategory within Category:Occupations too, which creates a lovely traffic jam at the bottom of that article). I for one cringe at the thought of fundamental articles such as actor and journalist being classifed under Category:Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations, or astronomer being classified under Category:Life, physical, and social science occupations. These are actual examples. Let's kill this, and kill the Dewey Decimal Classifications categories before our articles and categories start reading like the tax code. Postdlf 10:47, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't see why Category:Occupations needs to be deleted; it serves as a category of categories. But yes the hierarchy could be trimmed; your tax code comparison is on target. VV 13:07, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Right, "occupations" isn't a problem of course, but I didn't want to list every subcategory individually, and all this contains are these clumsily titled amalgamations, like they were only half-digested conceptually. Maybe I should list them all to make the point. Postdlf 18:48, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, my vote is keep them all. Right now there is no formal hierarchy for categorizing occupations themselves. This is useful in other reference media for the purposes of job comparison and research. I considered placing everything under Category:Occupations, but I think that would very quickly grow too large and pretty much require sub-categories at some future point. As such, I took a standarized system devised by the US government (not copyrighted) and created the structure. It is nice because everything is already defined on their website, so classification is a "no-brainer". The reason Standard Occupational Classification System has all the categories is to easily connect the article to the structure. I'm sure that can be changed in the future. Keep in mind, placement of actor in its occupation subcategory is not meant to be a primary classification, but articles on occupations tend to be light and I doubt this would be too intrusive. -- Netoholic 16:25, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As noted above, Category:Occupations isn't itself the problem—it's all of its subcategories, except for maybe one (Category:Legal occupations seems quite clear and sensible). The government seemed to make some arbitrary choices in trying to minimize the number of categories, grouping together occupations that could be linked otherwise, and under headers that are simply laundry lists of what they contain. If the category needs to list all of its contents in order to properly describe them, it's not a good classification, at least not for our purposes.

As for classification being a "no-brainer", would those in sports medicine fit into Category:Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations or Category:Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations? Both? (that would be pretty) Why is Category:Management occupations separate from Category:Office and administrative support occupations? How is the "maintenance" listed in Category:Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations separate from that listed in Category:Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations? Just because it's done in buildings rather than to objects? What about air conditioning maintenance? Why was architecture linked with engineering in Category:Architecture and engineering occupations rather than included under Category:Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations? Why is it more important that farmers work with flora and fauna (Category:Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations) rather than that they produce goods (Category:Production occupations)? It's no answer to say "read the Standard Occupational Classification System manual", because quite frankly we shouldn't care about the manual, and do you expect wikipedia readers to know the manual so they can figure out which category an occupation article is included under? Categories shouldn't depend on criteria that are external to the subject they are trying to classify, such as what the particular choices of government bureaucrats were in trying to force occupations into a small number of groupings. Nor should categories merely try to group as many things as they can together without regard to whether they form a single, unified concept (and I think as a general rule the most valid categories are ones that are defined by actual articles) rather than a mere listing of subtopics. I can't say that the SOCS doesn't effectively serve the government's need for it, but it won't serve ours. Postdlf 18:48, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I guess I feel that when there is an existing classification system we can use, it is worth exploring. If you would like to propose an alternative, I'd say the community would welcome it, but until that happens, this one should be tried out. I have a feeling though, that the task of coming up with a Wikipedia-grown system will take a long time to hash out, and itself could constantly be debated. I draw the comparison to many other established category schemes in that this one is completely valid for its purposes, and because no other better system has yet been submitted. -- Netoholic 21:57, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why not break up some of the stuck-together lumps in the SOCS system into simpler and logical groupings, such as "Sports occupations"? "Medical (or health) occupations"? And from there some parents may reveal themselves, like "Medical occupations" may be in "Science occupations" as well as one or two others, "Personal service occupations" (eh), something like that. There are two ways for a category structure to develop—start with a simple parent like Category:People or Category:History, and see what groupings of articles naturally form; or start with a specific article, figure out a specific category that it may belong to of which there are still other articles, and to which it bears a strong and useful relationship (i.e., Category:U.S. Army generals rather than Category:U.S. Army generals whose last name starts with P), and then figure out what parent categories would come together to compose it (Category:United States Army and Category:Generals), then work your way down (Category:United States armed forces --> Category:United States and Category:Militaries, etc.). It's all fairly intuitive, though you will need to know a little about the subjects to categorize them, and to check the preexisting category structure to make sure it fits and isn't redundant. Probably the best indication of how to categorize the occupation articles is the structure for categorizing the subjects of the occupations—see how art, medicine, sport, agriculture are categorized, and the occupations should be rather analogous. Postdlf 00:26, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The system involves only 23 categories. If you're proposing splitting them apart, you'll end up with a hundred in short order, which essentially would mirror other existing topic-based categories, and probably lead to many sub-categories cross-listed all over the place. You'd also have no guidlines for placement in them, so disputes would occur. As I said, this is a research tool for grouping similar occupations, and one that is "off-the-shelf" and ready to use for this relatively small-scale application - articles describing occupations. Don't delete it, just let it grow for a while and make changes (if the need arises) later. -- Netoholic 04:20, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Though it may have "only 23 categories", this reduction isn't a sign of simplicity because the category designations are anything but simple. Having sub-categories cross-listed in multiple places is a good thing if it shows actual relationships. If they show up in too many, however, it probably means that there's another parent category that could be formed to merge some of the connections. But categories shouldn't be merged just to reduce their number, unless of course you're the government simply looking for a method to sort data. As encyclopedists, we are trying to simplify concepts to their fundamentals, to classify an article as to what it is, and create groupings that aid to navigation of like articles. The SOCS categories don't accomplish any of these goals, but paradoxically end up complicating matters more through reduction because the reductions are arbitrary. Postdlf 07:44, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Keep on the reasoning that trying to replace a system the govt (not my govt by the way ;o) ) probably thought was the best they could do will probably be better than a system several hundred strangers arguing will end up with. Plus I found it fairly intuitive to add some articles to them when I felt the need. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod .....TALKQuietly)]] 21:27, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. There is no one category hierarchy in Wikipedia, nor should there. Categories are merely sets. One just needs to look at the many attempts people have made of "categorizations of everything" in the tech world to see that two or more hierarchies are often equally valid, when they are viewed from different contexts. gracefool |☺ 04:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)