Hi!
Maybe the problem with categories is not that bad in en.wikipedia, but as far as I can see its pretty chaotic there, too. I wrote this having in mind the attemts in de.wikipedia - my main reasons are true in every language.
Since Version 1.3 of MediaWiki we have the nice category function. In the german wikipedia there is a lot of confusion and struggle on how to use categories in the right way. As a student of library science I could tell several methods how to classify, index and sort things but none of them seems to be applicable easily with the current implementation of categories.
As far as I can tell there are three main reasons for Wikipedia's success:
1. It's very easy to contribute (Wikitax, everybody can edit) 2. Every edit is monitored in watchlists and list of lasts edits so we can control each other 3. There is a clear common mission - to create an encyclopedia (+NPOV)
As far as I also can see the category-function contradicts all of them:
1. It's not easy.
It's not easy to know how to do it in the right way because subject indexing is a complex issue and it's not easy because of lacks in the implementation (no rename, no redirects, no assignment of articles to categories without editing every single the article pages). Editing an article I have to guess which categories are existing, how they are spelled and the rules what to classify into them and what not.
2. It's not controllable.
You cannot watch a category to get noticed on new articles or when somebody removes an article from the category nor when sub-categories are created.
3. There is no common mission
Can anybody tell the purpose of categories? Finding articles (without a coordinated search function?!) Browsing in topics (without a clear overview of all categories?!) Are we trying to index articles with subject heading, using a thesaurus, a classification or even a structure ontology? Library science has invented several kind of schemes like that but at the moment everybody is muddling this and that trying to invent the already invented wheels of documentation (by the way there are also methods of automatic indexing, clustering and classification).
And: In classification there is no NPOV because there is no "right" way to classify the world but it depends on the special needs and questions I want to answer with a special system of subject indexing.
Given the reasons I strongly recommend to stop using the categories and to focus on writing and improving good articles. Many categories can easily be replaced with normal links between articles. Adding and removing categories do not change an article's content a bit. If you want to keep track of all articles in some area use (Wiki)Projects, article series, portals and learn how to use the "what links here"-function! A good article is an article that can be found easily without categories.
Indeed classifying wikipedia articles is very interesting and will become more important, but this should be an independent project - maybe in a "Classifipedia" or "Categorypedia" that links to wikipedia articles.
You know - librarians normally do not write the books they organize and search engine experts do not write the websites they crawl, so let's focus on what we can do the best: creating the most detailed, most understandable and freest encyclopedia in the history of mankind!
Greetings, Jakob Voss (aka nichtich@de.wikipedia)
I agree wholeheartedly with what Jakob says (although it seems many people don't like the idea of someone rejecting their new toy). Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Melbourne_trams or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Viennese_composers can serve as eye-openers: In each case, the "category" itself is rather pointless, and the entries are dubious. What is more, no one seems to be discussing this anywhere.
All the best,
KF
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jakob" jakob.voss@s1999.tu-chemnitz.de To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 1:24 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories considered harmful
Hi!
Maybe the problem with categories is not that bad in en.wikipedia, but as
far as
I can see its pretty chaotic there, too. I wrote this having in mind the
attemts
in de.wikipedia - my main reasons are true in every language.
Since Version 1.3 of MediaWiki we have the nice category function. In the german wikipedia there is a lot of confusion and struggle on how to use categories in the right way. As a student of library science I could tell several methods how to classify, index and sort things but none of them seems to be applicable easily with the current implementation of
categories.
As far as I can tell there are three main reasons for Wikipedia's success:
- It's very easy to contribute (Wikitax, everybody can edit)
- Every edit is monitored in watchlists and list of lasts edits so we can control each other
- There is a clear common mission - to create an encyclopedia (+NPOV)
As far as I also can see the category-function contradicts all of them:
- It's not easy.
It's not easy to know how to do it in the right way because subject indexing is a complex issue and it's not easy because of lacks in the implementation (no rename, no redirects, no assignment of articles to categories without editing every single the article pages). Editing an article I have to guess which categories are existing, how they are spelled and the rules what to classify into them and what not.
- It's not controllable.
You cannot watch a category to get noticed on new articles or when somebody removes an article from the category nor when sub-categories are created.
- There is no common mission
Can anybody tell the purpose of categories? Finding articles (without a coordinated search function?!) Browsing in topics (without a clear overview of all categories?!) Are we trying to index articles with subject heading, using a thesaurus, a classification or even a structure ontology? Library science has invented several kind of schemes like that but at the moment everybody is muddling this and that trying to invent the already invented wheels of documentation (by the way there are also methods of automatic indexing, clustering and classification).
And: In classification there is no NPOV because there is no "right" way to classify the world but it depends on the special needs and questions I want to answer with a special system of subject indexing.
Given the reasons I strongly recommend to stop using the categories and to focus on writing and improving good articles. Many categories can
easily
be replaced with normal links between articles. Adding and removing categories do not change an article's content a bit. If you want to keep track of all articles in some area use (Wiki)Projects, article series, portals and learn how to use the "what links here"-function! A good article is an article that can be found easily without categories.
Indeed classifying wikipedia articles is very interesting and will become more important, but this should be an independent project - maybe in a "Classifipedia" or "Categorypedia" that links to wikipedia articles.
You know - librarians normally do not write the books they organize and search engine experts do not write the websites they crawl, so let's focus on what we can do the best: creating the most detailed, most
understandable
and freest encyclopedia in the history of mankind!
Greetings, Jakob Voss (aka nichtich@de.wikipedia)
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
K Forstner wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with what Jakob says (although it seems many people don't like the idea of someone rejecting their new toy). Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Melbourne_trams or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Viennese_composers can serve as eye-openers: In each case, the "category" itself is rather pointless, and the entries are dubious. What is more, no one seems to be discussing this anywhere.
How old is the category feature? About a few months?
I wonder what Wikipedia looked like when it was merely a few months old. Imagine people back then had shaken their heads and gone, "This is totally rubbish! It's pointless, nothing will ever become of this. Let's stop this project right here."
It's amazing how people expect perfection from the start. Guys! This is a wiki! It's a work-in-progress, and guess what, thousands of people are actually working on it. Good wine takes time.
Also, this is the English mailing list, so we're talking about the English Wikipedia. This is NOT de. We don't consider stubs harmful. We don't consider redirects harmful. We don't arbitrarily reject obscure topics. We don't go on a rampage deleting stuff we don't like at first. We give it a chance to grow and prove itself! Why should we consider categories harmful when they haven't even been around for long enough to say anything about them?
Time will tell. Deletion won't.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
K Forstner wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with what Jakob says (although it seems many people don't like the idea of someone rejecting their new toy). Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Melbourne_trams or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Viennese_composers can serve as eye-openers: In each case, the "category" itself is rather pointless, and the entries are dubious. What is more, no one seems to be discussing this anywhere.
How old is the category feature? About a few months?
Heh, I think it's just three weeks old as of today. As features go, categories have been adopted remarkably rapidly - just compare tables and images, most of which are still in the old formats.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Timwi wrote:
K Forstner wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly with what Jakob says (although it seems many people don't like the idea of someone rejecting their new toy). Maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Writers , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Melbourne_trams or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Viennese_composers can serve as eye-openers: In each case, the "category" itself is rather pointless, and the entries are dubious. What is more, no one seems to be discussing this anywhere.
How old is the category feature? About a few months?
Heh, I think it's just three weeks old as of today. As features go, categories have been adopted remarkably rapidly - just compare tables and images, most of which are still in the old formats.
For sure! Considering that the debate about whether or not to have categories lasted for a year. During that time there was very little in that discussion about how the categories would be chosen. So even if many of these categories are different from the ones that I would use, the system as a whole is on track.
Ec
On 06/21/04 23:57, Stan Shebs wrote:
Timwi wrote:
How old is the category feature? About a few months?
Heh, I think it's just three weeks old as of today. As features go, categories have been adopted remarkably rapidly - just compare tables and images, most of which are still in the old formats.
Anything to kill off those accursed article boxes.
- d.
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:21:15 +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 06/21/04 23:57, Stan Shebs wrote: Anything to kill off those accursed article boxes.
Anything? How about "different article boxes"?
I like them. *shrugs*
(I've even restored one to a series of pages where an editor had removed the article box after categorising the pages.)
Cheers, Philip
Philip Newton wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:21:15 +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 06/21/04 23:57, Stan Shebs wrote: Anything to kill off those accursed article boxes.
Anything? How about "different article boxes"?
I like them. *shrugs*
In case there's any confusion, I'm OK with article boxes, it's David Gerard who hates 'em. :-)
Stan