Category talk:Cristiano Ronaldo

Team category

This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.

I want to highlight this as an example of the problem with Category:Sportspeople in categories for teams. The overwhelming majority of articles about CR7 are about him at Manchester United or Real Madrid with a fair amount for International competition. Is it appropriate to remove category for team when a player moves? What if CR7 becomes old and plays for an inferior league in some country's second division? Do we just remove Category:Juventus F.C. as well? I hope this illustrates the problem. Should it be all teams, or just one and eventually none? Also, this presents a problem in the 'Wikinews doesn't want to update categories constantly mantra.' Well, it was relayed as why the 'intro' should be super brief (so not technically about categories, but I think the same principle needs to apply, one way or the other). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SVTCobra (talk • contribs) 03:04, 25 July 2019‎ (UTC)

Sportspeople category tends to keep only that club category to which the player is currently associated with. Your comments remind me of loaned players, where both the clubs should be added in the category. If the player plays for a club whose category does not exist, we either make that category, or we leave it alone. We have categories for clubs which are not in the first tier: Middlesbrough F.C., Swansea City AFC and Wigan Athletic F.C.. The short bio helps us to keep on topic, which is a fact which would not cease to be a fact. Consider this line: "This is the category for Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese footballer, who playes for Italian club Juventus FC". This may not be true after some time, and Future suggests one to be careful using the sentences which could change in future. If it were to say "This is the category for Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese footballer", that is going to remain true. However, there is a catch. "Portuguese"— does that indicate his citizenship, or his nationality (in this context, place of birth, or ethnicity)? It should be nationality, as citizenship may or maynot be the same. Also, Cristiano Ronaldo had Spanish citizenship as anyone who has stayed for at least for five years with a permanent address. Which means, Diego Costa's bio should say "This is the category for Diego Costa, a Brazil footballer" or "This is the category for Diego Costa, a Brazilian footballer who plays for Spain". Per the tems of FIFA, one cannot change the country they represent if they have played a FIFA recognised match (except a friendly or qualifying: the specific case of Costa), as of now, it speaks about nationality.

And the problem you had perviously highlighted about having articles of MUFC or RMCF for a Juve player, consider this. One would reach to Cristiano Ronaldo's page by: clicking on his name, finding him in the list of "Football (soccer)" [not an issue], Portugal [not an issue], News articles by person [not an issue], Sportspeople [not an issue], and Juventus F.C. If that is so, the firt article they would see mentions he left RMCF for Juve. And if reading an old article, it would not take more than a few moments to understand the player would be no longer playing for that club, and that is how it would work.
103.254.128.98 (talk) 05:21, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not saying you a wrong in that the current club should be the only category in which a player appears. I am saying we need to decide. Eventually all players will retire. So is there any value added in trying to keep track of all club affiliations of everyone in Category:Sportspeople? Or do we have to make a value judgement after they retire which club they were most famous for playing for? Alex Ferguson seems to have been decided he is most famous for Manchester United but he has not been with the club for six years. But this is easier to accept because all Wikinews articles about Ferguson were during his ManU years. In CR7's case, this is vastly different. I am going to stay away from your points about citizenship for staying X number of years in a country, because my impression is that under the EU there's no forced adoption of citizenship for working in a fellow EU country, but I am no expert. EU people can work in any other EU country is my impression. On the other hand, I am aware national football leagues sometimes have limits to how many foreign players they can have on a squad. However, I think these discussions are not pertinent to the category issue. --SVTCobra 05:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
The point about citizenship was brought in picture because there are some other categories which should be fixed. Regarding Alex Ferguson, MUFC category should not be there. Is there a value? Yes, indeed. For DynamicPageList, especially. I would say, more of the wikilinking way, and the internal working.
/me goes to fix the category pages of some other footballers.
103.254.128.98 (talk) 06:32, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Some thoughts.

• One of the functions of the categories on a person is to suggest possible categorization for new articles. If that is the driving force in categorizing person categories, then we would want an active player to be listed only under the team they're currently playing for. However,

• this would not seem to apply to a former player (retired or dead); who knows what team might be relevant to a new article about a former player.
• this reasoning does not address the use of our categories as a research tool, which we have considered in general to be the dominant purpose of our topic categories. To what extent it figures in the purpose of our internal categories may be less clear and may perhaps vary depending on the internal category. For example, some subcats of People by occupation are meant to be targets for mainspace redirects, and therefore their category pages are set up using {{topic cat}}, making them arguably both topics and internal; and presumably any category targeted by a mainspace redirect is meant in part to be used for research.

• It concerns me that this is all leading to a greater potential for a person-category to become out of date. We don't want our categories to need real-time updating; if we keep having to update the information on person-categories, that suggests we may be putting too much encyclopedic information into them. I've been tempted on occasion to write an intro for, say, a former US president that simply says, "a US politician". A major insight from the early years of both Wikinews and Wikibooks is that one should not have meta-pages, separate from the primary products (usually, the mainspace pages) of the project, that require regular maintenance; if any regular maintenance is needed it should be located at, and focused on, the primary products. This was why the Wikinews portals died, and likewise the first generation of Wikibooks bookshelves.

--Pi zero (talk) 13:23, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Remark quoted from Category talk:Wayne Rooney#Category:

It is a travesty he is not in Category:Manchester United F.C.. I'm sorry, but it's just wrong. --SVTCobra 21:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I've been taking my time to think this over, but finally I think I agree, SVTCobra. There are two different paths a researcher might want to follow into our archives that both call for listing all the teams the player has belonged to (or, at least, the ones they've belonged to within the coverage of our archives): one might start at a player's category and want to know what teams may be relevant in our archives, or one might look at a team's category and want to know what players may be relevant in our archives.

So I'm now favoring a cumulative handling of teams for players. It's a separate question whether or not the intro line should mention what team they're now in. --Pi zero (talk) 22:32, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

As far as the latter, I would not want to incur the burden of keeping that up-to-date. Transfers can be frequent and then there's the issue of players on loan. I also wouldn't necessarily want them to be in the category for a particular team unless we have an article covering that, however, I think categories have been updated for transfers whether or not we have articles about them with that team. Wayne Rooney can serve again as an example. It looks like he was temporarily in Everton FC even though we never had an article about that. It's not wrong, and I wouldn't object to it remaining a fixture, but it shows how it can change more frequently than we have articles. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:01, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Overall, I also feel it is doubly inconsistent when looking at how nationality is being treated for players. Case in point Xherdan Shaqiri: He was a one-year-old baby when his family emigrated to Switzerland. What is the value of keeping him in Category:Yugoslavia? Not much, but I don't object to it, however, removing clubs feels like erasing history, and I think there is value in preserving it. --SVTCobra 04:08, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

It would suit to have a tracking category of "Players who played for FOO club".
Agastya Chandrakant ⚽️ 🏆 🎾 🎬 🎤 📰 16:14, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
@Acagastya: I think we need a stricter rule - perhaps only include a team category in a player category when that player is specifically highlighted in a published article. The fact they move from one team to another should not be reflected on Wikinews unless we publish an article about it. [₂₄Cr][talk] 10:00, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

That is not how a category should work. For a category like MUFC, we add its category (speaking about cat namespace), to all those categories which are a part of it. Think of it like cities; just because city is not highlighted as much does not mean it should be excluded. Similarly, should Pakistan anned entire of J&K, (with all mutual agreement), we are not going to maintain old categories like India and UK to the category.
•–• 10:07, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

The categories should reflect the published articles i.e. a snapshot of the time. Just as we don’t modify archived content, we should not be updating categories based on the players career unless we publish an article. We have articles about CR7 at Man Utd and Real, so those are categories that should be included in his category. However, we don’t have anything about his time at Sporting Club de Portugal. We would not create a category for that team unless we have at least three published articles involving the team. I think that makes sense. Your example of J&K (I assume you meant "annexed") suggests we should ignore the fact there was Indian administration in the region, just because they might give it up. What would happen to articles currently in Category:Jammu and Kashmir? Would they be transferred to Category:Pakistan, even though at the time of publishing, the region was part of India? That does not make sense. [₂₄Cr][talk] 11:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)