Charles Matthews wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote
I specifically limited my
suggestion to the "list of X topics" lists, which rarely if ever
have any useful content or organization and are not used by readers
(in fact editors generally ignore them too, most have become woefully
incomplete) *and* was only talking about removing the blue links,
in the same way that one would remove entries from a wanted articles
page.
I maintain around 70 of those. There are about 7000 lists on WP, I believe:
so if I'm looking after 1%, that may not make much of an impression. Still,
I reject this sort of generalisation, quite radically.
It's true that the math lists you maintain have more structure than
a link farm, and I applaud that; those are the kinds of lists that
add value beyond what categories can do, and I think all WP lists
should do that sort of thing. But Google for '"list of" topics', and
you'll see that what you've been doing is the exception rather than
the rule. Look at their histories, and you'll see many have been
abandoned too.
Interestingly, of the more-structured topics lists, the primary
organizational scheme looks just like one would expect of a
subcategory structure. So even those are not adding more value
than would categories (modulo the related changes button).
Please note that I'm not saying to change everything today; it's
just that the availability of additional software support in the
form of categories opens up all kinds of possibilities, one of which
Magnus pointed out at the start of this thread, and we should be
thinking about creative ways to make use of the software, not fold
our arms and insist on doing everything the same old way.
Just as a small example, when I started throwing articles into
the "ship classes" category, a couple jumped out as inconsistently
named, a detail which had long been masked by redirs. It might have
been quite a while before anybody thought to make up a list of ship
classes, and noticed the redirs on it.
Stan