php-deluxe.net - description Categorization Archive 1

Categorization/Archive 1

=Wheeee!=

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. -- 17:35, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

:Mediawiki boxes were *never* supposed to be used as a substitute for categorization (which has been in the works for quite a while now)- people went a bit overboard with them. That s why the first thing I did was start this page, so we can control the phenomenon. 17:55, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

::Well, thanks Raul, that puts a whole new light on things. I will now want look into contributing (i.e., starting a new category). -- 18:20, 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 -- 18:32, May 30, 2004 (UTC) :Forget it. -- 18:36, 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 -- 23:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) :I think you ve confused bugs in the Monobook skin with bugs in the category system. Lots of people hate Monobook. Hopefully, it ll be fixed soon. I agree that MonoBook wasn t really ready for production use. -- 23:54, 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 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 06:45, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

:What I don t like is the text opposite the Other names heading appearing over the horizontal line in the monobook skin, and I don t know to correct that at the mo. - 14:41, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC) ::Now that I have enabled Show table of contents in Preferences , this seems to have cured that problem. - 00:35, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

= Real world example of categorisation =

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

or any other ideas // 22:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

:You can do both at the same time. One subcategory can belong to several categories. 00:32, May 31, 2004 (UTC)

:To be more explicit about it (remember to prefer lowercase for titles...

/--Physics HoG, (other country) PMs -> HoG and HoS. 04:28, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

::I agree it is silly to create categories that are too finite to be of use. Where a grouping is finite (ie. you can create a list, such as UK Prime Ministers, American Presidents, etc) then that list should reside on a list page and the members should be put in a category(ies) appropriate to the overall category that they are in. Lists to find, categories to browse. -- 14:46, 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). 05:28, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

:Really -- Joe in Canada

=More sophisticated relations=

OK, we have . 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 , you d get a list of Stephen King s books. This is clearly not very useful.

Now, the books needn t be under 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 . 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 18:13, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

:Yeah, I see the problem. Either we can assume that members of a sub-category are also members of its super-category -- in which case , since the fact that he s an author doesn t guarantee that he s a person. Similar problems are everywhere. What s to do

:One possible solution would be to have a related categories section, separate from a sub categories section. 18:33, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

::That would work. Additionally it might be good to have a way of linking from say, 20:22, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

:::Check out ScudLee s diagram further up this page at 23:43, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

::::Yes, that was my point. BTW, it s 00:31, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why should 20:36, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

:Part of this is a naming issue. Only 4 things fall into the category The Beatles , while many things fall into the category Things related to the Beatles . Also, sometimes the category seems to relate to the subject the article is about; other times to the article itself, which may be a distinction worth acknowledging in some way. --

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 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)

:On the other hand, I think there s a good case to be made for a more bottom-up approach; let s take a look at how things are being categorized, and try to find the patterns in that. It s more the Wikipedia way, too. For example, I ve noticed that there are a lot of categories that are non-plural, such as 05:25, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)