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Appalachia Project Categorization Guidance

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Categorization Guidance

This Appalachia Project page offers information in addition to what is on the project's Index page about its Categorization Hierarchy, which is a very brief overview.

Categorization can be difficult to master. In recognition of this, at the top of every Category page is a link - [How to Categorize] - which goes to the Categorization Project's help page: Help:Categorization.

There are two aspects of categorization: the categories themselves and what they include.

Creating Categories

The Help:Categorization page includes the following, under Adding New Categories
If you would like to use a category but can't find it by searching or browsing click the "request a new category or advice" link that you will see next to the Edit Text box on the edit page of any profile.
Members can create new categories if they fit within an existing hierarchy and use our agreed-upon category naming scheme but if you have any uncertainty, use the link to start a conversation in G2G and you're sure to get help from Categorization Project members and other advanced WikiTreers.

Cemetery Categories

Before creating cemetery pages, please consult the Cemeterist Project's guidance, Cemetery Categorization. See also Guidance for Creation of United States Cemeteries. G2G questions tagged cemeteries and categorization cover a wide range of subjects, but searching one or the other for the other tag finds gems such as this question, asking for cemetery category help, where that Guidance page was mentioned.
You can also ask for help in G2G (tagged cemeteries and categorization). Those that use the Appalachia Project's Discord Chat Server, can request a new category or seek advice from fellow project members. To request a new cemetery category on our Discord Channel, click here.
In brief: If you are creating a category page for a cemetery, first make sure that one does not already exist. Second, follow the guidance provided. Third, use the CIB template for cemeteries: Template:CategoryInfoBox_Cemetery (like category pages, template pages have important information).
Note: The Appalachia Project does not oversee cemeteries which are located within Appalachia, so the project should not be included as an entry in the Cemetery CIB and the cemetery should not be categorized directly within the project's categorization hierarchy. The categorization hierarchy for cemeteries will put them in the appropriate location categories, which will lead to the project's top-level location category, Appalachia Counties (see Location Categorization, below). If a regional team has a special interest in a particular cemetery, the Team page can have a link to it.

Appalachia Project Categories

Categories used by the Appalachia Project to manage profiles and pages of interest to the project have, for the most part, already been created.[1] If you believe additional categories are needed, or would like to suggest an additional "Appalachia Project Needs..." category, please post to the Project's Google Group (not Discord or G2G). If you are not a project member, you can post a comment on this page and a project leader will bring it up in the Google Group.

Adding Categories to Profiles

When determining what categories to add to someone's profile or to a page, always check the Category page itself for guidance as to what profiles or pages are appropriate (see the next section, "Guidance from Category Pages"). If no guidance is given, check with the relevant project.

People Profiles

For people profiles of Appalachians, you'll want to include at a minimum the appropriate
  • Appalachians category or categories. Say the person was born and died in West Virginia, having lived their whole life there, then you'd add [[Category: West Virginia Appalachians]] or the Appalachia Sticker with the parameter "state=West Virginia" (which will had the category automatically): {{Appalachia Sticker|state=West Virginia}} - see Template: Appalachia Sticker for details and additional parameters.
  • Location category or categories. Say the person was born in Logan County and died in Mingo County. You'd add [[Category: Logan County, West Virginia]] and [[Category: Mingo County, West Virginia]] - unless you knew the town(s), in which case you'd add the category for the town instead of the county (not all towns have categories; go with the county if there is not a town category and check into whether or not a town category should be created).
  • Cemetery category, if where the person is buried is known.

Project Pages

Most project pages will be under the project's main category, Appalachia Project, or a top-level subcategory.
For example, Category: Southern Appalachia Team, which focuses on the Southern Appalachia Region that includes counties in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, has the Workspace pages and Appalachians categories for those states (see below).
People profiles under the main Appalachia Project category are only those of project members. Likewise, people profiles under the Regional Team categories are only those of team members.

Guidance from Category Pages

To provide a basic outline here, the following information was pulled from category pages as of 25 September 2022. It shows the types of profiles and pages found in the Appalachia Project's categorization hierarchies.[2]

Project: #Category: Appalachia Project (Category: Appalachia Project)
People and Places: #Category: Appalachia (Category: Appalachia)

Remember also that every category page has a [Navigate] link at the upper right, which will show its parent category (or categories) and any subcategories. It does not show pages or profiles.

Category: Appalachia Project

Parent Category:
Guidance on the category page:
Subcategories:
Pages:

Regional Teams

Two of the five regional teams are shown in the following examples. Note that the South Central Team includes One Place Studies. While OPS pages are part of the One Place Studies Project, and should follow that project's categorization hierarchies, team members with an interest in a particular study can include it under the appropriate team's category, at the discretion of the Team Leader.
Parent Category:
Guidance from the South Central Appalachia Team category page:
Subcategories:
Pages:
Parent Category:
Guidance from the Southern Appalachia Team category page:
Subcategories:
Pages:

Category: Appalachia

Parent Categories:
Guidance on the Appalachia category page:
  • This Appalachia Project category includes the category for Appalachia-related projects as well as the project's top-level categories for people and places of Appalachia. It also includes the space page for Counties of Appalachia (which has tables for Appalachia county category pages). For other project categories and pages, as well as project members, please see Category: Appalachia Project. The project's Workspace pages (with tables for Appalachia county space pages) can also be found under Category: Appalachia Counties.
Subcategories:
Pages:
Note: No people profiles and no additional subcategories or pages are appropriate for this category.

Category: Appalachians

Parent Category:
Guidance on the Appalachians category page:
  • This Appalachia Project category is a top-level container category for the project's "landing level" subcategories. Landing-level categories are where people profiles should be categorized. The project categorizes places of Appalachia under the appropriate county category (Category: Appalachia Counties). Some One Place Studies pages may also be under a Regional Team category (found under Category: Appalachia Project) at the Team Leader's discretion.

    Which state-level Appalachians category someone should be categorized under depends on when they lived in Appalachia (for example, someone who died before 20 June 1863 - the date that West Virginia was admitted to the union - should not be in Category: West Virginia Appalachians).
Subcategories:
Note: No profiles or pages.

Category: Appalachia, Notables

Parent categories:
Guidance on the Appalachia, Notables category page:
  • This category contains profiles of notable persons of Appalachia. It is managed by the Appalachia Project in association with the Notables Project. Questions? Post in G2G, tagging your question as appropriate (you can add up to six tags).

    Native Americans are not considered Appalachians (although there are some exceptions - if in doubt, check with the profile manager and/or the Native Americans Project).

    Please submit your Notable Profile to the Appalachia Project via this form.

    appalachia - Notables - categorization

Location Categorization

The top-level Appalachia Project location category is Category: Appalachia Counties.

Location categorization hierarchy flows from Category: United States of America to the state-level categories, of which 13 have counties in today's Appalachia:

  1. Category: Alabama (37 counties)
  2. Category: Georgia (37 counties)
  3. Category: Kentucky (54 counties)
  4. Category: Maryland (3 counties)
  5. Category: Mississippi (24 counties)
  6. Category: New York (14 counties)
  7. Category: North Carolina (31 counties)
  8. Category: Ohio (32 counties)
  9. Category: Pennsylvania (52 counties)
  10. Category: South Carolina (7 counties)
  11. Category: Tennessee (52 counties)
  12. Category: Virginia (25 counties) - also 8 Independent Cities
  13. Category: West Virginia (55 counties)

Category: Appalachia Counties

Parent Category:
Guidance on Appalachia Counties category page:
  • This Appalachia Project category includes the category pages for the eight Virginia Independent Cities and all 423 counties in today's Appalachia (as listed by the Appalachian Regional Commission, here). Also appropriate for this category are existing space pages for those counties and existing county categories and space pages for extinct and former counties that were within Appalachia throughout their history (for example, Berkeley County was in Appalachia when it was part of the Colony of Virginia, subsequently the Commonwealth of Virginia, and now as a county in West Virginia). Note that of the 13 states with counties in Appalachia (see tables on the project's Counties of Appalachia page), only West Virginia in its entirety has always been completely in Appalachia. See the Workspace pages (listed under "W" below) for links to corresponding space pages.

    People profiles should be categorized under the appropriate state-level Appalachians category, based on when they lived in Appalachia (the 13 categories for Appalachians can be found here).
Subcategories: (433) As, for example
Pages (56) As, for example

Category: Adair County, Kentucky (e.g.)

Parent Categories:
Guidance on Adair County, Kentucky category page, in addition to information included in the Category Information Box:
  • Adair County, Kentucky was founded in 1801 and named for John Adair, then Speaker of the House in Kentucky and later Governor of Kentucky.
Subcategories: (58) including
Pages:

Tips

  • As mentioned earlier, always check the Category page itself for guidance as to what profiles or pages are appropriate.
  • When you add a category - or a template, which can sometimes automatically add a category - check the saved page to ensure the categories that you intended to add were added correctly (no "red" categories - when the category is shown in red, it means the category does not exist).[4]
  • Information added to a profile should have a source - including categories. For example, if you add Category: West Virginia Appalachians or {{Appalachia Sticker|state=West Virginia}} (which will add the category), the profile's biography should support that the person was born in or lived in West Virginia.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ If/when the project gets a project account, which would allow it to manage profiles, the project box required to be displayed on such profiles would add Category: Appalachia Project Managed Profiles (see Space: Appalachia Project Managed Profiles).
  2. ↑ Note that information on category pages, to include the categories, pages, and profiles listed, may be different than what was there on 25 September. Anyone can add any category to any open profile or page. This does not necessarily mean that they should have. Rarer is when the text of a category page is changed without the knowledge of the project maintaining the category. If you have questions about the guidance on one of the project's category pages, please post to the project's Google Group (not Discord or G2G). If you are not a member of the Google Group, post a comment on this page.
  3. ↑ The sandbox template is the proposed coding for the project box (which would be used with the project account on profiles managed by the Appalachia Project).
  4. ↑ Template pages include details about the use of a template, and often the Examples table will show any category that the template automatically adds. The name of the template page will be the same as the name of the template (the words following the opening double braces to the closing braces or to the first pipe, whichever comes first [pipes are used to add parameters]). The URL would be the main WikiTree address, the wiki subfolder, the Template namespace and the template name. For example, the template name of {{Estimated Date|Birth and Death}} is Estimated Date and the URL would be https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Estimated_Date. Likewise, the URL for {{Appalachia Sticker}} would be https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Appalachia_Sticker.




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  • Public Q&A: These will appear above and in the Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Forum. (Best for anything directed to the wider genealogy community.)


Comments: 4

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Harris-5439 Steven Harris
Was this structure proposed and approved by the community by chance?

I noticed there was rapid expansion of the categories and profiles, but I think there are a few concerns that should be looked over.

For instance, the page states that "Say the person was born and died in West Virginia, having lived their whole life there, then you'd add ... " Is there a way to know whether a person claimed this heritage or even associated with the term?

posted by Steven Harris
Noland-165 Liz (Noland) Shifflett
i forwarded an e-mail to you about the review of this page. I'm not sure what to say about your last question. If a person was born in France, they're French. If a person is born in Appalachia, they're an Appalachian.
posted by Liz (Noland) Shifflett
Harris-5439 Steven Harris
> i forwarded an e-mail to you about the review of this page.

Received. I agree with the email comments, the page looks well documented and explained. However, from Help:Category Creation and Removal:

"Do not create a category unless it fits neatly within an existing hierarchy and uses an agreed-upon category naming scheme. If you are not confident about these, click the "request a new category or advice" link that you will see next to the Edit Text box on the edit page of any profile. It's better to start a conversation with the Categorization Project and other advanced members than trying to do things alone."

Since this is an entirely new hierarchy, this would start the Category proposal process.


> If a person was born in France, they're French. If a person is born in Appalachia, they're an Appalachian.

Appalachia is a cultural region, not an official demographic or administrative entity. This would be similar to saying anyone born in Yemen or Oman is Arabic. Or that a person who was born on a Military base in Japan and lived there for 90% of their life is Japanese.

Identifying with a culture or cultural region (sharing in the beliefs, customs, and lifestyle) would be much more than just where a person was born, lived, or died.

posted by Steven Harris
edited by Steven Harris
Craig-4574 Sandy (Craig) Patak
I can not speak on the Categorization part but with my over 25 years of researching and speaking on Appalachia, I can speak on the region as a SME.

Saying Appalachia is only cultural is inaccurate. I understand where your thought process is with this because topics bespeaking Appalachian life are what is widely discussed vs geology or location. Yes, Appalachia is culturally defined by inhabitants (and non-inhabitants) but it is also most definitely a location defined by the US Government's commission: Appalachia Regional Commission (ARC). For constrast, the NEH does speak to the cultural parts of Appalachia. On almost every Project page, we reference ARC as a source. Even, Dr Henry Gates, Jr is quoted as saying, "Appalachia is a rich and beautiful land..." The definitive Encyclopedia of Appalachia also accepts ARC's definition as the "region."

Over the past month, I have spoken and documented with many experts (Academics of Appalachian Studies from major Universities, Govt Officials at ARC, and fellow SMEs) on this topic, and a few other Appalachian topics, that are in agreement that Appalachia is both a culture and a location. Appalachia might not be recognized with an official Government body such as a Congress or Senate, but basically, Appalachia does have a defined location or else who is to say that California is or is not Appalachia.

I completely agree with you about sharing beliefs, customs, and lifestyle for Appalachia and other places because this would be similar to the Acadians, for example.

With all this said, maybe there is an easy fix by using specific symantics. Perhaps the only Project sticker we use says born/lived in Appalachia and we remove instances of "was an Appalachian." We pretty much already do this already anyway. This really seems easy and not complicated to come to an agreement so the Project can move forward.

posted by Sandy (Craig) Patak
edited by Sandy (Craig) Patak

Categories: Appalachia Project