Erik Moeller wrote:
Ray-
Not checkboxes, which would indeed require so many that they would become rigid and/or useless. I would propose searchable write-in boxes where words and/or codes could be entered.
This sounds a lot like my proposed [[Category:Foo]] scheme, only that you want codes instead of words for the categories. My scheme has the advantage that it can be built very easily on top of the existing data structures, with no extra input fields or changes to RC required.
With this scheme, you would have
[[Category:Sex]] [[Category:Sexually explicit]] or [[Category:Religion]] or [[Category:Music]]
and meta-categories:
[[Category:Stub]] or [[Category:Delete]] or [[Category:NPOV dispute]]
each of these category pages would be editable, but always automatically include a sorted list of the pages that link to the category ("what links here"). It would also be nice if a text could be configured for each category that is displayed on pages that are part of it, e.g.
[[Category:Stub]] -> This article is a stub article ...
I think there is much in common between the two ideas, at least in terms of what we want the two visions would accomplish. I think there is probably a lot of room for reconciling the two. I'd need to give more thought to the way it might be done. I can give a few preliminary observations. 1. Codes or words? Use both, but have a way of distinguishing which is being uses, e.g. it is a word if the second character is in lower case. We would still need to find a way of accomodating the "NPOV" example above. 2. Does "category page" mean a whole separate page? If it is, isn't a category box the same thing, only much tinier, and without the need to write the word "category" every time? Some articles will belong to several categories.
Anyway, I'm sure there will be more to say on this. Ec