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Category types page. |
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I've also been thinking about some general purpose templates for categories that might help in their management. I hate the {{ catdiffuse}} template, and would like some that are much more user friendly, not blatantly self-referential and move us towards the category structure discussed at Wikipedia:Category intersection. I'm not sure of all the details, so I wanted to bounce the idea off you before I do anything. (Samuel then wrote the first version of the proposal on the project page)
What do you think? -- Samuel Wantman 08:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I find the page interesting. A couple thoughts: As this is a guide to category use, I think it should be a guideline, once it's more complete, and I think it should be made clear that other uses for categories are possible, just that these are the most common (embracing WP:IAR). - jc37 06:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
These categories are naive and inaccurate, an attempt to pass of an eccentric and inaccurate set of definitions as fact rather than opinion. All of them are ridiculous. For example one cannot say that certain things are topics and others are not. The level and type of category that one designates as a "topic" is purely a matter of opinion. For example, why is it "film" that is the topic? Why not the broader "culture" or the narrower "cinematography"? These templates are a personal project and should not be imposed on anyone else. They will not help readers, but simply jar against their own way of thinking, which is likely to be just as valid at Samuel Wantman's way of thinking. Cloachland 06:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It is already a problem that the top section of category pages takes up so much space, and adding multiline boxes would make things far worse. When I go to the category I want to see what it is in, not all sorts of introductory comments and links to other things. These boxes assume that people aren't smart enough to develop their own understanding of the category system, but actually readers can be trusted to do that just fine, and will not benefit from this patronising intrusion. Cloachland 06:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you would need to survey the readers before you can conclude that they understand the category system. From my experience, editors don't agree over what the category system is meant to be, so this will help reduce conflicts like that. You might see it as making things too strict, but some order for the category system is long overdue. Carcharoth 10:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
From my own experience of categorisation, I recognise the category types you are describing here, and I support the system that is being set up. To address some of the concerns people have raised, maybe it would be a good idea to demonstrate that a category that seems to lump lots of things together can actually be separated out into several of these types. Find an example that covers all these types, and then give the category name used for each type. You already have film for three of them. Try and find an example where the differences between all five types can be demonstrated in the same subject area. For example, if you have a long list of earthquakes (the index category: Category:Earthquakes), some people may want to divide it up by date, some by location, some by type, and so on. These are the navigation categories ( Category:Earthquakes by country; Category:Earthquakes by century; Category:Earthquakes by type - the latter hasn't been created and populated yet). The topic category would be articles on the science of earthquakes ( Category:Seismology). If an earthquake spawns lots of subarticles, like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, then that would have a subject category, in this case Category:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Am I understanding this correctly? Carcharoth 10:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to see what this would make of Category:Women... - jc37 10:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The underlying idea seems to be that there is one correct way of thinking about categories, and users should be guided to follow it. This negates one of the greatest strengths of wikipedia, ie that it is gloriously flexible with multiple methods of navigation, and plenty of flexibility in the way they are used to account for special circumstances in each field. It is all very well for a user to clarify in his own mind how the category system works for him, but the proposal here is that this should then be displayed across Wikipedia in what would amount to tens of thousands of screens worth of text and colour. If this was implemented actual articles would rarely be visible when a category first loaded, one would have to scroll down past this largely useless information every time. When a user visits a category they usually know that they want to see what is in the that category; it is completely inappropriate to give make a set of suggestions for other places they might look the first thing that they see. Osomec 19:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
First of all, I really like the guidelines you've put together here Samuel. Whoever said "This is a bad, inflexible, prescriptive system, patronising and a waste of space" is being intellectually lazy and simply doesn't want to try and improve on the current system. I'm trying to leverage the power of all the information stored in the category links but without these distinctions it is extremely difficult.
I think that this simply standardizes the way that categories are already being used without ruling out new possible uses or even requiring a category to have a type and any point in time. I'm sure concerns over the display templates can alleviated; I agree that as is, with the "see this and that" bits, they are probably too large for the top of some pages.
Froggy 000 04:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't specialize in categorization, but there seem to be a lot of categories of categories here, and it might do more harm than good to artificially place a level on each category. Any given category will have some subcategories and/or supercategories, and people can navigate through. Also, it will be time-consuming to implement, and it creates one more backlog for untagged categories. But it's not a bad idea - I just question its practical benefit. YechielMan 19:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. The category types make sense and the suggested templates will help visitors to navigate Wikipedia. The only downside I can see is that this should take a relatively low priority and should (as was suggested above) be a guideline rather than a firm policy. Categories that already have a lot of information in their headers either don't need the template added or should be tidied up to make room for it. Waggers 09:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks like this proposal has is not proceeding and consensus for acceptance is not evident. This should be marked as rejected ASAP. -- Kevin Murray 01:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
With no objections or progress it is marked rejected. -- Kevin Murray 12:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
As we all know, there are a good many controversial categories. There are a number of guidelines that address this, although their intent is a matter of interpretation. Examples include:
Given the frequent mention of lists in these instances, it's clear that what's really being discussed is what this proposal terms an index category. I think that the best way to satisfy these portions of the guidelines — and eliminate a huge amount of conflict between editors — would be to severely restrict (or outright prohibit) index categories in the case of controversial topics. This is actually already the case for categories involving religious belief or sexual preference, as applied to biographies of living people. I suggest that we simply generalize the restriction in a way that makes sense, rather than continue to deal with these issues on a case-by-case basis. In order for this generalization to make sense, we would need to establish a taxonomy of categories similar to that described in this proposal.
Note that most of these categories could either be modified or merged into a different topic category, so the intent of the category could be preserved. For instance, everyone listed under Category:Pseudoscientists could uncontroversially be recategorized under Category:Pseudoscience, which is a topic category. I claim this would be uncontroversial because anyone even accused of being a pseudoscience (as long as the accusation is notable and referenced properly) is related to the topic in virtue of that accusation. At the very least, it would completely eliminate the problem of each side trying to "prove" one way or another whether the person really is a pseudoscientist, and focus the editorial debate on the more appropriate issue of cited references.
I would like to modify this proposal to be more in line with the desires of the other editors who have expressed an opinion here, and to emphasize the problematic nature of controversial index categories. I'd like some feedback here before proceeding, however. -- Sapphic 01:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
One thing that might help is to point out that the labels are not intended to cover all categories. There may be categories that don't fall neatly into one of these types, or are still developing a clearer structure, so it should be emphasised that these tags should only be used in clear-cut cases. Carcharoth ( talk) 13:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
There is related discussion currently at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Many months later, it is again being discussed on the mailing lists: [1]. Just fyi. -- Quiddity ( talk) 22:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Category types page. |
|
Categories | ||||
|
I've also been thinking about some general purpose templates for categories that might help in their management. I hate the {{ catdiffuse}} template, and would like some that are much more user friendly, not blatantly self-referential and move us towards the category structure discussed at Wikipedia:Category intersection. I'm not sure of all the details, so I wanted to bounce the idea off you before I do anything. (Samuel then wrote the first version of the proposal on the project page)
What do you think? -- Samuel Wantman 08:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I find the page interesting. A couple thoughts: As this is a guide to category use, I think it should be a guideline, once it's more complete, and I think it should be made clear that other uses for categories are possible, just that these are the most common (embracing WP:IAR). - jc37 06:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
These categories are naive and inaccurate, an attempt to pass of an eccentric and inaccurate set of definitions as fact rather than opinion. All of them are ridiculous. For example one cannot say that certain things are topics and others are not. The level and type of category that one designates as a "topic" is purely a matter of opinion. For example, why is it "film" that is the topic? Why not the broader "culture" or the narrower "cinematography"? These templates are a personal project and should not be imposed on anyone else. They will not help readers, but simply jar against their own way of thinking, which is likely to be just as valid at Samuel Wantman's way of thinking. Cloachland 06:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It is already a problem that the top section of category pages takes up so much space, and adding multiline boxes would make things far worse. When I go to the category I want to see what it is in, not all sorts of introductory comments and links to other things. These boxes assume that people aren't smart enough to develop their own understanding of the category system, but actually readers can be trusted to do that just fine, and will not benefit from this patronising intrusion. Cloachland 06:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you would need to survey the readers before you can conclude that they understand the category system. From my experience, editors don't agree over what the category system is meant to be, so this will help reduce conflicts like that. You might see it as making things too strict, but some order for the category system is long overdue. Carcharoth 10:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
From my own experience of categorisation, I recognise the category types you are describing here, and I support the system that is being set up. To address some of the concerns people have raised, maybe it would be a good idea to demonstrate that a category that seems to lump lots of things together can actually be separated out into several of these types. Find an example that covers all these types, and then give the category name used for each type. You already have film for three of them. Try and find an example where the differences between all five types can be demonstrated in the same subject area. For example, if you have a long list of earthquakes (the index category: Category:Earthquakes), some people may want to divide it up by date, some by location, some by type, and so on. These are the navigation categories ( Category:Earthquakes by country; Category:Earthquakes by century; Category:Earthquakes by type - the latter hasn't been created and populated yet). The topic category would be articles on the science of earthquakes ( Category:Seismology). If an earthquake spawns lots of subarticles, like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, then that would have a subject category, in this case Category:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Am I understanding this correctly? Carcharoth 10:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to see what this would make of Category:Women... - jc37 10:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The underlying idea seems to be that there is one correct way of thinking about categories, and users should be guided to follow it. This negates one of the greatest strengths of wikipedia, ie that it is gloriously flexible with multiple methods of navigation, and plenty of flexibility in the way they are used to account for special circumstances in each field. It is all very well for a user to clarify in his own mind how the category system works for him, but the proposal here is that this should then be displayed across Wikipedia in what would amount to tens of thousands of screens worth of text and colour. If this was implemented actual articles would rarely be visible when a category first loaded, one would have to scroll down past this largely useless information every time. When a user visits a category they usually know that they want to see what is in the that category; it is completely inappropriate to give make a set of suggestions for other places they might look the first thing that they see. Osomec 19:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
First of all, I really like the guidelines you've put together here Samuel. Whoever said "This is a bad, inflexible, prescriptive system, patronising and a waste of space" is being intellectually lazy and simply doesn't want to try and improve on the current system. I'm trying to leverage the power of all the information stored in the category links but without these distinctions it is extremely difficult.
I think that this simply standardizes the way that categories are already being used without ruling out new possible uses or even requiring a category to have a type and any point in time. I'm sure concerns over the display templates can alleviated; I agree that as is, with the "see this and that" bits, they are probably too large for the top of some pages.
Froggy 000 04:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't specialize in categorization, but there seem to be a lot of categories of categories here, and it might do more harm than good to artificially place a level on each category. Any given category will have some subcategories and/or supercategories, and people can navigate through. Also, it will be time-consuming to implement, and it creates one more backlog for untagged categories. But it's not a bad idea - I just question its practical benefit. YechielMan 19:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. The category types make sense and the suggested templates will help visitors to navigate Wikipedia. The only downside I can see is that this should take a relatively low priority and should (as was suggested above) be a guideline rather than a firm policy. Categories that already have a lot of information in their headers either don't need the template added or should be tidied up to make room for it. Waggers 09:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks like this proposal has is not proceeding and consensus for acceptance is not evident. This should be marked as rejected ASAP. -- Kevin Murray 01:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
With no objections or progress it is marked rejected. -- Kevin Murray 12:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
As we all know, there are a good many controversial categories. There are a number of guidelines that address this, although their intent is a matter of interpretation. Examples include:
Given the frequent mention of lists in these instances, it's clear that what's really being discussed is what this proposal terms an index category. I think that the best way to satisfy these portions of the guidelines — and eliminate a huge amount of conflict between editors — would be to severely restrict (or outright prohibit) index categories in the case of controversial topics. This is actually already the case for categories involving religious belief or sexual preference, as applied to biographies of living people. I suggest that we simply generalize the restriction in a way that makes sense, rather than continue to deal with these issues on a case-by-case basis. In order for this generalization to make sense, we would need to establish a taxonomy of categories similar to that described in this proposal.
Note that most of these categories could either be modified or merged into a different topic category, so the intent of the category could be preserved. For instance, everyone listed under Category:Pseudoscientists could uncontroversially be recategorized under Category:Pseudoscience, which is a topic category. I claim this would be uncontroversial because anyone even accused of being a pseudoscience (as long as the accusation is notable and referenced properly) is related to the topic in virtue of that accusation. At the very least, it would completely eliminate the problem of each side trying to "prove" one way or another whether the person really is a pseudoscientist, and focus the editorial debate on the more appropriate issue of cited references.
I would like to modify this proposal to be more in line with the desires of the other editors who have expressed an opinion here, and to emphasize the problematic nature of controversial index categories. I'd like some feedback here before proceeding, however. -- Sapphic 01:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
One thing that might help is to point out that the labels are not intended to cover all categories. There may be categories that don't fall neatly into one of these types, or are still developing a clearer structure, so it should be emphasised that these tags should only be used in clear-cut cases. Carcharoth ( talk) 13:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
There is related discussion currently at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Many months later, it is again being discussed on the mailing lists: [1]. Just fyi. -- Quiddity ( talk) 22:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)