Unless we get the watchlist feature first it's a bad idea because it will lead to people putting things in random categories to get them to save, making it harder on both readers and editors to find things. But the category watchlist idea would be wonderful - I hope it's just a case of busyness of the developers not a performance issue... JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've found that if you add a tag requesting categories, the person who created an article is usually very willing and capable of providing excellent categories. They just forgot to, or didn't know better. I honestly believe that the huge majority of people who'd be unwilling to spend 60 seconds adding categories are people who're creating articles that get deleted rather quickly anyway... and them adding bogus categories would just make their vandalism even easier to detect.
That said, it would be an annoyance to some people, and more importantly we probably would lose some contributions. So, like I detail on my userpage, I think we should have a warning screen, telling people the article they're creating is uncategorized, and that if left like that, it will be disorganized and hard for people to find, and telling them how to add categories. But they can click a box that says "I understand, create the article anyway" to opt out. -- W.marsh 00:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I am opposed to forcing writers to choose pigeonholes. However, I like W.marsh's idea about reminding them. That's very similar to the reminder I get when I forget to add an edit summary, and which I usually appreciate. The edit summary reminder, though, can be opted out of in the user's preferences. You might think about whether to include that feature for a category reminder as well. Rbraunwa 18:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Point by point
No it won't - well only for about six seconds once - "[[Category:Living people|Nonsense article]] done - now for six million more hoax articles..."
As per 1. [[Category:Living people|Nonsense article]]
As long as it's put in the right category, and not just this first thing that the user thought of i.e. "fuckit - I'll put it in living people and sort it out later" . I thought this was the purpose of stub categories... {{stub}} which then gets stub sorted to a correct stub category.
Unlikely. If I merely drop someone into living people rather than I don't know American congressmen, how does that help ?
Well as long as we are comfortable with lots of new articles in the WRONG CATEGORY - that won't get detected anywhere. Do you fancy trawling through Cat:Living people looking for misplaced articles ? Megapixie 01:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
This is going to be a problem -- I do a lot of categorization, and I frequently have to create new categories, particularly people, places, or things from smaller countries (today I had to create "Sri Lankan albums"). Any rule shouldn't bar someone from creating a new article and putting it in a newly-created category. Whether the rule is still workable with this limitation, I don't know. NawlinWiki 02:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Put it this way. What's worse, an article with no categories, or one with incorrect categories? The incorrectly categorized is still more likely get noticed and improved than the uncategorized one. And I don't really get what harm incorrect categories would cause... most of these would be vandalism/vanity/etc. and all the added categorization would mean would be that we'd find it more quickly. It's not like adding Category:Living people is A) obvious to average vandal and B) The category is hardly any kind of protection against the article being deleted as vandalism, etc. It actually helps us find it faster.
So sure, there'd be some incorrect categories. Most would be on articles that would be promptly deleted anyway. And an incorrect category on a few hundred articles would still be better than having tens of thousands of articles without any category... just floating around out there, unconnected to people who might want to improve them, waiting for some reporter who wants to write an easy Wikipedia-bashing article along the lines of "Look at this terrible article I found!" -- W.marsh 03:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Automatically adding an {{ uncat}} tag, as suggested by Garion96, seems like the best option to me. Enforcing inclusion of categories as a requirement prior to saving would be a major hassle. Even just being forced to acknowledge a warning prior to saving could be irritating at times. The template is sufficient notify the editor that a category is required, and it doesn't interfere with saving.
A potential problem with adding the {{ uncat}} tag is that this could flood Category:Category needed with articles that should be deleted rather than categorized. Using a modified {{ uncat}} template which would add them to a distinct category such as Category:New uncategorized articles or some such, should prevent this. Dv82matt 03:27, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
How about we retain the "prompt for categories if not added" as a backup option in user preferences, but if someone does not add a category, tag them with {{ uncat}}? If we do this, perhaps {{ uncat}} will need to be sorted by date in order to help prioritise which articles most badly need proper categorisation, as {{ linkless}} and {{ wikify}} do now. Kimchi.sg 06:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
The Category:Redirects subtree already exists to contain them. Bo Lindbergh 05:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
This is going to cause a lot of retroactive issues. Plus I don't like the idea of forcing categories down people's throats. As above, it just means people will pick nonsense categories so they can save. Vandals and spambots will soon adapt to put random cats (heck, even 'random' alphanumeric combinations) for categories to continue the spam. Kevin_b_er 04:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
A bit related, there is a discussion here on using a bot to add the {{ uncat}} tag to all articles without categories. Please comment there your objections or approval. If the enforce inclusion of categories would be implemented, this bot job would only be needed once. Garion96 (talk) 12:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I oppose the inclusion of this since it may hinder editing. Wikipedia should be as open as possible, and this might discourage someone from creating a new article. It took me a while to understand categories, and though it does require work to add the categories later, a newbie is more likely to put in a single, or even an irrelevant category just to get the page created, rather then adding proper cats. Checking for improperly categorized articles will probably be more harmful then having an uncategorized page. (P.S. I am on break, so don't expect a quick reply to any response, Sorry!) Prodego talk 22:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, no, anything that would discourage contribution by newbies must be avoided. User:Zoe| (talk) 01:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Zoe -- in the relative scheme of things categories are of lower importance; minimizing barriers to the addition of useful content is more important than ensuring proper categorization. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
If this ever does come to fruition (hopefully not), the "please enter a category" prompt must include a link to a list of categories. User:Zoe| (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For many of the reasons stated above, I support the idea of an automatic "uncategorized" category being created, in order to facilitate editing by newbies, particularly the creation of articles. Granted, forcing categorizing will also deter (though it won't eliminate) the creation to vandalism and nonsense articles. But it's needlessly cumbersome for legitimate, good faith newcomers. Also, not everyone knows what categories are suitable for what article. And to make things even more confusing -- and I am not what you'd call a newbie (check my contributions) I was floored to discover only a few hours ago that even CATEGORIES need Categories. It's a blessed moebius strip around here. No, I reject the forcing of categories; make an automatic "uncat" tag that goes in if the creator of a page neglects (for whatever reason) to categorize an article. 23skidoo 18:29, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the general trend of the above sentiments. Some sort of "are you sure you want to" page after the first attempt to save an uncategorised page, with canned text to the effect of "please add a specific category if you know it", and a short list of default options to assist the terminally bewildered, would be OK. As the majority of new articles are going to be stubs, it would be logical to include that among said options. It would seem reasonable for the software to make a WAG at whether the new article is a stub, based on length, and automatically add either {{ stub}} or {{ uncat}} accordingly to the previewed text (while mentioning the other as a possibility). What it should absolutely not do is repeatedly "bounce" the user to a "can't do that" page. Alai 01:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
There are some good ideas on this page - I'd like to drop a poll as to how folks here feel about the following specific proposals:
Is there any way you could get the articles to automatically bear the {{wiki}} tag if they contain no outgoing links? At any rate the proposal itself sounds like an excellent start, and would cut down some of the repetion of various cleanup jobs. Salad Days 19:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
[1]. It took 8 edits on the new article for him to get categories into his new article. I think the links on the welcome did help. It shows that people that want to learn will learn - others are beyond redemption. Agathoclea 19:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I like this proposal a lot. I don't think we should shy from doing something bold like this just over the possibility that some newbies might be scared off. Wikipedia needs software upgrades to work better and achieve its mission. I have a suggestion about stubs that are created by anonymous and registered users: can we (1) modify the software or (2) commission a bot that tags articles with less than 70 words as "Recently created stubs?" This new category can be sorted out by people who have experience, and will be more helpful to newbies. Rama's arrow 00:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I noticed someone changed this proposal into a "feature request." Has anyone submitted this yet? Also, is there enough discussion here to claim community support? Salad Days 20:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I brought up this proposal in the context of current software capabilities at the village pump. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Mandatory categorization of new articles. -- Eliyak T· C 08:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Unless we get the watchlist feature first it's a bad idea because it will lead to people putting things in random categories to get them to save, making it harder on both readers and editors to find things. But the category watchlist idea would be wonderful - I hope it's just a case of busyness of the developers not a performance issue... JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
I've found that if you add a tag requesting categories, the person who created an article is usually very willing and capable of providing excellent categories. They just forgot to, or didn't know better. I honestly believe that the huge majority of people who'd be unwilling to spend 60 seconds adding categories are people who're creating articles that get deleted rather quickly anyway... and them adding bogus categories would just make their vandalism even easier to detect.
That said, it would be an annoyance to some people, and more importantly we probably would lose some contributions. So, like I detail on my userpage, I think we should have a warning screen, telling people the article they're creating is uncategorized, and that if left like that, it will be disorganized and hard for people to find, and telling them how to add categories. But they can click a box that says "I understand, create the article anyway" to opt out. -- W.marsh 00:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I am opposed to forcing writers to choose pigeonholes. However, I like W.marsh's idea about reminding them. That's very similar to the reminder I get when I forget to add an edit summary, and which I usually appreciate. The edit summary reminder, though, can be opted out of in the user's preferences. You might think about whether to include that feature for a category reminder as well. Rbraunwa 18:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Point by point
No it won't - well only for about six seconds once - "[[Category:Living people|Nonsense article]] done - now for six million more hoax articles..."
As per 1. [[Category:Living people|Nonsense article]]
As long as it's put in the right category, and not just this first thing that the user thought of i.e. "fuckit - I'll put it in living people and sort it out later" . I thought this was the purpose of stub categories... {{stub}} which then gets stub sorted to a correct stub category.
Unlikely. If I merely drop someone into living people rather than I don't know American congressmen, how does that help ?
Well as long as we are comfortable with lots of new articles in the WRONG CATEGORY - that won't get detected anywhere. Do you fancy trawling through Cat:Living people looking for misplaced articles ? Megapixie 01:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
This is going to be a problem -- I do a lot of categorization, and I frequently have to create new categories, particularly people, places, or things from smaller countries (today I had to create "Sri Lankan albums"). Any rule shouldn't bar someone from creating a new article and putting it in a newly-created category. Whether the rule is still workable with this limitation, I don't know. NawlinWiki 02:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Put it this way. What's worse, an article with no categories, or one with incorrect categories? The incorrectly categorized is still more likely get noticed and improved than the uncategorized one. And I don't really get what harm incorrect categories would cause... most of these would be vandalism/vanity/etc. and all the added categorization would mean would be that we'd find it more quickly. It's not like adding Category:Living people is A) obvious to average vandal and B) The category is hardly any kind of protection against the article being deleted as vandalism, etc. It actually helps us find it faster.
So sure, there'd be some incorrect categories. Most would be on articles that would be promptly deleted anyway. And an incorrect category on a few hundred articles would still be better than having tens of thousands of articles without any category... just floating around out there, unconnected to people who might want to improve them, waiting for some reporter who wants to write an easy Wikipedia-bashing article along the lines of "Look at this terrible article I found!" -- W.marsh 03:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Automatically adding an {{ uncat}} tag, as suggested by Garion96, seems like the best option to me. Enforcing inclusion of categories as a requirement prior to saving would be a major hassle. Even just being forced to acknowledge a warning prior to saving could be irritating at times. The template is sufficient notify the editor that a category is required, and it doesn't interfere with saving.
A potential problem with adding the {{ uncat}} tag is that this could flood Category:Category needed with articles that should be deleted rather than categorized. Using a modified {{ uncat}} template which would add them to a distinct category such as Category:New uncategorized articles or some such, should prevent this. Dv82matt 03:27, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
How about we retain the "prompt for categories if not added" as a backup option in user preferences, but if someone does not add a category, tag them with {{ uncat}}? If we do this, perhaps {{ uncat}} will need to be sorted by date in order to help prioritise which articles most badly need proper categorisation, as {{ linkless}} and {{ wikify}} do now. Kimchi.sg 06:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
The Category:Redirects subtree already exists to contain them. Bo Lindbergh 05:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
This is going to cause a lot of retroactive issues. Plus I don't like the idea of forcing categories down people's throats. As above, it just means people will pick nonsense categories so they can save. Vandals and spambots will soon adapt to put random cats (heck, even 'random' alphanumeric combinations) for categories to continue the spam. Kevin_b_er 04:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
A bit related, there is a discussion here on using a bot to add the {{ uncat}} tag to all articles without categories. Please comment there your objections or approval. If the enforce inclusion of categories would be implemented, this bot job would only be needed once. Garion96 (talk) 12:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I oppose the inclusion of this since it may hinder editing. Wikipedia should be as open as possible, and this might discourage someone from creating a new article. It took me a while to understand categories, and though it does require work to add the categories later, a newbie is more likely to put in a single, or even an irrelevant category just to get the page created, rather then adding proper cats. Checking for improperly categorized articles will probably be more harmful then having an uncategorized page. (P.S. I am on break, so don't expect a quick reply to any response, Sorry!) Prodego talk 22:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, no, anything that would discourage contribution by newbies must be avoided. User:Zoe| (talk) 01:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Zoe -- in the relative scheme of things categories are of lower importance; minimizing barriers to the addition of useful content is more important than ensuring proper categorization. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
If this ever does come to fruition (hopefully not), the "please enter a category" prompt must include a link to a list of categories. User:Zoe| (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For many of the reasons stated above, I support the idea of an automatic "uncategorized" category being created, in order to facilitate editing by newbies, particularly the creation of articles. Granted, forcing categorizing will also deter (though it won't eliminate) the creation to vandalism and nonsense articles. But it's needlessly cumbersome for legitimate, good faith newcomers. Also, not everyone knows what categories are suitable for what article. And to make things even more confusing -- and I am not what you'd call a newbie (check my contributions) I was floored to discover only a few hours ago that even CATEGORIES need Categories. It's a blessed moebius strip around here. No, I reject the forcing of categories; make an automatic "uncat" tag that goes in if the creator of a page neglects (for whatever reason) to categorize an article. 23skidoo 18:29, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the general trend of the above sentiments. Some sort of "are you sure you want to" page after the first attempt to save an uncategorised page, with canned text to the effect of "please add a specific category if you know it", and a short list of default options to assist the terminally bewildered, would be OK. As the majority of new articles are going to be stubs, it would be logical to include that among said options. It would seem reasonable for the software to make a WAG at whether the new article is a stub, based on length, and automatically add either {{ stub}} or {{ uncat}} accordingly to the previewed text (while mentioning the other as a possibility). What it should absolutely not do is repeatedly "bounce" the user to a "can't do that" page. Alai 01:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
There are some good ideas on this page - I'd like to drop a poll as to how folks here feel about the following specific proposals:
Is there any way you could get the articles to automatically bear the {{wiki}} tag if they contain no outgoing links? At any rate the proposal itself sounds like an excellent start, and would cut down some of the repetion of various cleanup jobs. Salad Days 19:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
[1]. It took 8 edits on the new article for him to get categories into his new article. I think the links on the welcome did help. It shows that people that want to learn will learn - others are beyond redemption. Agathoclea 19:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I like this proposal a lot. I don't think we should shy from doing something bold like this just over the possibility that some newbies might be scared off. Wikipedia needs software upgrades to work better and achieve its mission. I have a suggestion about stubs that are created by anonymous and registered users: can we (1) modify the software or (2) commission a bot that tags articles with less than 70 words as "Recently created stubs?" This new category can be sorted out by people who have experience, and will be more helpful to newbies. Rama's arrow 00:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I noticed someone changed this proposal into a "feature request." Has anyone submitted this yet? Also, is there enough discussion here to claim community support? Salad Days 20:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I brought up this proposal in the context of current software capabilities at the village pump. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Mandatory categorization of new articles. -- Eliyak T· C 08:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)