on 4/29/07 4:58 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
FWIW, I'm unconvinced we do that badly at this. (And I'm actually a recent convert - playing around with Catfishing has made me suspect that the categories are better organized than I'd previously assumed)
(.........)
The problem, as I see it, is primarily implementation - the fact that categories are attributes of articles, and so every category must appear on the article. To my mind, categories are most preferable as replacements for the old "list of X" articles - navigational tools that work well on their own. But instead they're enormously difficult to change, requiring editing of hundreds of articles for a large category.
If categories could be moved to their own, independent existence and if a decent interface for the article side of things could be devised we'd have something that is very close to a useful system.
Your chief complaint with the system appears to be the type and number of Categories that exist. Small wonder! Anyone who can edit can create a new Category!
My complaint is a little different: Those who would prohibit placing Main and Sub Categories in the same article.
In any case, as I have said many times before, the problems with the Category system in WP cannot be addressed with a goal of fixing it until their is a general agreement that it is, indeed, broken.
Please, I'm trying to swear off this stuff :-)
Marc