Manual of Style | ||||||||||
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Categories | ||||
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Some suggested housekeeping rules:
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After looking this over, it looks like it's trying to re explain WP:CAT in a different way, while leaving out the "organisation/tree/subcatting" aspect of the guideline page.
To illustrate:
Imagine if this page was broken up into the following sections:
Might not be a bad idea to discuss a reOrg of the categorisation page itself to better present/explain these things. - jc37 02:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
To start off, here are some of what I consider common practice on category pages. I welcome your thoughts on this:
I'm intentionally staying general and vague to start with. What have I missed? : ) - jc37
I have made a few more tweaks. Feel free to revert, edit, strikeout any of the content. --
Alan Liefting (
talk -
contribs) 23:54, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
From this it looks like there is a disagreement about whether miscellaneous templates or images can be used in categories. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:29, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Some examples of unnecessary temples:
Related:
We should not try to link everything everywhere. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 02:41, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Per the above I've removed "...footer or sidebar templates". I'm going to try to edit the section to more reflect common practice. - jc37 15:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings about the use of {{ Cat main}}. In many cases having the main article listed first is sufficient. In fact for cases where the only header text is the template it seems like overkill. I have even seen cases where the template was used and the article was not included in the category! Add to that the fact that it is not uncommon for the template to be pointing at a redirect which is really confusing. This template may have outlived its usefulness in many cases. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Just stumbled across Category:Dark sky parks. It had {cat main} and it was a redir to the main article. That, and the lack of categories meant that it was inaccurate, confusing and redundant. I deleted it. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 21:35, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why it should be one or the other. Having the eponymous article categorised isn't always appropriate. And that doesn't even get into times where the eponymous article may have been merged to be part of another article or always has been part of another article. Our goal should always be to enhance navigation. And in that, some redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing.
All that aside, we should write this so it can stand alone without reference to how something is categorised in the category. This page should be strictly limited to what is placed in the editing window when editing a category page. The idea is to try to keep the concepts separate. For one thing I have hopes that this may help reduce the all too common confusion between creation of a category through the technical aspects of categorisation (by adding a bracketed category name to a page) and the creation of a category page through the typical editing process. WP:CAT covers the former, and the hope is that this page will cover the latter.
This will also be nice in that it should semantically bring the editing of category pages more clearly under the various editing process policies and guidelines. For example, another common confusion is that - believe it or not - editing a category isn't editing. Leading to WP:OWN situations among many other things) - jc37 14:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with some of the views expressed above. {{ Cat main}} should be used on nearly every category that has a suitable main article. Redundancy with the article's appearance in the category is simply not a problem. Redundancy in navigation aids is often a good thing. Cat main is important because it is more approachable to readers, who may not know to look for an article appearing at the top of the list, above "A". (This is not self-evident.)-- Srleffler ( talk) 06:45, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Ok. I removed all references to what should be categorised in the category (as beyond the scope of this page). And also removed all comments concerning "clutter", since that is very subjective and is of course unenforceable. (And as an aside, would confuse people who hear how WP:OC is "category clutter".)
I added surrounding explanatory text concerning the purpose of categories and how the main purpose of the category page is to help convey the scope and intended purpose of the category in question, and to help associated navigation through the use of various templates such as catmain.
I don't think that any of this should be contentious, as it is clearly common practice. Though I welcome discussion on it. The text does need further expansion though. - jc37 15:34, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Let's tackle discussing this directly.
Please list what you personally don't want to see on category pages, and explain whether you think this is common practice or if you would just like consensus to change on this. - jc37 16:04, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I favour a minimalist approach to category pages. Less is more!
In a nutshell, a category page should be treated as a form of signpost. In general, the less information it contains, the better it serves its purpose of assisting quick and easy navigation.
Categories are for quick navigation, and all extra material on the page has two adverse effects:
Examples of description line for Category:People from Glossop
Description | Rating | Comment |
---|---|---|
People from Glossop | Very poor | Simply restates titles, without a link to the head article, and adds no context. It adds nothing except duplicate text, so it is worse than useless. |
People from Glossop | Poor | Restates title, but links to head article for clarification. However, the lack of bolding makes the link hard to spot |
People from Glossop | Good | Links to head article, and bolding makes the link prominent ... but where in the universe is Glossop? |
People from Glossop, a town in Derbyshire, England | Very good | Links to head article, bolding makes the link prominent, and the few extra words on the location will save readers from having to open up the article to get basic location info. |
People from Glossop, a market town in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, England. It had a population of 32,0000 in the 2001 census | Poor | 3 superfluous links distract the eye from the important one (i.e. Glossop), and the details on the census belong in the article. There is no ambiguity, so the district is probably superfluous. |
-- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Are we looking at wanting to deprecate Template:Cat main in favour of a simple sentence with the main article bolded and linked? I agree that wikilinking "insects" is overlinking, but that order should remain linked, because it is a technical use of a common word, which many readers won't be familiar with.
I considered whether a picture should be included. Pictures are pleasant to see, and can immediately clarify unusual topics. However, they consume height as you say, and a small picture of an insect says little more than the text "Plecoptera are ... insects". The same and other images are immediately obtainable by clicking on the main article link. I can also imagine disputes about what is the best, clearest or most inconic image, which is the sort of discussion that belongs in the article history and not in the history of a category page. So, I'm tending to agree that generally, images shoud be discouraged. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk)
After discussing this above, I think the place where I'm thinking that the "general" prohibitions suggested so far shouldn't apply would be in regards to concepts (that which one could not reach out and "touch").
Perhaps we should just have a "special case" section concerning concepts? - jc37 21:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Often on category pages there is {{ portal}} as well as an entry as a page and, if it exists, a portal subdirectory. Having a portal subdirectory is fine but having the page entry is redundant. It is also often "link clutter" around the all important eponymous article link. Examples: Category:Foods, Category:Environment. This is mainly applicable to cases here the portal and the category are the same name. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 22:08, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This should probably be restarted, since a) it was worked up into a form that seems non-controversial, b) if it actually reflects standard practice, there won't be any difficulty getting an RfC at WT:MOS to adopt it as part of MoS (see how many MoS pages there already are), and c) because this stalled, matters have gotten worse, with all kinds of huge template-cruft atop categories now, and sometimes substantial content. Just the other day, I found an entire Wikipedia essay embedded in a category page (since moved to WP:Rouge editors). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:01, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
From the MOS: A maximum of 200 category entries are displayed per screen. To make navigating large categories easier, a table of contents can be used on the category page - e.g. {{ Category TOC}} displays a table of contents (Top, 0–9, A–Z).
We should consider updating this for {{
CatAutoTOC}}
—¿philoserf? (
talk) 22:09, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Manual of Style | ||||||||||
|
Categories | ||||
|
Some suggested housekeeping rules:
|
After looking this over, it looks like it's trying to re explain WP:CAT in a different way, while leaving out the "organisation/tree/subcatting" aspect of the guideline page.
To illustrate:
Imagine if this page was broken up into the following sections:
Might not be a bad idea to discuss a reOrg of the categorisation page itself to better present/explain these things. - jc37 02:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
To start off, here are some of what I consider common practice on category pages. I welcome your thoughts on this:
I'm intentionally staying general and vague to start with. What have I missed? : ) - jc37
I have made a few more tweaks. Feel free to revert, edit, strikeout any of the content. --
Alan Liefting (
talk -
contribs) 23:54, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
From this it looks like there is a disagreement about whether miscellaneous templates or images can be used in categories. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:29, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Some examples of unnecessary temples:
Related:
We should not try to link everything everywhere. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 02:41, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Per the above I've removed "...footer or sidebar templates". I'm going to try to edit the section to more reflect common practice. - jc37 15:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings about the use of {{ Cat main}}. In many cases having the main article listed first is sufficient. In fact for cases where the only header text is the template it seems like overkill. I have even seen cases where the template was used and the article was not included in the category! Add to that the fact that it is not uncommon for the template to be pointing at a redirect which is really confusing. This template may have outlived its usefulness in many cases. Vegaswikian ( talk) 05:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Just stumbled across Category:Dark sky parks. It had {cat main} and it was a redir to the main article. That, and the lack of categories meant that it was inaccurate, confusing and redundant. I deleted it. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 21:35, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why it should be one or the other. Having the eponymous article categorised isn't always appropriate. And that doesn't even get into times where the eponymous article may have been merged to be part of another article or always has been part of another article. Our goal should always be to enhance navigation. And in that, some redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing.
All that aside, we should write this so it can stand alone without reference to how something is categorised in the category. This page should be strictly limited to what is placed in the editing window when editing a category page. The idea is to try to keep the concepts separate. For one thing I have hopes that this may help reduce the all too common confusion between creation of a category through the technical aspects of categorisation (by adding a bracketed category name to a page) and the creation of a category page through the typical editing process. WP:CAT covers the former, and the hope is that this page will cover the latter.
This will also be nice in that it should semantically bring the editing of category pages more clearly under the various editing process policies and guidelines. For example, another common confusion is that - believe it or not - editing a category isn't editing. Leading to WP:OWN situations among many other things) - jc37 14:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I disagree with some of the views expressed above. {{ Cat main}} should be used on nearly every category that has a suitable main article. Redundancy with the article's appearance in the category is simply not a problem. Redundancy in navigation aids is often a good thing. Cat main is important because it is more approachable to readers, who may not know to look for an article appearing at the top of the list, above "A". (This is not self-evident.)-- Srleffler ( talk) 06:45, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Ok. I removed all references to what should be categorised in the category (as beyond the scope of this page). And also removed all comments concerning "clutter", since that is very subjective and is of course unenforceable. (And as an aside, would confuse people who hear how WP:OC is "category clutter".)
I added surrounding explanatory text concerning the purpose of categories and how the main purpose of the category page is to help convey the scope and intended purpose of the category in question, and to help associated navigation through the use of various templates such as catmain.
I don't think that any of this should be contentious, as it is clearly common practice. Though I welcome discussion on it. The text does need further expansion though. - jc37 15:34, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Let's tackle discussing this directly.
Please list what you personally don't want to see on category pages, and explain whether you think this is common practice or if you would just like consensus to change on this. - jc37 16:04, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I favour a minimalist approach to category pages. Less is more!
In a nutshell, a category page should be treated as a form of signpost. In general, the less information it contains, the better it serves its purpose of assisting quick and easy navigation.
Categories are for quick navigation, and all extra material on the page has two adverse effects:
Examples of description line for Category:People from Glossop
Description | Rating | Comment |
---|---|---|
People from Glossop | Very poor | Simply restates titles, without a link to the head article, and adds no context. It adds nothing except duplicate text, so it is worse than useless. |
People from Glossop | Poor | Restates title, but links to head article for clarification. However, the lack of bolding makes the link hard to spot |
People from Glossop | Good | Links to head article, and bolding makes the link prominent ... but where in the universe is Glossop? |
People from Glossop, a town in Derbyshire, England | Very good | Links to head article, bolding makes the link prominent, and the few extra words on the location will save readers from having to open up the article to get basic location info. |
People from Glossop, a market town in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, England. It had a population of 32,0000 in the 2001 census | Poor | 3 superfluous links distract the eye from the important one (i.e. Glossop), and the details on the census belong in the article. There is no ambiguity, so the district is probably superfluous. |
-- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Are we looking at wanting to deprecate Template:Cat main in favour of a simple sentence with the main article bolded and linked? I agree that wikilinking "insects" is overlinking, but that order should remain linked, because it is a technical use of a common word, which many readers won't be familiar with.
I considered whether a picture should be included. Pictures are pleasant to see, and can immediately clarify unusual topics. However, they consume height as you say, and a small picture of an insect says little more than the text "Plecoptera are ... insects". The same and other images are immediately obtainable by clicking on the main article link. I can also imagine disputes about what is the best, clearest or most inconic image, which is the sort of discussion that belongs in the article history and not in the history of a category page. So, I'm tending to agree that generally, images shoud be discouraged. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk)
After discussing this above, I think the place where I'm thinking that the "general" prohibitions suggested so far shouldn't apply would be in regards to concepts (that which one could not reach out and "touch").
Perhaps we should just have a "special case" section concerning concepts? - jc37 21:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Often on category pages there is {{ portal}} as well as an entry as a page and, if it exists, a portal subdirectory. Having a portal subdirectory is fine but having the page entry is redundant. It is also often "link clutter" around the all important eponymous article link. Examples: Category:Foods, Category:Environment. This is mainly applicable to cases here the portal and the category are the same name. -- Alan Liefting ( talk - contribs) 22:08, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This should probably be restarted, since a) it was worked up into a form that seems non-controversial, b) if it actually reflects standard practice, there won't be any difficulty getting an RfC at WT:MOS to adopt it as part of MoS (see how many MoS pages there already are), and c) because this stalled, matters have gotten worse, with all kinds of huge template-cruft atop categories now, and sometimes substantial content. Just the other day, I found an entire Wikipedia essay embedded in a category page (since moved to WP:Rouge editors). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:01, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
From the MOS: A maximum of 200 category entries are displayed per screen. To make navigating large categories easier, a table of contents can be used on the category page - e.g. {{ Category TOC}} displays a table of contents (Top, 0–9, A–Z).
We should consider updating this for {{
CatAutoTOC}}
—¿philoserf? (
talk) 22:09, 29 March 2020 (UTC)