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Memory Alpha  AboutPolicies and guidelinesCategory tree → Category suggestions

Please make sure you have read and understood Memory Alpha's category approval policy before editing this page. Category suggestions can be used to suggest a single category, multiple categories in the same "tree branch" or "parent category," or to determine which categories will contain or be contained by other categories. From there, they may either be approved and enacted by moving the discussion from this page to the new category's talk page, or, if not approved, moving the discussion from here to the category suggestion archive.

One of the reasons we discuss categories first is because we need to ensure that the category tag, when circumstances call for it, contains the correct sort keys to arrange the list in a predetermined order.

This page is broken down into sections:

  • In-universe categories: These categories are intended to be used for in-universe articles, and should be named to maintain Memory Alpha's POV.
  • Production POV categories: These categories are for use on production articles, which are written from the real world POV, and as such should be have the {{real world}} template on them.
  • Maintenance categories: These categories are used in the maintenance of Memory Alpha, and would include the audio and image files for example. These categories can have either a in-universe or real world POV.

In-universe categories[]

Brand names or businesses[]

For things like Stryker, Michelob, Coca-Cola, Nike, Inc., Great Value, etc. Some of them are categorized as Earth establishments, but isn't that more for individual places of business like cafes, stores, etc, not merely names imprinted on products? -LauraCC (talk) 02:17, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Hats[]

See the long list @ hat. -LauraCC (talk) 02:14, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Certainly there are more types of hats than other types of clothing accessories, although footwear may develop a longer list eventually. -LauraCC (talk) 17:25, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Performing art[]

For articles such as dance (and types thereof), play (theater), cabaret, etc, along with associated topics like method acting, soap opera, prop, etc, which are currently mostly lumped in with other stuff under Recreation. Music and Movies could become subcategories under this. -- UncertainError (talk) 02:58, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Seems logical. -LauraCC (talk) 15:33, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

War[]

For war-related things that aren't conflicts (conflicts and weapons would then be subcats, perhaps) or necessarily limited to the military members themselves: Post-traumatic stress disorder, Amputation, Shrapnel, Campaign headquarters tent, Missing in action, Killed in action, soldier, veteran, etc. Similar to the "death" and "sleep" categories. -LauraCC (talk) 01:51, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Assay office customers[]

For all the individuals (in-joke names) listed @ Assay office. -LauraCC (talk) 02:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Fleets[]

For the list @ fleet. -LauraCC (talk) 03:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

California locations[]

There are so many different places names listed @ California. -LauraCC (talk) 14:03, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Journalists[]

For people like Sylvia Ront, Noah Schloss (journalist), Jake Sisko, Jake Tapper, etc, some of whom are depicted as broadcast reporters, while others are said to be writers (not to say they couldn't have also written what they reported on, but never mentioned if so.). -LauraCC (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Telepathy[]

For telepathy related topics, such as Telepathic historian, Mind meld, Telepathic energy, etc. -LauraCC (talk) 02:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Alternate timeline[]

For things which (as far as we know) only exist in timelines other than the prime, mirror, and alternate reality (Kelvinverse). Category:Confederation would be a subcat. People like Eric-Christopher and Bret La Forge would be there as well. Maybe there's a better name for it, but I can't think of one at the moment. -LauraCC (talk) 19:36, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Commercial transport database passengers[]

I know there's a table on the page Commercial transport database, but when somebody runs into one of these names while browsing MA, this gives them an alternate way to look at them. -LauraCC (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Production POV categories[]

Comics sub-breakdown[]

The Comics category is starting to get rather large at almost 1000 articles. The comics that have been published over the years have come from (thus far) a handful of publishers, so one possibility to make it a bit more manageable would be to break them down based on that, such as "Marvel Comics", "DC Comics", "WildStorm Comics", "IDW Publishing Comics", "Gold Key Comics", etc.

Titles/Issues/Volumes/etc that are printed by more than one publisher would have each publisher's category on them.

Further possible breakdowns (that could be instead of or in addition to) could include "miniseries comics" (for those of less than 6 issues), "ongoing comics", "one-shot comics". These would fall in-line with the "comics collections" category.

Thoughts? -- sulfur (talk) 14:51, June 11, 2020 (UTC)

I would prefer the publisher categories, but restricted to just the first one. We can just have a note on the categories that it only contains the comics first published by them. - Archduk3 15:26, June 11, 2020 (UTC)
Yes, we should sort them by publisher. -LauraCC (talk) 17:28, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Child performers[]

A la Category:Deceased production staff and Category:Animal performers, what about a category for child actors? -LauraCC (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

I realize that although the dead stay dead and animals stay animals, children grow up, but some actors only performed (on Trek and/or at all) as children. -LauraCC (talk) 18:29, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

This is too niche. –Gvsualan (talk) 12:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Deceased performers and deceased authors[]

Subcategories of deceased production staff, as it's up to 1,297 by now. -LauraCC (talk) 18:28, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, is there a wiki shortcut for finding all the people in a category with death dates, or would you have to do it one at a time? -LauraCC (talk) 19:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Anyone using {{died}} should automatically be categorized as "deceased production staff", and it really wasn't designed to discriminate because it is not a manually added category. Also, it's a lot of rather unnecessary work. If you want to mess around with dpl stuff, you can probably populate a list if you cross reference both categories. –Gvsualan (talk) 17:16, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Here goes:

-LauraCC (talk) 20:49, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

-LauraCC (talk) 20:51, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

-LauraCC (talk) 04:03, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Much like the overtaking of this section with lists, I really don't see the need for this at this time. –Gvsualan (talk) 12:18, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Archival footage performers[]

I seem to recall this being suggested elsewhere, maybe by me, maybe here earlier, but anyone appearing as themselves in archival footage such as Adolf Hitler (self) and Boris Karloff (self) ought to have a category for that. -LauraCC (talk) 17:41, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Theatrical releases[]

As The Last Generation (episode) is airing in IMAX theaters, and it is not a movie, how about a category for all Trek productions aired in theaters? Were there any other show episodes that aired in theaters? (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Soundtrack concert releases[]

Also, what about a category for productions that have aired in soundtrack concerts? -LauraCC (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Podcast covers[]

Right now, they're categorized at "Memory Alpha images (audio covers)". Maybe split into (audiobook covers) and (podcast covers)? -LauraCC (talk) 18:59, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Memory Alpha contributors[]

To denote those production staff members with an MA account. The category would automatically add to any page with a "MA" template, which would be listed in Sidebar staff, next to "|MA username = ". (In-jokes associated with their name are already listed in the template, after all) A mention in the body of the article might get lost there easier than if it's done this way. Besides these contributors with credits, are there any others? (I'm certain I've heard there are others before, though I don't remember their names offhand.)

-LauraCC (talk) 20:39, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I suppose we could just do a table list instead of a category, but still add their username to the staff sidebar. -LauraCC (talk) 04:04, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Lyricists[]

For whoever wrote the lyrics to Trek songs, such as SNW: "Subspace Rhapsody" tracks, "Beyond Antares", "Sledgehammer (song)", "The Moon's a Window to Heaven" etc. Right now, the last one is in "Category:Composers", which "Lyricists" could be a subcat of, or a fellow subcat of "Music department". -LauraCC (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

US filming locations and Canada filming locations[]

Or would it be better to have a list of filming locations by country? Canadian and US locations outnumber other world locations.-LauraCC (talk) 23:22, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, possibly divide into "Interior filming locations" (such as "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory") and "Exterior filming locations" (such as El Mirage Dry Lake Bed). -LauraCC (talk) 15:36, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I've sorted them by country/region, etc here: User:LauraCC/Filming locations by country/province. -LauraCC (talk) 18:33, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Maintenance categories[]

Images (anatomical graphics)[]

A subcategory of Category:Memory Alpha images (display graphics), to capture things like File:Kwejian medical scan.jpg, File:Aenar brain.jpg, File:Ash Tyler Active Latent Klingon Anatomy.jpg, File:Boyce's name.jpg, File:Eye diagram.jpg, etc. Or, if we want to expand to include things like the biobed displays, could expand to "medical graphics." Maybe two separate, one for anatomical, one for medical (non-anatomical). - AJHalliwell (talk) 17:57, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Let's start with the latter. Support. LauraCC (talk) 03:16, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Image categories for individual characters[]

I'm bringing back an old suggestion to implement individual categories for each major character (see here). I've been told it's already been implemented in Memory Beta (as seen here) and it would be extremely helpful not only to create subdivisions in the extremely populated Category:Memory Alpha images (Humans), but also create a more user-friendly method to find all the pictures of their favorite characters. What do you think? | Pedronog (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Support -- for the series main casts (i.e. Kirk, Riker, Hoshi, etc.), as I agree Category:Images of Humans is so large (11,000+) it's essentially unnavigable. Per Memory Alpha:Image use policy, "Memory Alpha is not an image gallery!", but I think this would serve to organize what needs organized, and provide a gallery of sorts for those interested. We'll continue to remove superfluous/duplicate images. Would we then put "Category:Memory Alpha images (William T. Riker)" under "Category:Memory Alpha images (Human individuals)" under Category:Memory Alpha images (Humans)? - AJHalliwell (talk) 15:44, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

I think we should indeed do that. But what about The Doctor? Would "Category:Memory Alpha images (The Doctor)" be simultaneously under "Category:Memory Alpha images (Human individuals)" and under "Category:Memory Alpha images (Human holograms)"? Is that OK? | Pedronog (talk) 16:35, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

The "images (The Doctor)" category should fall under "Category:Memory Alpha images (Human holograms)"; where all current images of The Doctor should be. For Humans, I recommend a "Human individuals" subcategory. For alien mains, with there being far fewer, maybe they could fall under the species category since there would only be a few (i.e. "images (Worf)" under "images (Klingons)" instead of "images (Klingon individuals)".) - AJHalliwell (talk) 23:09, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Just for example's sake, the Memory Beta equivalent starts at http://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Memory_Beta_images_(regular_and_recurring_characters) and trees down from there. Obviously it can't be a total carbon copy because of minor differences in naming conventions and major differences in subject matter, but it's grown pretty well with organic adds -- captainmike 22:56, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

This should be approved by now, right? | Pedronog (talk) 18:32, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

As nice as it would be to (mostly) duplicate MB's category tree for this, we really can't because Category:Memory Alpha images (Humans) is an in-universe category, whereas the MB categories are real-world POV (i.e. Memory Beta images (regular and recurring characters) -> Memory Beta images (DS9 regular and recurring characters), etc.). We *can* mirror the ones below there, though, since Memory Alpha images (Julian Bashir) as a sub-cat of Memory Alpha images (Humans) doesn't veer into RW territory. But bearing that in mind, I'd say go for it, at least for the main characters with lots of images. -- Renegade54 (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Before we go live with this, I'd suggest doing the following:
  1. Make a page with a list of each of the main characters (I'd suggest starting with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura as a trial)
  2. List each image that would go into each of those categories
Once that's done, we can run a bot on these rather than requiring an individual to edit several hundred image pages. That'll give us an idea of scope and size for these categories I think. Then we can start growing out series by series moving forward. -- Sulfur (talk) 19:01, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm sure there are a few mistakes, but to get started I compiled: User:AJHalliwell/Images by character, primarily based on the "what links here" files for the main performer's page. - AJHalliwell (talk) 21:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I added just a couple of pictures to Kirk. Are we going to consider every single image where a piece of Shatner is seen, while playing Kirk?

For instance, what if he's really small? Like in here:

Or only showing his back? Like these ones:

And do we count images where only his hand is being seen?

Pedronog (talk) 08:57, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

My understanding would be anytime "Category:Images of Humans" would otherwise be used; so yes for really small, yes for only his back, but no for only his hand, because those are not illustrating a Human, they're illustrating an object. Similarly, if an image of a stunt double is depicting the stunt double - it's not considered an in-universe image of Kirk, it should be written from real world perspective as an image depicting the stunt double. And Marta imitating Kirk is not an image of Kirk. This is also a good reminder that, in group photos, the bot will need to make sure it leaves on "Category:Images of Humans" and not just replace. - AJHalliwell (talk) 04:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Got it! | Pedronog (talk) 06:49, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Any further along on this? LauraCC (talk) 03:17, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
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