On 12/12/06, Parker Peters onmywayoutster@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Here are some examples, my main argument and a proposal:
When I began contributing to Wikipedia, there was a Category ³Suicides². If a person¹s article stated they committed suicide, the category,
³Suicides²
would be included. If this person had committed suicide by using a firearm, the Category, ³Suicides by firearm² would be also be included. In this case the Category, ³Deaths by firearm² would also be included. In this way,
the
researcher can call up, individually, all persons in the encyclopedia
who
had committed suicide. Then, if they chose, they could also call up separate lists of those who committed suicide by firearm, and a separate list of all persons who died by firearm. This was wonderful for the researcher.
And yes, this makes sense.
We've had other writers pulling the same nonsense in other topics in the past: fictional vampires listed as fictional vampires but not mythological creatures, articles regarding aspects and criticism of the Koran being included in the Koran category but with editors insisting that including it in the "Islam" category as well being redundant, various grades of conspiracy theory put into one group but not another, and so on.
A square is a rectangle, is also a regular polyhedron, is also a polyhedron, and so on, and each of these categories applies in its own way. I think the same thing is true for categories, the more categories something is listed under (as long as they are relevant), the better and redundancy (the idea that one category's listings are also completely encompassed by another) is not a bad thing, it only indicates a tighter degree of search.
Articles should only belong to the most specific of categories in which they can belong. The goals of categorization are different from the goals of flat interlinking.