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Everyone else seems very excited about this categorization. I, however, oppose it. I think it is overkill to try to categorize articles when we should try to categorize in the articles' contexts or material(s). Are we still using "List of topics in whatever" lists? And whatever happened to the MediaWiki boxes? I don't know, maybe there is some good justification for this system. -- Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 17:35, May 30, 2004 (UTC)
I have another question. I looked at Category:Monarchs. I want to start my own subcategory. How does the subcategory appear in Category:Monarchs? --
Merovingian ↕
T@Lk 18:32, May 30, 2004 (UTC)
I am not thrilled either. So far I have seen categories which disrupt (top right) image placement and people putting in categories while not noticing that a vandal has partly translated a page into Italian. Previews do not seem to show the category text, the categories seem to be much less tolerant of non-standard coding than other functions, and those putting in categoroies do not seem to be looking at the overall impact on a page. Is this really ready for real world application? -- Henrygb 23:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I was also rather dismayed when I suddenly noticed these "categories" appearing in various pages I've been editing and following closely. They reminded me of the old "namespaces" argument, that basically went - should we have a "Transvaal" article or a "South Africa/Transvaal" article? The decision was that namespaces aren't good, because encyclopedia entries are not hierarchical, and rarely belong to only one category. So, now these multiple categories were invented. So, you could say that Transvaal is in "South Africa" and a "Province" and a "Place" and a "Non-existant province" and a .... you get the drift - when does the list of categories stop? What's wrong with the old way of having the first paragraph say something like: The Transvaal was one of the provinces of South Africa? It's much more general, much more useful, and actually much clearer, because the relationship of the article to each of its categories is spelled out in English, rather than being implied (a category of "South Africa" doesn't say if the article is a place in south Africa, a former place in South Africa, a South African person, and so on). Moreover, it's not always clear to which category a certain article belongs. Does the Daytona race track article belong to the "NASCAR tracks", "U.S. tracks" or just "tracks" category? What was wrong with the old way of just saying that "Daytona ... is a race track in the U.S., ...", with certain key words linking to the appropriate entity or list of entities (such as list of nascar or us race tracks)? I have to admit, I thought the old way was much better, and I wish these categories go away. Nyh 06:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
By the way, I am also opposed to these long boxed lists people started to put in pages (see, for example, the end of South Africa), for exactly the same reasons. These boxes are not more useful than just linking to the "list of countries in Africa", and only clutter the article with irrelevant information (does a person looking up South Africa needs to see the list of other African countries?) and makes the whole link structure of wikipedia more rigid and less flexible. So, I wish those boxes go away too.... Nyh 06:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if this is a good ide but I thought of categorize fundamental constants of physics, chemistry, biology, matematics, etc. How could such a structure look like or should they just go under dicipline instead of "fundamental constants" ?
Fund. Const. of Phys -- \ Fund. Const. of Chem ----+ | Fund. Const. of Math ----+-- Fundamental Constants of Nature -- Mathematics and Nature Science | . . . etc
or should it be
Fundamental Constants of Physics -- \ Other category -- + Physics -+ | | Fundamental Constants of Chemistry | \ | Other category -- + Chemistry -+ | +- Mathematics and Nature Science | . . . etc
or any other ideas ? // Rogper 22:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
/--Physics<------Fundamental constants of physics-----\ | | +--Chemistry<----Fundamental constants of chemistry---+ ... ... ... +--Foo<----------Fundamental constants of foo---------+ | | V V Natural sciences Fundamental constants | \---->Science
Is it possible to format the listing of the sub-categories and the contained articles? E.g. if I add Albert Einstein to the Category:People, could I use [[Category:People|Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)]] not only to sort him by Einstein, but also to display the results with the year? The current list in the categories are a little though to read.
Also, how much introduction text is suggested for a category scheme? One line like e.g. Category:Harry Potter, none like Category:Films, or a lengthy introduction that makes the category more like an article like Category:Japanese culture (made by me for demonstration purposes)? -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
'precomment': I think this bug has been fixed. All the workarounds are now unnecessary, unless there are huge warts in something other than monobook. Can we delete this section now? -- ssd 03:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed that the current placement of the "Categories" link at the top-right corner of an article will force a picture in the article into the center of the screen. I'm trying to format the Batman article, for instance, so that the image is on the right side of the screen and not in the center. However, I can't seem to figure out how to place the picture without it being forced into the center by the categories assigned to that article. Please advise. -- Modemac 11:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I think I've fixed the batman problem. Workaround is to put <br clear=right> before the image. Any text before that will still be placed left of the category list, but stuff after the br will be below it. This seems to be a problem only in the MonoBook skin, as the standard skin does not seem to try to float the category list, and has it flat on one line instead. -- ssd 13:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
#siteSub { display: block; }
How is this done? I feel that Category:Actors and Actresses should not have Actresses capitalised. It would also be good to rename the singular categories like Category:Poet. It seems I'm not allowed to move the category page. Lupin 11:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I was surprised to see that it seems possible to add a user page to a category. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Harry_Potter for an example: there is a load of HP articles, then an individual's user page. Surely this is not a great idea?? -- Nevilley 11:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Redirects don't work properly with categories, and I think we will need them to work properly.
Already we have Category:Sport and Category:Sports. What is needed here is:
-- Dominus 11:40, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The category guides say categories are plural. If british english says sport then make a subcategory British sport instead of sport and quit messing up the rest. -- ssd 14:58, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The sport/sports thing is just an example, I agree with the general remark: we need category equivalence, sth. like a hard link vs. a soft link in a fs. Flyingbird 04:40, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is there a way to build a list like List of people by name ? -- User:Docu
I think definitely that articles that are ultimately included in Category:People should be about individuals only. In terms of bands, how about something like this?
John Lennon---The Beatles members---The Beatles-----Musical groups---------Music | \ / | British musicians--British people--People / | \ / / -Vocalists----------------------Musicians----------------- / | / \ / -Guitarists------/ \-------------------/
(does that look right?) Or is that too much? - Lee (talk) 14:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
/ / Alternative musicians Births by year--Births / \ / \ / Beck-------\--------1970 births--\------/-------------1970---1970s \ \ \--/-------\ / \ July 6 \ / \ / \ births--------\-------Births by day |/ 21st century \ /| \ / | Alternative music | \---------------Events by year / \ | / Beck albums---Alternative music---\-------/---------\ / \ albums \---/--------\ \ / \ / \ \ / \ /---------------1970 albums-----------\----\--Albums by year \ / \ \ \ |/ /--Rock and roll albums---------\---Albums by | /| / / \ \ genre | / \---------/----------/------\ \--------------\ \ \ | / / / \ \ \ \ \ Let It Be----------/--The Beatles albums---Albums by artist----\---\---Albums-\ / \ / | \ \ John Lennon albums--\---------------/ /------\ \ \ \ \ \ / /-----Rock and roll--Music genres \ 251 Menlove Avenue-\ \ \ / / \ Modern music \ \ \ / / Musical groups by genre \ \ \ \ \ / / / \ \ \ \ \ \| Rock and roll groups Musical groups-----\ \ \ /---------John Lennon------\|\ / / \ \ \ / |\ \ / Musical groups by nationality \ \ \ / | \ \ / / \ \ \ John Lennon------The Beatles members---|-The Beatles----British musical groups \-Music \ \ \ \ | \ / \ Vocalist Rock and roll-----\--/ United Kingdom | \ \ musicians \ / | \ \ \ British musicians---British people--People by nationality / \ \ | \ \ / \ \----|---\ Musicians by nationality---Musicians------People / \ | \ / / \ / / Guitarists--|----Musicians by instrument----/ / \----/-------------/ \ / / /--Musicians by genre--------------/ / / / / /--------------/
These are too much fun. -
Lee
(talk)
21:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I admit it, now I'm just being silly. (It now wraps around, top and bottom) - Lee (talk) 22:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Removed from the page:
I fail to see why we couldn't have gender specific categories, e.g. there is a list of famous women in history, and we could also have a similar category. -- User:Docu
The idea that categories should be plural really should be re-examined. Shakespeare was a playwright, not a playwrights. Elizabeth II is a monarch, not a monarchs, a queen, not a queens, a female, not a females, a woman, not a women. John XIII was a pope, not a popes. - Nunh-huh 20:52, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I propose that non-existent articles in a category should always be listed on the category page itself. Example: Category:Documentary films. This ensures that we can completely port over existing lists.-- Eloquence * 15:58, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
I just categorized chess players and I am wondering if they should be categorized by country (with players page linking to, say, Category:Latvian chess players and then Category:Latvian chess players linking to Category:Chess players). This page seems to imply so but I do not quite like this idea.
Right now, a person can go to Category:Chess players and use that to look up players. That is very convenient. If players are subdivided by country, he will have to click on each country. And, if a person is looking for a player but does not know from which country that player is, he will have particular difficulty finding the player. So, I think it might be better to have links from players page to both Category:Chess players and to country's category ( Category:People of Latvia).
I am fine with dividing politicians into categories by country, since, if you are looking for politicians, you most likely are looking for politicians from a particular country. I am not quite fine with doing that for occupations like chess or mathematics, where national identities are less emphasized. Any thoughts? Andris 16:25, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Silly question here...why on the Categorization page are we making lists of categories? I thought that's what the categorization system was for? -- ssd 17:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
It looks like there is a slight problem over in the writers category where some subcategories have been created in the sigular version. For example:
I've already seen that it is non-trivial to move/rename a category, and Playwrights and Poets already contain quite a few members. Is this a case were category redirects are required? -- Solipsist 18:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The naming convention indicates it should be singular, I think. Also, there are catagories called writers and catagories called authors, so the singular/plural thing is not the only problem. I was going to move one of these category names and edit all the articles under it, but wiki wouldn't let me, so I've left the names as is. -- ssd 20:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed people adding Wikipedia: namespace articles to categories. I don't think this is correct. E.g. someone just added Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles to three categories, one of which, Category:Automobiles, is a definite 'encyclopedia space' category. In general, we follow a 'don't link to Wikipedia: from the article namespace' policy, for good reason, and this appears to violate it.
I can see the point of categorising Wikipedia: namespace articles too, but I have my reservations about having these categories in the same namespace as the regular categories.
Thoughts? —Morven 20:04, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Should we add the people category to articles about people, until the software automatically adds entries from subcategories (and avoids duplication)? -- Jeandré, 2004-05-31t21:31z
Okay, someone draw up a map for Category:Actors_and_actresses. I'd like to suggest that we scrap that category in favour of Category:Actors as it is much too long, and include both sexes in it.--[[User:HamYoyo| HamYoyo (Talk)]] 22:36, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Alright, I'll do it:
/People by nationality-----Actors by nationality\ /Stage actors / \ / / \ / People--------------People by profession-----------------Actors \ / \ \ / \ \People by period---------------Actors by period/ \Screen Actors
--[[User:HamYoyo| HamYoyo (Talk)]] 23:04, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Someone once made various lists for actors .. I suppose they are at list of actors. -- User:Docu
Many women describe themselves as "actors"; for them, the current heading isn't NPOV! - Robin Patterson 00:53, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Should we split articles that deal with more than one thing with the same name (where one is not obviously more important than others), eg William Baldwin?, before adding categories to the page? - Jeandré, 2004-05-31t23:00z
Example problem: Should the List of Japanese people go under Category:Japanese people or its parent category Category:People by nationality? Or should the whole list be copied to the Category:Japanese people and made a redirect? -- Chris 73 | Talk 23:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I have placed Pudding, Pie, and Yoghurt into both Category:Desserts and Category:Food and drink, even though Category:Desserts is a subcategory of Category:Food and drink. That's because these items are each really two closely related ideas: a food item which may be savory, and a dessert made with that food item prepared sweet.
I'm pointing this out just so that we don't get too strict on the heirarchicalization policy. Sometimes it needs to be broken.
If we did require strict heirarchicalization, the alternatives I see would be:
-- TreyHarris 01:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Where does this leave cow pies? They are neither dessert nor food. - Nunh-huh 02:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd just like to add that I think an overly strict adherence to hierarchy is problematic. Some of the examples provided on the main page are particularly dubious - Paul McCartney is to be classified as a Beatle rather than as a British musician? Is this at all justifiable? On what basis should there even be a category called Category:The Beatles consisting of four people? Especially considering that the article The Beatles quickly links to all four, and all four have a link to that article towards the top. Add to that the fact that all four of them also produced solo work making them British musicians in their own right, not just through the Beatles. Ga. At any rate, the tendency of categories to break down into subcategories that are not mutually exclusive militates towards listing things in most categories that apply, even if they fit into some subcategory - there is always (or, at least, frequently) the question of whether the particular subcategory applies. There is also the fact that you end up with a system where Category:Philosophers ends up including only philosophers from countries that didn't produce many philosophers, and doesn't include Plato and Aristotle (as being in Category:Ancient philosophers or Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer (as being in Category:German philosophers, or whatever. The whole thing quickly becomes silly. Until items categorized in subcategories also get categorized in the larger categories, I think we should maintain most of these people in both the larger category and the subcategory. And for many instances, as this one about pies above, it makes sense to do this even if we do get to that latter point. john k 06:57, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I added John Howard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke to this category. They have since been removed, the user (Adam Carr) citing "horrible whitespace gaps". I don't see it on my screen (IE or Firefox) so I thought the problem had been fixed? Am I right to add them back? -- Chuq 01:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd have to say that while I think that many categories are useful, I think categories for groups that are more clearly presented in terms of chronological lists (e.g. British monarchs, Australian prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer, or whatever), categories are sort of pointless. Especially since for most of these we already have succession tables that link to the main article, and the main article has links to all the individuals under consideration. Category:Australian politicians would make sense, but I don't really see what you get out of having a special category for prime ministers. john k 20:03, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
etc. \ NSW MLCs Victorian pol's -- Aust. state pol's \ / \ New South Wales pol's --/ Aust pol's by government Politicians --- / / \ / \ \ NSW MLAs Aust. senators / \ / \ \ / \ / \ / \ \ NSW Liberal MLAs Aust. federal pol's Australian politicians People \ / / / \ \ / \ / / / \ Australian people \ / / / \ \ \ / / / \ Australia \ John Howard Aust. PM's ---- Aust. MHRs / \ / \ \ / / / Aust. politics --------- Politics Aust. lib. PMs / Aust. Lib. MHRs ---- Aust. Liberal pol's / \ / / \ / Aust. Lib. leaders Aust. pol's by party / Aust. Labor pol's
Abbreviations, (some should be obvious): Aust=Australian, pol's=politicians, Lib=Liberal, NSW=New South Wales, MHR=Member of the House of Representatives (Australian federal lower house), MLC/MLA=Member of the Legislative Assembly/Council (NSW state lower/upper house).
The major downside I can see here is that many of the category names are quite long. There are more lines that can be drawn, but I'm not as good with this as ScudLee!
Some may also think it is arguable whether politicians are people :P -- Chuq 00:56, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
That'd be fine, except that I don't see any real way in which such categories are useful at all. To whom is a page with an alphabetical listing of British monarchs useful? john k 04:00, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned with the issue JamesDay brought up in the main Wikipedia:Categorization page; that people are going off and enthusiastically categorising inside areas of the 'pedia that are covered by existing WikiProjects. While I'm certainly not suggesting that this should be barred, I do think that trying to let active WikiProjects decide on their own categorization is a good thing.
So please, if there is a WikiProject covering an area you want to categorise, how about posting something in that project's talk page -- at least telling people what you're up to? —Morven 02:34, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
Looking at the new category system, the one think it should do in future it doesn't do now is drawing nice graphical representations of our hierarchy trees. To look if this could be possible one day, I tried if a category can be a super-category of its own sub-category: See Category:Testing circularity, Category:Testing circularity 2. In other words: we can do infinite loops with the category tags, which makes drawing algorithms (or any other automatical use of the category tags, like listing content of sub-category in super-category) quite a bit more complex. Is this a bug, is it a feature, should this be forbidden, regulated, automatical recognized and marked? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:39, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Avoiding loops in a traversal algorithm is trivial. All that is necessary is to keep a list of already visited notes, and not re-visit them. -- ssd 18:56, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
When I noticed that Category:Web comics only derived from comics, I created a Category:Web sites. I put slashdot, alexa, google, and wikipedia in there and i figured it would flesh itself out. However, I now realize that I should have planned this better first. Can someone help me with one of those nifty ASCII trees for this categorization? Any ideas on what the subcats should be (Portals, Search Engines, Blogs, etc?) - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:00, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
If the subject of an article has its own category, should the article go both in that category, and in its parents? For instance, National Hockey League - should it be in both Category:NHL and Category:Ice hockey leagues? -- Jao 20:23, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There's a lot of argument over whether John Lennon (eg) should be in Category:The Beatles only (putting him in "British Musicians", "Musicians", "People" automatically) or put in all those explicitly (therefore showing up on all those lists). I have a possible solution.
Implement hidden categories: If I type [[Category:Musicians|]] in the John Lennon article, his article will show on Category:Musicians but the Musicians category will not show in the article on John Lennon. Just from looking at the categories which show up ("The Beatles" and maybe "British Musicians" too, and perhaps "Males" and "Christians" on the side, which brings me on to my next post) any sane human being understands John Lennon is also a Musician and a Person. However, if you go to Category:People, do you expect to find John Lennon on the list? Of course! r3m0t 23:29, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
John Lennon, who recorded much solo material from 1970-1980, clearly should be listed in both Category:British Musicians and Category:The Beatles (assuming the latter category is necessary - it seems pretty ridiculous to me). john k 06:40, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What should be the parent of Category:Cities? Geography? Politics? Chuq 23:41, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think the categorisation of topics is a good idea, but I'm just wondering about the validity of lists now that the category option has been enabled in WikiMedia. Categories are in a sense lists, so wouldn't the lists created so far become obsolete eventually?
For example, there is a List of vegetables, but we also have Category:Vegetables. Are we saying there is room for both on Wikipedia? Surely once articles have been categorised, there would be no need for the lists?
Forgive me for posing these questions, but I'm trying to understand the rationale behind using both. -- TonyW 10:47, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Categories do have several advantages over lists, but the one advantage lists have over categories, indeed the feature that has driven the growth of Wikipedia to half a million articles so quickly, is the ability to easily type requested articles and existing articles on the same page. If an article in a list doesn't yet exist, it remains a red link until someone decides click on it and create one. Using categories, you actually have to create a stub article for every item on the list, including a category link on each stub (or type the requested titles onto the category page so they show up in a separate grouping). It remains to be seen how this will change our ability to find gaps in coverage and create new articles. GUllman 18:02, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I see three advantages of lists over categories:
Abigail 16:20, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Right now, lists are mostly more complete than categories. I wonder how long it will be before the roles are reversed and the lists are no longer maintained viligantly enough to keep up with completeness of the categories. Or, perhaps that will never happen. -- ssd 03:54, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We could add a feature to the categorization software so that unwritten articles can be categorized. Either by adding a category to the nonexistent article (which would still behave exactly as if it didn't exist, but the category would be in the markup when it was first edited), or by a tag on the category page itself, which would be automatically removed when the article is written (and the category automatically added to the article). This would take care of one advantage of lists over categories. I definitely think this should be implemented. Providing links to similar articles that need to be written is a very good thing.
Just some other ideas: The other advantage is formatting of the list, and extra information. Lists could be built from the information that is already in categories, so maybe when something was added to the category, it would show up in the list in an "unsorted" section or whatever.
Category pages could also have a few formatting options, so that you could define whether to list things in subcategories (such as a category of animals and then subcategories of phylum) or in a big list (such as a category of people), could define whether names should be listed in order of last name or first, etc.
The less tedious manual work, the better. - Omegatron 21:58, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Consider Category:Terrorists. Some people would obviously belong, like Osama bin Laden. Some people would not belong, and it would be POV to include them, like George W. Bush. But lots and lots of people are borderline. Do you inclued Yassir Arafat or not? Either including him, or excluding him, would be POV. He's certainly notable as someone whom lots of people consider a terrorist, but including him seems to be slander and unencyclopedic. And it's not just him: consider Khalid bin Mahfouz, José Padilla, and Waleed Alshehri.
So in situations like this, where including an article to a category would be POV, and excluding the article would also be POV, what should we do? Quadell (talk) 18:56, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Two issues. First, there's Category:9/11, a member of Category:Terrorist incidents. There are lots of people associated with 9/11 in one way or the other. I was thinking of making a subcategory Category:9/11 Commission members, which would include the members of that commission, but then I thought, the Commission Director ( Philip D. Zelikow) isn't technically a member, and it would be a shame to exclude him. I could make it simply Category:9/11 Commission, or Category:People associated with the 9/11 Commission, but then one might want to include the people they interviewed. Which one could. So what's the best way to organize this?
Second, let's say there comes to be a Category:People interviewed by the 9/11 Commission. (There are, after all, dozens, and this is information people might want to browse through.) Besides the fact that this would be an awfully long name, it would have to include George W. Bush. Which would indicate to me that the man would have a lot of categories. Off the top of my head, I can think of Category:Presidents, Category:People interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, Category: People associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Category:Oil Executives, Category:Republicans, Category:Neoconservatives (although that's pushing it), Category: Baseball team owners, and soon, possibly, Category:Defendants in the Valerie Plame case. My point is, particularly famous and diverse people are going to be in a dozen, maybe dozens of, categories. Is this according to plan? Quadell (talk) 19:14, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Now, what is the plural of person. Is it (1) people or (2) persons; the answer is persons; people is a mass noun, and although in common usage as a plural of person, that usage is incorrect. Dunc_Harris| ☺ 20:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
People is what you have when there are several of them.
If you are refering to a person as a group (??), but you have more than one group, that could be a persons I suppose, but I can't think how exactly that would be meaningful. If you have several different groups of people, that would be peoples, as in peoples of the world and I have seen that used. -- ssd 12:23, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Currently, there is the list of people by name. With all articles linked from those pages, one gets many (but not all biographies, and a series of articles due to linked dates, descriptions etc.). Using Category:People and subcategories, one gets many of them as well, but also 20 Forthlin Road and similar.
If a category and a sort key, e.g. [[:Category:Biographies|Lennon, John]] were added to every article, one could easily list those without additional articles. The layout of Category:Biographies would initially be a bit messy, but once the layout is improved, it may be just as easy to read as the list of people by name above. -- User:Docu
I tend to be of the opinion that categories for subjects that have or could have succession tables are a bad idea. What value does Category:British Prime Ministers have? It gives you an alphabetical list of British prime ministers. How is this useful, when there's already a page that chronologically lists British prime ministers, a link to that page from the articles of every British prime minister, and succession tables to allow you to easily jump to that person's predecessor(s) and successor(s). So why is this useful? Especially since, by this logic, James Callaghan will end up in Category:British Prime Ministers, Category:British Foreign Secretaries, Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer, Category:British Home Secretaries, and Category:British Labour Party leaders, but not in Category:British politicians. Wouldn't it make more sense just to put all British politicians in Category:British politicians, and leave the individual offices to the older methods which worked perfectly fine? That is, I think categories are inappropriate for things of which there is only one at a time. I'd be happy to see Lord Callaghan in a Category:Prime Ministers, for instance, since that would presumably list politicians who were prime ministers in various different countries (although we might want to limit such a category to current prime ministers). john k 20:38, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What about Category:Heads of state - it would be a pain to add each British PM to both categories, when you could add them to Category:British Prime Ministers and then add that category to any others it should be a part of? Chuq 23:51, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The British PM would not need to be added to Category:Heads of State, because he (or she) is not a head of state. john k 02:38, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is not a single country in the world where the Prime Minister is, by virtue of that office, Head of State (there are various countries where the Head of State also holds the office of Prime Minister, such as Oman, Saudi Arabia, and so forth, and many countries, such as the United States, where the Head of State is also Head of Government). john k 05:28, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
OK, we have Category:People. This includes Category:Authors, which includes various other categories. One of these is Category:Stephen King. Now, in this case, that category includes lots of books directly.
This means that if you took a naïve algorithm and dumped out all the articles linked to under Category:People, you'd get a list of Stephen King's books. This is clearly not very useful.
Now, the books needn't be under Category:Stephen King directly - they could be under Category:Stephen King books. But that would want to be, along with Category:Stephen King movies, a member of the Category:Stephen King, and it is hard to see where a Category:Stephen King would go if it isn't Category:Authors or a subcategory of that.
So I think we need a way of distinguishing between a category where (a) you are asserting that everything in the category is an example of the thing it is in (ie list categories), and (b) categories where you are just providing hierachial links for convenience.
So, basically I'm saying, the relationship between Category:Stephen King and Category:People should be different to that between Category:Authors and Category:People. I want all members of the latter to appear in the mega-list of people, I don't want all the members of the former.
Does this make sense to anyone? Morwen 18:13, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Why should Category:Stephen King be under Category:People at all? Shouldn't it be under Category:Categories about People, or some such? john k 20:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We have to think from the encyclopedia user's point of view. He/she is starting at the top level of the hierarchy with a subject in mind, and they need to know which blind path to go down to find an article on that subject. It might help to think of the problem as a game of twenty questions. The first question we may ask is, "Is your subject a Category:Persons, Category:Places, or Category:Things?" If they choose Category:Persons, then ALL the articles from then on should be about persons. Why? Because we may someday be able to click a link to collapse the hierarchy, and display all the articles below that level in one alphabetical order. If they wanted to know about Stephen King's books, they might choose Category:Things, and have a choice of Category:Animals, Category:Vegetables, Category:Minerals, Category:Ideas, etc., and go down one of those paths. My point is, Categories link only as a hierarchy; Wikipedia articles link as a network to every related article. So as long as the user reaches the article on Steven King (the person), or the articles on Steven King's books using the categories, the articles themselves link to each other. GUllman 16:31, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This makes a lot of sense. We need to have some sort of idea of what categories are for before we go and start putting everything into categories. 17:42, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The following is an archive of a section that used to be on the main page. It has since been re-factored, but this reads like a discussion, so it's been kept here.
Categories should be kept as hierarchical as possible. That is, the number of top-level categories should be kept at a minimum.
Most importantly, an article should only link to the most specific categories it is in. Thus, Paul McCartney should link not to People, nor to People of Britain, nor to Musicians, but to British musicians, or rather The Beatles. The reason for this is that The Beatles should be hierarchicalized as follows (arrows denote parentage; linked items are articles; the rest are categories):
Paul McCartney | -----> Musicians ----- V / \ The Beatles -> British musicians - ---> People \ / -> People of Britain -
Thus, it's known that British musicians are not only musicians and British people, but also People. Which is obvious. Thus, the number of actual category links on the article page can be kept to a minimum.
Another example:
Harry Potter Albus Dumbledore | | | | | | | .--------------' | | | V | | Hogwarts teachers ---> Harry Potter characters ---> Harry Potter V V ^ | | Gryffindors-----------------------------' | V V Fictional universes Fictional characters | | V '---------------------> Fiction
Note that an article may have more than one parent. Thus, the structure is not a strict top-down hierarchy. (And thus absolutely not equivalent to the old subpage model.)
Queue.enqueue(category_to_extract) while (!Queue.empty) this_category = Queue.dequeue(); CategorySet.add(this_category) foreach (subcategory in this_category) if (!CategorySet.in(subcategory) and !Queue.in(subcategory)) Queue.enqueue(subcategory) # if we haven't seen it before foreach (category in CategorySet) foreach (article in category) ArticleSet.add(article) foreach (article in ArticleSet) Extract(article)
Fictional universes | V Harry Potter--\ | /---->Hogwarts employees--\ V | | Harry Potter characters---+ +--> Albus Dumbledore ^ | | | \---->Gryffindors---------/ Fictional characters
foreach (category of my_article) Queue.enqueue( [category,1] ) while (!Queue.empty) [this_category,depth] = Queue.dequeue(); CategorySet.add( [this_category,depth] ) if (this_category has no parents) this_category.setFlag(is_a_root) foreach (super_category containing this_category) if (!CategorySet.in(super_category) and !Queue.in(super_category)) Queue.enqueue( [subcategory,depth+1] ) maxdepth = max(depth+1,maxdepth) else [super_category,old_depth] = CategorySet.retrieve(super_category) if (old_depth > depth+1) CategorySet.add( [super_category,depth+1] ) foreach ([category,depth] in CategorySet) outputSet[depth].add(category) foreach (depth in 1..maxdepth) output depth; foreach (category in outputSet[depth]) output category;
In the enthusiasm to populate Wikipedia with categories, the character of the project is changing in an unanticipated direction. Pages are being (randomly) categorised by proponents of various disciplines. There are three problems with this:
I suggest that there should be a Guideline for categorisation by which editors (1) exercise caution and err on the side of not ascribing a category unless the text of the page justifies it (2)limit the size of the categorisation link text so that it remains small in relation to the size of the page. It seems to me that without these minimal requirements we will end up with pages exhibiting content confusion. Pages will go through a long gestation period looking rather weird - perhaps even looking like they derive from a banner supported commercial website. Is there any solution to the problem of trying to create hierarchies in a more logical order? -- JPF 17:58, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
By example. (please spell check)
We have category Spaghetti. Spaghetti is a kind of Pasta (belongs to the category). Pasta is a kind of Food. Is Spaghetti a kind of Food? - Yes! Does Spaghetti belongs directly to category Food? - No. If it belonged to the category, other kinds of pasta and soups would belong too, making Food category overloaded. Thus Spaghetti is kind of Food only indirectly.
Spaghetti is a kind of Italian national pasta. Italian national pasta is a kind of Pasta. Would Spaghetti belong to Pasta directly? Yes. Imagine if somebody else invented Spaghetti, not the Italians. Would it be a kind of Pasta? Sure, yes. Thus Spaghetti belongs directly to Italian national pasta and Pasta independently.
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
Everyone else seems very excited about this categorization. I, however, oppose it. I think it is overkill to try to categorize articles when we should try to categorize in the articles' contexts or material(s). Are we still using "List of topics in whatever" lists? And whatever happened to the MediaWiki boxes? I don't know, maybe there is some good justification for this system. -- Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 17:35, May 30, 2004 (UTC)
I have another question. I looked at Category:Monarchs. I want to start my own subcategory. How does the subcategory appear in Category:Monarchs? --
Merovingian ↕
T@Lk 18:32, May 30, 2004 (UTC)
I am not thrilled either. So far I have seen categories which disrupt (top right) image placement and people putting in categories while not noticing that a vandal has partly translated a page into Italian. Previews do not seem to show the category text, the categories seem to be much less tolerant of non-standard coding than other functions, and those putting in categoroies do not seem to be looking at the overall impact on a page. Is this really ready for real world application? -- Henrygb 23:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I was also rather dismayed when I suddenly noticed these "categories" appearing in various pages I've been editing and following closely. They reminded me of the old "namespaces" argument, that basically went - should we have a "Transvaal" article or a "South Africa/Transvaal" article? The decision was that namespaces aren't good, because encyclopedia entries are not hierarchical, and rarely belong to only one category. So, now these multiple categories were invented. So, you could say that Transvaal is in "South Africa" and a "Province" and a "Place" and a "Non-existant province" and a .... you get the drift - when does the list of categories stop? What's wrong with the old way of having the first paragraph say something like: The Transvaal was one of the provinces of South Africa? It's much more general, much more useful, and actually much clearer, because the relationship of the article to each of its categories is spelled out in English, rather than being implied (a category of "South Africa" doesn't say if the article is a place in south Africa, a former place in South Africa, a South African person, and so on). Moreover, it's not always clear to which category a certain article belongs. Does the Daytona race track article belong to the "NASCAR tracks", "U.S. tracks" or just "tracks" category? What was wrong with the old way of just saying that "Daytona ... is a race track in the U.S., ...", with certain key words linking to the appropriate entity or list of entities (such as list of nascar or us race tracks)? I have to admit, I thought the old way was much better, and I wish these categories go away. Nyh 06:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
By the way, I am also opposed to these long boxed lists people started to put in pages (see, for example, the end of South Africa), for exactly the same reasons. These boxes are not more useful than just linking to the "list of countries in Africa", and only clutter the article with irrelevant information (does a person looking up South Africa needs to see the list of other African countries?) and makes the whole link structure of wikipedia more rigid and less flexible. So, I wish those boxes go away too.... Nyh 06:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I don't know if this is a good ide but I thought of categorize fundamental constants of physics, chemistry, biology, matematics, etc. How could such a structure look like or should they just go under dicipline instead of "fundamental constants" ?
Fund. Const. of Phys -- \ Fund. Const. of Chem ----+ | Fund. Const. of Math ----+-- Fundamental Constants of Nature -- Mathematics and Nature Science | . . . etc
or should it be
Fundamental Constants of Physics -- \ Other category -- + Physics -+ | | Fundamental Constants of Chemistry | \ | Other category -- + Chemistry -+ | +- Mathematics and Nature Science | . . . etc
or any other ideas ? // Rogper 22:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
/--Physics<------Fundamental constants of physics-----\ | | +--Chemistry<----Fundamental constants of chemistry---+ ... ... ... +--Foo<----------Fundamental constants of foo---------+ | | V V Natural sciences Fundamental constants | \---->Science
Is it possible to format the listing of the sub-categories and the contained articles? E.g. if I add Albert Einstein to the Category:People, could I use [[Category:People|Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)]] not only to sort him by Einstein, but also to display the results with the year? The current list in the categories are a little though to read.
Also, how much introduction text is suggested for a category scheme? One line like e.g. Category:Harry Potter, none like Category:Films, or a lengthy introduction that makes the category more like an article like Category:Japanese culture (made by me for demonstration purposes)? -- Chris 73 | Talk 07:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
'precomment': I think this bug has been fixed. All the workarounds are now unnecessary, unless there are huge warts in something other than monobook. Can we delete this section now? -- ssd 03:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed that the current placement of the "Categories" link at the top-right corner of an article will force a picture in the article into the center of the screen. I'm trying to format the Batman article, for instance, so that the image is on the right side of the screen and not in the center. However, I can't seem to figure out how to place the picture without it being forced into the center by the categories assigned to that article. Please advise. -- Modemac 11:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I think I've fixed the batman problem. Workaround is to put <br clear=right> before the image. Any text before that will still be placed left of the category list, but stuff after the br will be below it. This seems to be a problem only in the MonoBook skin, as the standard skin does not seem to try to float the category list, and has it flat on one line instead. -- ssd 13:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
#siteSub { display: block; }
How is this done? I feel that Category:Actors and Actresses should not have Actresses capitalised. It would also be good to rename the singular categories like Category:Poet. It seems I'm not allowed to move the category page. Lupin 11:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I was surprised to see that it seems possible to add a user page to a category. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Harry_Potter for an example: there is a load of HP articles, then an individual's user page. Surely this is not a great idea?? -- Nevilley 11:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Redirects don't work properly with categories, and I think we will need them to work properly.
Already we have Category:Sport and Category:Sports. What is needed here is:
-- Dominus 11:40, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The category guides say categories are plural. If british english says sport then make a subcategory British sport instead of sport and quit messing up the rest. -- ssd 14:58, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The sport/sports thing is just an example, I agree with the general remark: we need category equivalence, sth. like a hard link vs. a soft link in a fs. Flyingbird 04:40, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is there a way to build a list like List of people by name ? -- User:Docu
I think definitely that articles that are ultimately included in Category:People should be about individuals only. In terms of bands, how about something like this?
John Lennon---The Beatles members---The Beatles-----Musical groups---------Music | \ / | British musicians--British people--People / | \ / / -Vocalists----------------------Musicians----------------- / | / \ / -Guitarists------/ \-------------------/
(does that look right?) Or is that too much? - Lee (talk) 14:04, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
/ / Alternative musicians Births by year--Births / \ / \ / Beck-------\--------1970 births--\------/-------------1970---1970s \ \ \--/-------\ / \ July 6 \ / \ / \ births--------\-------Births by day |/ 21st century \ /| \ / | Alternative music | \---------------Events by year / \ | / Beck albums---Alternative music---\-------/---------\ / \ albums \---/--------\ \ / \ / \ \ / \ /---------------1970 albums-----------\----\--Albums by year \ / \ \ \ |/ /--Rock and roll albums---------\---Albums by | /| / / \ \ genre | / \---------/----------/------\ \--------------\ \ \ | / / / \ \ \ \ \ Let It Be----------/--The Beatles albums---Albums by artist----\---\---Albums-\ / \ / | \ \ John Lennon albums--\---------------/ /------\ \ \ \ \ \ / /-----Rock and roll--Music genres \ 251 Menlove Avenue-\ \ \ / / \ Modern music \ \ \ / / Musical groups by genre \ \ \ \ \ / / / \ \ \ \ \ \| Rock and roll groups Musical groups-----\ \ \ /---------John Lennon------\|\ / / \ \ \ / |\ \ / Musical groups by nationality \ \ \ / | \ \ / / \ \ \ John Lennon------The Beatles members---|-The Beatles----British musical groups \-Music \ \ \ \ | \ / \ Vocalist Rock and roll-----\--/ United Kingdom | \ \ musicians \ / | \ \ \ British musicians---British people--People by nationality / \ \ | \ \ / \ \----|---\ Musicians by nationality---Musicians------People / \ | \ / / \ / / Guitarists--|----Musicians by instrument----/ / \----/-------------/ \ / / /--Musicians by genre--------------/ / / / / /--------------/
These are too much fun. -
Lee
(talk)
21:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I admit it, now I'm just being silly. (It now wraps around, top and bottom) - Lee (talk) 22:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Removed from the page:
I fail to see why we couldn't have gender specific categories, e.g. there is a list of famous women in history, and we could also have a similar category. -- User:Docu
The idea that categories should be plural really should be re-examined. Shakespeare was a playwright, not a playwrights. Elizabeth II is a monarch, not a monarchs, a queen, not a queens, a female, not a females, a woman, not a women. John XIII was a pope, not a popes. - Nunh-huh 20:52, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I propose that non-existent articles in a category should always be listed on the category page itself. Example: Category:Documentary films. This ensures that we can completely port over existing lists.-- Eloquence * 15:58, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
I just categorized chess players and I am wondering if they should be categorized by country (with players page linking to, say, Category:Latvian chess players and then Category:Latvian chess players linking to Category:Chess players). This page seems to imply so but I do not quite like this idea.
Right now, a person can go to Category:Chess players and use that to look up players. That is very convenient. If players are subdivided by country, he will have to click on each country. And, if a person is looking for a player but does not know from which country that player is, he will have particular difficulty finding the player. So, I think it might be better to have links from players page to both Category:Chess players and to country's category ( Category:People of Latvia).
I am fine with dividing politicians into categories by country, since, if you are looking for politicians, you most likely are looking for politicians from a particular country. I am not quite fine with doing that for occupations like chess or mathematics, where national identities are less emphasized. Any thoughts? Andris 16:25, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Silly question here...why on the Categorization page are we making lists of categories? I thought that's what the categorization system was for? -- ssd 17:33, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
It looks like there is a slight problem over in the writers category where some subcategories have been created in the sigular version. For example:
I've already seen that it is non-trivial to move/rename a category, and Playwrights and Poets already contain quite a few members. Is this a case were category redirects are required? -- Solipsist 18:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The naming convention indicates it should be singular, I think. Also, there are catagories called writers and catagories called authors, so the singular/plural thing is not the only problem. I was going to move one of these category names and edit all the articles under it, but wiki wouldn't let me, so I've left the names as is. -- ssd 20:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I've noticed people adding Wikipedia: namespace articles to categories. I don't think this is correct. E.g. someone just added Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles to three categories, one of which, Category:Automobiles, is a definite 'encyclopedia space' category. In general, we follow a 'don't link to Wikipedia: from the article namespace' policy, for good reason, and this appears to violate it.
I can see the point of categorising Wikipedia: namespace articles too, but I have my reservations about having these categories in the same namespace as the regular categories.
Thoughts? —Morven 20:04, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Should we add the people category to articles about people, until the software automatically adds entries from subcategories (and avoids duplication)? -- Jeandré, 2004-05-31t21:31z
Okay, someone draw up a map for Category:Actors_and_actresses. I'd like to suggest that we scrap that category in favour of Category:Actors as it is much too long, and include both sexes in it.--[[User:HamYoyo| HamYoyo (Talk)]] 22:36, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Alright, I'll do it:
/People by nationality-----Actors by nationality\ /Stage actors / \ / / \ / People--------------People by profession-----------------Actors \ / \ \ / \ \People by period---------------Actors by period/ \Screen Actors
--[[User:HamYoyo| HamYoyo (Talk)]] 23:04, May 31, 2004 (UTC)
Someone once made various lists for actors .. I suppose they are at list of actors. -- User:Docu
Many women describe themselves as "actors"; for them, the current heading isn't NPOV! - Robin Patterson 00:53, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Should we split articles that deal with more than one thing with the same name (where one is not obviously more important than others), eg William Baldwin?, before adding categories to the page? - Jeandré, 2004-05-31t23:00z
Example problem: Should the List of Japanese people go under Category:Japanese people or its parent category Category:People by nationality? Or should the whole list be copied to the Category:Japanese people and made a redirect? -- Chris 73 | Talk 23:48, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I have placed Pudding, Pie, and Yoghurt into both Category:Desserts and Category:Food and drink, even though Category:Desserts is a subcategory of Category:Food and drink. That's because these items are each really two closely related ideas: a food item which may be savory, and a dessert made with that food item prepared sweet.
I'm pointing this out just so that we don't get too strict on the heirarchicalization policy. Sometimes it needs to be broken.
If we did require strict heirarchicalization, the alternatives I see would be:
-- TreyHarris 01:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Where does this leave cow pies? They are neither dessert nor food. - Nunh-huh 02:41, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd just like to add that I think an overly strict adherence to hierarchy is problematic. Some of the examples provided on the main page are particularly dubious - Paul McCartney is to be classified as a Beatle rather than as a British musician? Is this at all justifiable? On what basis should there even be a category called Category:The Beatles consisting of four people? Especially considering that the article The Beatles quickly links to all four, and all four have a link to that article towards the top. Add to that the fact that all four of them also produced solo work making them British musicians in their own right, not just through the Beatles. Ga. At any rate, the tendency of categories to break down into subcategories that are not mutually exclusive militates towards listing things in most categories that apply, even if they fit into some subcategory - there is always (or, at least, frequently) the question of whether the particular subcategory applies. There is also the fact that you end up with a system where Category:Philosophers ends up including only philosophers from countries that didn't produce many philosophers, and doesn't include Plato and Aristotle (as being in Category:Ancient philosophers or Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer (as being in Category:German philosophers, or whatever. The whole thing quickly becomes silly. Until items categorized in subcategories also get categorized in the larger categories, I think we should maintain most of these people in both the larger category and the subcategory. And for many instances, as this one about pies above, it makes sense to do this even if we do get to that latter point. john k 06:57, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I added John Howard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke to this category. They have since been removed, the user (Adam Carr) citing "horrible whitespace gaps". I don't see it on my screen (IE or Firefox) so I thought the problem had been fixed? Am I right to add them back? -- Chuq 01:12, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'd have to say that while I think that many categories are useful, I think categories for groups that are more clearly presented in terms of chronological lists (e.g. British monarchs, Australian prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer, or whatever), categories are sort of pointless. Especially since for most of these we already have succession tables that link to the main article, and the main article has links to all the individuals under consideration. Category:Australian politicians would make sense, but I don't really see what you get out of having a special category for prime ministers. john k 20:03, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
etc. \ NSW MLCs Victorian pol's -- Aust. state pol's \ / \ New South Wales pol's --/ Aust pol's by government Politicians --- / / \ / \ \ NSW MLAs Aust. senators / \ / \ \ / \ / \ / \ \ NSW Liberal MLAs Aust. federal pol's Australian politicians People \ / / / \ \ / \ / / / \ Australian people \ / / / \ \ \ / / / \ Australia \ John Howard Aust. PM's ---- Aust. MHRs / \ / \ \ / / / Aust. politics --------- Politics Aust. lib. PMs / Aust. Lib. MHRs ---- Aust. Liberal pol's / \ / / \ / Aust. Lib. leaders Aust. pol's by party / Aust. Labor pol's
Abbreviations, (some should be obvious): Aust=Australian, pol's=politicians, Lib=Liberal, NSW=New South Wales, MHR=Member of the House of Representatives (Australian federal lower house), MLC/MLA=Member of the Legislative Assembly/Council (NSW state lower/upper house).
The major downside I can see here is that many of the category names are quite long. There are more lines that can be drawn, but I'm not as good with this as ScudLee!
Some may also think it is arguable whether politicians are people :P -- Chuq 00:56, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
That'd be fine, except that I don't see any real way in which such categories are useful at all. To whom is a page with an alphabetical listing of British monarchs useful? john k 04:00, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned with the issue JamesDay brought up in the main Wikipedia:Categorization page; that people are going off and enthusiastically categorising inside areas of the 'pedia that are covered by existing WikiProjects. While I'm certainly not suggesting that this should be barred, I do think that trying to let active WikiProjects decide on their own categorization is a good thing.
So please, if there is a WikiProject covering an area you want to categorise, how about posting something in that project's talk page -- at least telling people what you're up to? —Morven 02:34, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
Looking at the new category system, the one think it should do in future it doesn't do now is drawing nice graphical representations of our hierarchy trees. To look if this could be possible one day, I tried if a category can be a super-category of its own sub-category: See Category:Testing circularity, Category:Testing circularity 2. In other words: we can do infinite loops with the category tags, which makes drawing algorithms (or any other automatical use of the category tags, like listing content of sub-category in super-category) quite a bit more complex. Is this a bug, is it a feature, should this be forbidden, regulated, automatical recognized and marked? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:39, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Avoiding loops in a traversal algorithm is trivial. All that is necessary is to keep a list of already visited notes, and not re-visit them. -- ssd 18:56, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
When I noticed that Category:Web comics only derived from comics, I created a Category:Web sites. I put slashdot, alexa, google, and wikipedia in there and i figured it would flesh itself out. However, I now realize that I should have planned this better first. Can someone help me with one of those nifty ASCII trees for this categorization? Any ideas on what the subcats should be (Portals, Search Engines, Blogs, etc?) - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:00, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
If the subject of an article has its own category, should the article go both in that category, and in its parents? For instance, National Hockey League - should it be in both Category:NHL and Category:Ice hockey leagues? -- Jao 20:23, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There's a lot of argument over whether John Lennon (eg) should be in Category:The Beatles only (putting him in "British Musicians", "Musicians", "People" automatically) or put in all those explicitly (therefore showing up on all those lists). I have a possible solution.
Implement hidden categories: If I type [[Category:Musicians|]] in the John Lennon article, his article will show on Category:Musicians but the Musicians category will not show in the article on John Lennon. Just from looking at the categories which show up ("The Beatles" and maybe "British Musicians" too, and perhaps "Males" and "Christians" on the side, which brings me on to my next post) any sane human being understands John Lennon is also a Musician and a Person. However, if you go to Category:People, do you expect to find John Lennon on the list? Of course! r3m0t 23:29, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
John Lennon, who recorded much solo material from 1970-1980, clearly should be listed in both Category:British Musicians and Category:The Beatles (assuming the latter category is necessary - it seems pretty ridiculous to me). john k 06:40, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What should be the parent of Category:Cities? Geography? Politics? Chuq 23:41, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think the categorisation of topics is a good idea, but I'm just wondering about the validity of lists now that the category option has been enabled in WikiMedia. Categories are in a sense lists, so wouldn't the lists created so far become obsolete eventually?
For example, there is a List of vegetables, but we also have Category:Vegetables. Are we saying there is room for both on Wikipedia? Surely once articles have been categorised, there would be no need for the lists?
Forgive me for posing these questions, but I'm trying to understand the rationale behind using both. -- TonyW 10:47, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Categories do have several advantages over lists, but the one advantage lists have over categories, indeed the feature that has driven the growth of Wikipedia to half a million articles so quickly, is the ability to easily type requested articles and existing articles on the same page. If an article in a list doesn't yet exist, it remains a red link until someone decides click on it and create one. Using categories, you actually have to create a stub article for every item on the list, including a category link on each stub (or type the requested titles onto the category page so they show up in a separate grouping). It remains to be seen how this will change our ability to find gaps in coverage and create new articles. GUllman 18:02, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I see three advantages of lists over categories:
Abigail 16:20, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Right now, lists are mostly more complete than categories. I wonder how long it will be before the roles are reversed and the lists are no longer maintained viligantly enough to keep up with completeness of the categories. Or, perhaps that will never happen. -- ssd 03:54, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We could add a feature to the categorization software so that unwritten articles can be categorized. Either by adding a category to the nonexistent article (which would still behave exactly as if it didn't exist, but the category would be in the markup when it was first edited), or by a tag on the category page itself, which would be automatically removed when the article is written (and the category automatically added to the article). This would take care of one advantage of lists over categories. I definitely think this should be implemented. Providing links to similar articles that need to be written is a very good thing.
Just some other ideas: The other advantage is formatting of the list, and extra information. Lists could be built from the information that is already in categories, so maybe when something was added to the category, it would show up in the list in an "unsorted" section or whatever.
Category pages could also have a few formatting options, so that you could define whether to list things in subcategories (such as a category of animals and then subcategories of phylum) or in a big list (such as a category of people), could define whether names should be listed in order of last name or first, etc.
The less tedious manual work, the better. - Omegatron 21:58, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)
Consider Category:Terrorists. Some people would obviously belong, like Osama bin Laden. Some people would not belong, and it would be POV to include them, like George W. Bush. But lots and lots of people are borderline. Do you inclued Yassir Arafat or not? Either including him, or excluding him, would be POV. He's certainly notable as someone whom lots of people consider a terrorist, but including him seems to be slander and unencyclopedic. And it's not just him: consider Khalid bin Mahfouz, José Padilla, and Waleed Alshehri.
So in situations like this, where including an article to a category would be POV, and excluding the article would also be POV, what should we do? Quadell (talk) 18:56, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Two issues. First, there's Category:9/11, a member of Category:Terrorist incidents. There are lots of people associated with 9/11 in one way or the other. I was thinking of making a subcategory Category:9/11 Commission members, which would include the members of that commission, but then I thought, the Commission Director ( Philip D. Zelikow) isn't technically a member, and it would be a shame to exclude him. I could make it simply Category:9/11 Commission, or Category:People associated with the 9/11 Commission, but then one might want to include the people they interviewed. Which one could. So what's the best way to organize this?
Second, let's say there comes to be a Category:People interviewed by the 9/11 Commission. (There are, after all, dozens, and this is information people might want to browse through.) Besides the fact that this would be an awfully long name, it would have to include George W. Bush. Which would indicate to me that the man would have a lot of categories. Off the top of my head, I can think of Category:Presidents, Category:People interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, Category: People associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Category:Oil Executives, Category:Republicans, Category:Neoconservatives (although that's pushing it), Category: Baseball team owners, and soon, possibly, Category:Defendants in the Valerie Plame case. My point is, particularly famous and diverse people are going to be in a dozen, maybe dozens of, categories. Is this according to plan? Quadell (talk) 19:14, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Now, what is the plural of person. Is it (1) people or (2) persons; the answer is persons; people is a mass noun, and although in common usage as a plural of person, that usage is incorrect. Dunc_Harris| ☺ 20:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
People is what you have when there are several of them.
If you are refering to a person as a group (??), but you have more than one group, that could be a persons I suppose, but I can't think how exactly that would be meaningful. If you have several different groups of people, that would be peoples, as in peoples of the world and I have seen that used. -- ssd 12:23, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Currently, there is the list of people by name. With all articles linked from those pages, one gets many (but not all biographies, and a series of articles due to linked dates, descriptions etc.). Using Category:People and subcategories, one gets many of them as well, but also 20 Forthlin Road and similar.
If a category and a sort key, e.g. [[:Category:Biographies|Lennon, John]] were added to every article, one could easily list those without additional articles. The layout of Category:Biographies would initially be a bit messy, but once the layout is improved, it may be just as easy to read as the list of people by name above. -- User:Docu
I tend to be of the opinion that categories for subjects that have or could have succession tables are a bad idea. What value does Category:British Prime Ministers have? It gives you an alphabetical list of British prime ministers. How is this useful, when there's already a page that chronologically lists British prime ministers, a link to that page from the articles of every British prime minister, and succession tables to allow you to easily jump to that person's predecessor(s) and successor(s). So why is this useful? Especially since, by this logic, James Callaghan will end up in Category:British Prime Ministers, Category:British Foreign Secretaries, Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer, Category:British Home Secretaries, and Category:British Labour Party leaders, but not in Category:British politicians. Wouldn't it make more sense just to put all British politicians in Category:British politicians, and leave the individual offices to the older methods which worked perfectly fine? That is, I think categories are inappropriate for things of which there is only one at a time. I'd be happy to see Lord Callaghan in a Category:Prime Ministers, for instance, since that would presumably list politicians who were prime ministers in various different countries (although we might want to limit such a category to current prime ministers). john k 20:38, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What about Category:Heads of state - it would be a pain to add each British PM to both categories, when you could add them to Category:British Prime Ministers and then add that category to any others it should be a part of? Chuq 23:51, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The British PM would not need to be added to Category:Heads of State, because he (or she) is not a head of state. john k 02:38, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There is not a single country in the world where the Prime Minister is, by virtue of that office, Head of State (there are various countries where the Head of State also holds the office of Prime Minister, such as Oman, Saudi Arabia, and so forth, and many countries, such as the United States, where the Head of State is also Head of Government). john k 05:28, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
OK, we have Category:People. This includes Category:Authors, which includes various other categories. One of these is Category:Stephen King. Now, in this case, that category includes lots of books directly.
This means that if you took a naïve algorithm and dumped out all the articles linked to under Category:People, you'd get a list of Stephen King's books. This is clearly not very useful.
Now, the books needn't be under Category:Stephen King directly - they could be under Category:Stephen King books. But that would want to be, along with Category:Stephen King movies, a member of the Category:Stephen King, and it is hard to see where a Category:Stephen King would go if it isn't Category:Authors or a subcategory of that.
So I think we need a way of distinguishing between a category where (a) you are asserting that everything in the category is an example of the thing it is in (ie list categories), and (b) categories where you are just providing hierachial links for convenience.
So, basically I'm saying, the relationship between Category:Stephen King and Category:People should be different to that between Category:Authors and Category:People. I want all members of the latter to appear in the mega-list of people, I don't want all the members of the former.
Does this make sense to anyone? Morwen 18:13, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Why should Category:Stephen King be under Category:People at all? Shouldn't it be under Category:Categories about People, or some such? john k 20:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
We have to think from the encyclopedia user's point of view. He/she is starting at the top level of the hierarchy with a subject in mind, and they need to know which blind path to go down to find an article on that subject. It might help to think of the problem as a game of twenty questions. The first question we may ask is, "Is your subject a Category:Persons, Category:Places, or Category:Things?" If they choose Category:Persons, then ALL the articles from then on should be about persons. Why? Because we may someday be able to click a link to collapse the hierarchy, and display all the articles below that level in one alphabetical order. If they wanted to know about Stephen King's books, they might choose Category:Things, and have a choice of Category:Animals, Category:Vegetables, Category:Minerals, Category:Ideas, etc., and go down one of those paths. My point is, Categories link only as a hierarchy; Wikipedia articles link as a network to every related article. So as long as the user reaches the article on Steven King (the person), or the articles on Steven King's books using the categories, the articles themselves link to each other. GUllman 16:31, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This makes a lot of sense. We need to have some sort of idea of what categories are for before we go and start putting everything into categories. 17:42, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The following is an archive of a section that used to be on the main page. It has since been re-factored, but this reads like a discussion, so it's been kept here.
Categories should be kept as hierarchical as possible. That is, the number of top-level categories should be kept at a minimum.
Most importantly, an article should only link to the most specific categories it is in. Thus, Paul McCartney should link not to People, nor to People of Britain, nor to Musicians, but to British musicians, or rather The Beatles. The reason for this is that The Beatles should be hierarchicalized as follows (arrows denote parentage; linked items are articles; the rest are categories):
Paul McCartney | -----> Musicians ----- V / \ The Beatles -> British musicians - ---> People \ / -> People of Britain -
Thus, it's known that British musicians are not only musicians and British people, but also People. Which is obvious. Thus, the number of actual category links on the article page can be kept to a minimum.
Another example:
Harry Potter Albus Dumbledore | | | | | | | .--------------' | | | V | | Hogwarts teachers ---> Harry Potter characters ---> Harry Potter V V ^ | | Gryffindors-----------------------------' | V V Fictional universes Fictional characters | | V '---------------------> Fiction
Note that an article may have more than one parent. Thus, the structure is not a strict top-down hierarchy. (And thus absolutely not equivalent to the old subpage model.)
Queue.enqueue(category_to_extract) while (!Queue.empty) this_category = Queue.dequeue(); CategorySet.add(this_category) foreach (subcategory in this_category) if (!CategorySet.in(subcategory) and !Queue.in(subcategory)) Queue.enqueue(subcategory) # if we haven't seen it before foreach (category in CategorySet) foreach (article in category) ArticleSet.add(article) foreach (article in ArticleSet) Extract(article)
Fictional universes | V Harry Potter--\ | /---->Hogwarts employees--\ V | | Harry Potter characters---+ +--> Albus Dumbledore ^ | | | \---->Gryffindors---------/ Fictional characters
foreach (category of my_article) Queue.enqueue( [category,1] ) while (!Queue.empty) [this_category,depth] = Queue.dequeue(); CategorySet.add( [this_category,depth] ) if (this_category has no parents) this_category.setFlag(is_a_root) foreach (super_category containing this_category) if (!CategorySet.in(super_category) and !Queue.in(super_category)) Queue.enqueue( [subcategory,depth+1] ) maxdepth = max(depth+1,maxdepth) else [super_category,old_depth] = CategorySet.retrieve(super_category) if (old_depth > depth+1) CategorySet.add( [super_category,depth+1] ) foreach ([category,depth] in CategorySet) outputSet[depth].add(category) foreach (depth in 1..maxdepth) output depth; foreach (category in outputSet[depth]) output category;
In the enthusiasm to populate Wikipedia with categories, the character of the project is changing in an unanticipated direction. Pages are being (randomly) categorised by proponents of various disciplines. There are three problems with this:
I suggest that there should be a Guideline for categorisation by which editors (1) exercise caution and err on the side of not ascribing a category unless the text of the page justifies it (2)limit the size of the categorisation link text so that it remains small in relation to the size of the page. It seems to me that without these minimal requirements we will end up with pages exhibiting content confusion. Pages will go through a long gestation period looking rather weird - perhaps even looking like they derive from a banner supported commercial website. Is there any solution to the problem of trying to create hierarchies in a more logical order? -- JPF 17:58, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
By example. (please spell check)
We have category Spaghetti. Spaghetti is a kind of Pasta (belongs to the category). Pasta is a kind of Food. Is Spaghetti a kind of Food? - Yes! Does Spaghetti belongs directly to category Food? - No. If it belonged to the category, other kinds of pasta and soups would belong too, making Food category overloaded. Thus Spaghetti is kind of Food only indirectly.
Spaghetti is a kind of Italian national pasta. Italian national pasta is a kind of Pasta. Would Spaghetti belong to Pasta directly? Yes. Imagine if somebody else invented Spaghetti, not the Italians. Would it be a kind of Pasta? Sure, yes. Thus Spaghetti belongs directly to Italian national pasta and Pasta independently.