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I think this is a bad idea because it encourages overcategorization. It encourages people to add half a dozen categories to an article, instead of the most appropriate one. This is important - the more categories an article is in, the less meaningful they become.
This is a debate that should be held some time anyway - in my opinion, certain classes of categorization are undesirable and should be avoided. In particular, any categorization by gender, skin color, or sexual or political preference (unless, of course, this is directly relevant to the person we're talking about). I do believe this obviates the problem that the "all or nothing" rule is intended to solve.
It seems topic articles are a good exception, as you state on the page. R adiant _>|< 09:48, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure the "all or nothing rule" as stated reflects widespread current practice. I think in some cases it's reasonable, like the example of Category:Best Actor Oscar (and we should perhaps discuss in another forum whether Category:Best Actor Oscar should even be a category in the first place). I think there are other cases where it would lead to massive redundancy, like the ethnicity or national origin subcats of Category:American people. I think the difference might be the relative size of the incomplete subsets to the higher level supercat. Back to the "utility" yardstick, or perhaps more related to the Principle of least astonishment, if the supercat contains a collection of "relatively small" subsets (and the subsets are incomplete) the preponderance of the articles will be directly in the supercat. In this case, I think duplicate categorization is warranted. If the subcats contain a large fraction of the articles based on a relatively obvious division I think duplicate categorization is not warranted. This may make for an "ugly" rule, not pleasantly in line with any kind of formal database view, but IMO viewing categorization as a formal database is not realistic. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:45, September 11, 2005 (UTC)
The least astonishment comment was more directed to the situation where some relatively large category has a relatively small (and incomplete) subcategory, in which case I'd think most users would expect the higher level category to contain all the articles (including the ones in the small, incomplete, subcategory). One example of this might be
Category:American films shot in Japan which is a subcategory of
Category:American films (the members of the subcat are not currently also in the higher level category, which seems weird to me). Here's a modified version of the rule (additions italicized, deletions struck).
-- Rick Block ( talk) 04:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
This page 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. |
I think this is a bad idea because it encourages overcategorization. It encourages people to add half a dozen categories to an article, instead of the most appropriate one. This is important - the more categories an article is in, the less meaningful they become.
This is a debate that should be held some time anyway - in my opinion, certain classes of categorization are undesirable and should be avoided. In particular, any categorization by gender, skin color, or sexual or political preference (unless, of course, this is directly relevant to the person we're talking about). I do believe this obviates the problem that the "all or nothing" rule is intended to solve.
It seems topic articles are a good exception, as you state on the page. R adiant _>|< 09:48, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure the "all or nothing rule" as stated reflects widespread current practice. I think in some cases it's reasonable, like the example of Category:Best Actor Oscar (and we should perhaps discuss in another forum whether Category:Best Actor Oscar should even be a category in the first place). I think there are other cases where it would lead to massive redundancy, like the ethnicity or national origin subcats of Category:American people. I think the difference might be the relative size of the incomplete subsets to the higher level supercat. Back to the "utility" yardstick, or perhaps more related to the Principle of least astonishment, if the supercat contains a collection of "relatively small" subsets (and the subsets are incomplete) the preponderance of the articles will be directly in the supercat. In this case, I think duplicate categorization is warranted. If the subcats contain a large fraction of the articles based on a relatively obvious division I think duplicate categorization is not warranted. This may make for an "ugly" rule, not pleasantly in line with any kind of formal database view, but IMO viewing categorization as a formal database is not realistic. -- Rick Block ( talk) 17:45, September 11, 2005 (UTC)
The least astonishment comment was more directed to the situation where some relatively large category has a relatively small (and incomplete) subcategory, in which case I'd think most users would expect the higher level category to contain all the articles (including the ones in the small, incomplete, subcategory). One example of this might be
Category:American films shot in Japan which is a subcategory of
Category:American films (the members of the subcat are not currently also in the higher level category, which seems weird to me). Here's a modified version of the rule (additions italicized, deletions struck).
-- Rick Block ( talk) 04:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)