Compare it to the weaknesses of the current category
system. 98% of editors don't know what they are doing. >Categories and
subcategories are applied inconsistently all the time. Nobody has an overview of the
entire tree >structure, or even a major branch of it.
And would this be any less truer of tags?
Something that is a subcategory of American novelists
today may stop being one tomorrow, just by dint of a single >edit, and no one would be
the wiser (unless they keep hundreds of categories on their watchlist). The category
>tree (or weave, as categories can have several parents) changes daily, with categories
created, renamed, >recategorised, and deleted. There are incessant arguments about how
to name, categorise and diffuse categories, >and about perceived iniquities.[citation
needed]
In all the years I’ve been on Wikipedia I think I’ve only once been involved in any
dispute over a category’s existence where I didn’t agree (and still don’t) with the
outcome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_A…
(I suppose it’s only coincidental here that the category in question was mostly populated
by articles about women). Indeed, I find it interesting that WP:LEW includes only one
example from the category namespace, with everything else very well represented.
Using a defined set of basic tags in combination with
something like CatScan – ported across to the Foundation >server if you like, and given
a friendly front-end with shortcuts to the most common searches – would do away >with
that.
Without really solving the underlying problem, IMO, and making it harder to
fix when it recurs.