Folks,
I'm angry right now, so I very probably should not post to the List until I cool off; but my emotions are overriding my good senses at the moment - so here goes.
It concerns what has been a pet peeve of mine almost from the beginning of my work with the encyclopedia: CATEGORIES!
I do a fair amount of research in my work, and one of the things that attracted me to WP in the first place was the Category feature. If I were doing research on, say, Accidental Deaths, or Suicides, or Cancer Deaths (to name just three) I could select on these Categories and, bingo, I would have an entire wealth of documented cases of persons with these characteristics. NOW, the Category Police have so diluted this process with trillions of subcategories, e.g., Persons who died accidentally on a train while traveling from Newark to Tampa ;-) - that the whole Category system has become worthless to serious researchers. This, in itself, would not be a problem, but to add the greatest injury of all, each person included in this subcategory has been removed from the main one. So to see all cases of Accidental deaths in the encyclopedia I have to go to each subcategory, print the lists and collate them myself. Agghh!
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't even look at the bottom of an Article.
There, I feel better now :-) Thanks for your ear.
Marc Riddell
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Folks,
I'm angry right now, so I very probably should not post to the List until I cool off; but my emotions are overriding my good senses at the moment - so here goes.
It concerns what has been a pet peeve of mine almost from the beginning of my work with the encyclopedia: CATEGORIES!
I do a fair amount of research in my work, and one of the things that attracted me to WP in the first place was the Category feature. If I were doing research on, say, Accidental Deaths, or Suicides, or Cancer Deaths (to name just three) I could select on these Categories and, bingo, I would have an entire wealth of documented cases of persons with these characteristics. NOW, the Category Police have so diluted this process with trillions of subcategories, e.g., Persons who died accidentally on a train while traveling from Newark to Tampa ;-) - that the whole Category system has become worthless to serious researchers. This, in itself, would not be a problem, but to add the greatest injury of all, each person included in this subcategory has been removed from the main one. So to see all cases of Accidental deaths in the encyclopedia I have to go to each subcategory, print the lists and collate them myself. Agghh!
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't even look at the bottom of an Article.
There, I feel better now :-) Thanks for your ear.
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it. Apparently, the same person is not allowed to appear in the main category if they're also in a subcategory. So people's names are removed from "Accidental deaths" and placed instead in the subcat "deaths while falling from a ladder at lunchtime in Solihull." It has been explained a thousand times that these micro categories, plus the no-repeated-names rule, wipe out the point of having categories in the first place, but there is a small but determined group in charge of categories, and there's no reasoning with them.
Sarah
On 4/9/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Folks,
I'm angry right now, so I very probably should not post to the List
until I
cool off; but my emotions are overriding my good senses at the moment -
so
here goes.
It concerns what has been a pet peeve of mine almost from the beginning
of
my work with the encyclopedia: CATEGORIES!
I do a fair amount of research in my work, and one of the things that attracted me to WP in the first place was the Category feature. If I
were
doing research on, say, Accidental Deaths, or Suicides, or Cancer Deaths
(to
name just three) I could select on these Categories and, bingo, I would
have
an entire wealth of documented cases of persons with these
characteristics.
NOW, the Category Police have so diluted this process with trillions of subcategories, e.g., Persons who died accidentally on a train while traveling from Newark to Tampa ;-) - that the whole Category system has become worthless to serious researchers. This, in itself, would not be a problem, but to add the greatest injury of all, each person included in
this
subcategory has been removed from the main one. So to see all cases of Accidental deaths in the encyclopedia I have to go to each subcategory, print the lists and collate them myself. Agghh!
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I
won't
even look at the bottom of an Article.
There, I feel better now :-) Thanks for your ear.
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it. Apparently, the same person is not allowed to appear in the main category if they're also in a subcategory. So people's names are removed from "Accidental deaths" and placed instead in the subcat "deaths while falling from a ladder at lunchtime in Solihull." It has been explained a thousand times that these micro categories, plus the no-repeated-names rule, wipe out the point of having categories in the first place, but there is a small but determined group in charge of categories, and there's no reasoning with them.
Sarah
I agree with Marc and Sarah. I have had problems with people insisting that country-level categories MUST remain empty of all but the main country article, and people who create two-level deep subcategories, just to insert one single article. And if you try to argue with them, they say that all categories have that format, so that's just the way it has to be.
Ian
On 4/9/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it. Apparently, the same person is not allowed to appear in the main category if they're also in a subcategory. So people's names are removed from "Accidental deaths" and placed instead in the subcat "deaths while falling from a ladder at lunchtime in Solihull." It has been explained a thousand times that these micro categories, plus the no-repeated-names rule, wipe out the point of having categories in the first place, but there is a small but determined group in charge of categories, and there's no reasoning with them.
I believe the way categorization has been done on enwiki is with the assumption that sooner rather than later, a feature that makes subcategorized articles automagically appear in the supercategory as well will be implemented.
Unfortunately, I see no momentum to do this - and furthermore, because it doesn't work that way right now, people are already doing things with a category tree that would make it nonsensical anyway.
One sometimes-unfortunate trait in Wikipedia is that things are done a certain way because the people obsessive enough to do the micro-management of things like categorization want it that way, regardless of what the overall editor population or indeed the reader population would actually prefer. This is the Wikipedia-specific version of something all too often seen in free software; most free software works the way people who know enough to write that program want it to work, not necessarily the way that people who just want to use the software would like it to work.
-Matt
-Matt
On 09/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I believe the way categorization has been done on enwiki is with the assumption that sooner rather than later, a feature that makes subcategorized articles automagically appear in the supercategory as well will be implemented.
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
- d.
on 4/9/07 6:47 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
I'm not sure what you mean here; please explain a little more, David.
Marc
On 09/04/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 6:47 PM, David Gerard at dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
I'm not sure what you mean here; please explain a little more, David.
Tags, like on FlickR, blog posts and so forth. So rather than [[Category:Left-handed Jewish Chinese lesbian computer scientists]], you'd have "left-handed", "Jewish", "Chinese", "lesbian" and "computer scientist" applied separately. The whole point being to be able to query the intersections between tags.
That bit's the hard part - getting complicated tag queries not to cripple the database. (And you can bet people will do the most complicated queries imaginable the moment they can.) I'm not sure how close the work is to being fit to release onto the live servers without crippling the database, but I do know that's the direction it's going in.
- d.
On 4/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
I think that's largely a good idea and I hope it gets done. Tags are understood by most of the user population, I suspect, since they have already been exposed to them via places such as flickr, del.icio.us and others. They are less structured, of course, but structure requires agreement beyond that which is easy to obtain on enwiki.
If the software got smart (and the technology isn't patented, naturally) something like flickr's 'tag clusters' might be a neat idea as well.
-Matt
on 4/9/07 7:05 PM, Matthew Brown at morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
I think that's largely a good idea and I hope it gets done. Tags are understood by most of the user population, I suspect, since they have already been exposed to them via places such as flickr, del.icio.us and others. They are less structured, of course, but structure requires agreement beyond that which is easy to obtain on enwiki.
If the software got smart (and the technology isn't patented, naturally) something like flickr's 'tag clusters' might be a neat idea as well.
Ok, humor this computer-language challenged person: what the hell is a "tag"?
Marc
Tags are user-generated categories, sort of. You can tag the "Oak" artlcle with "tree" and "wood" in a little text box somewhere on the page, and if the "wood" tag doesn't already exist, it'll be created on the fly. Tags aren't as strict as categories (you can make spelling errors, for example, or taxonomic ones), which makes them good for wikipedia.
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 7:05 PM, Matthew Brown at morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/9/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
I think that's largely a good idea and I hope it gets done. Tags are understood by most of the user population, I suspect, since they have already been exposed to them via places such as flickr, del.icio.us and others. They are less structured, of course, but structure requires agreement beyond that which is easy to obtain on enwiki.
If the software got smart (and the technology isn't patented, naturally) something like flickr's 'tag clusters' might be a neat idea as well.
Ok, humor this computer-language challenged person: what the hell is a "tag"?
Marc
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
----- Original Message ----- From: Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com
Tags are user-generated categories, sort of. You can tag the "Oak" artlcle with "tree" and "wood" in a little text box somewhere on the page, and if the "wood" tag doesn't already exist, it'll be created on the fly. Tags aren't as strict as categories (you can make spelling errors, for example, or taxonomic ones), which makes them good for wikipedia.
So if I tell Wikipedia to show me all the articles about wood, would it also show me the "tree" articles that an editor forgot to also explicitly add the "wood" tag too? If I tag an article "treee" there won't be a redlink to warn me I've accidentally created an orphan tag? Would an article about a school need to be tagged with city, county, state, country and continent tags independantly, and will all of these tags be displayed in a big lump on the article's page?
I really like the way categories currently work, and I suspect that to get them into this state project-wide it would take more than just a handful of obsessive loons. What I think would be a great addition to categories would be a way to specify explicitly whether a subcategory is meant to be a collection of the same things as fit in the supercategory or if it's just related in a more generic way (eg, [[cat:cities in California]] is a collection of things that also belong in [[cat:cities in the United States]], but the things in [[cat:San Francisco]] do not themselves belong in [[cat:cities in California]]). If this were possible on a software level then an auto-aggregating function would be much less likely to get confused.
On 4/10/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
So if I tell Wikipedia to show me all the articles about wood, would it also show me the "tree" articles that an editor forgot to also explicitly add the "wood" tag too? If I tag an article "treee" there won't be a redlink to warn me I've accidentally created an orphan tag? Would an article about a school need to be tagged with city, county, state, country and continent tags independantly, and will all of these tags be displayed in a big lump on the article's page?
These questions are all implementation specific. No one has proposed a specific implementation of tags in MediaWiki as opposed to categories. The semantic distinction between a tag ("a word that is relevant to some entity") and a category ("a specific class of entities of which this subject is one example") is more important.
I really like the way categories currently work, and I suspect that to get them into this state project-wide it would take more than just a handful of obsessive loons. What I think would be a great addition to categories would be a way to specify explicitly whether a subcategory is meant to be a collection of the same things as fit in the supercategory or if it's just related in a more generic way (eg, [[cat:cities in California]] is a collection of things that also belong in [[cat:cities in the United States]], but the things in [[cat:San Francisco]] do not themselves belong in [[cat:cities in California]]). If this were possible on a software level then an auto-aggregating function would be much less likely to get confused.
Yes, I have been arguing for such a distinction for quite a while, but I don't have a vision for exactly what it would look like. We analysed different kinds of categories in some depth maybe 6 months ago, but there were little grey areas everywhere. Maybe instead of trying to solve all the problems of categories in one hit, we do just need a simple tag which says "It is ok to treat this category as a strict taxonomy", so that all members of all subcategories have equal weight in it.
But you would probably still have problems with members that didn't strictly belong, like the "main article" for each category.
Anyone want to request a specific feature, like a __INCLUDESUBCATS__ tag for categories?
Steve
On 4/10/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Ok, humor this computer-language challenged person: what the hell is a "tag"?
I don't know if there is a precise definition of a tag or a category, but basically "tags" are more free-form. On a photo-sharing site, you might tag a picture of person riding a donkey in the middle of new york with tags like "donkey", "new york", "wtf", "dangerous", "traffic" etc. The idea is to make it easy to find images which are in some way "similar" to this one. No one really defines the tags in advance: they're just words that you could associate with the image, and there's no precise definition of each tag.
Our categories are generally more rigid: people organise them, create hierarchies, and define rules for them: "elephants" should only contain real elephants, not stuffed toys in the shape of elephants. Famous elephants should be in "famous elephants", which is a subcategory of "elephants". It's a good system in theory, but has several problems, one of which is the lack of software support for retrieving a list of all the items of a category and its subcategories. And of course, there's nothing stopping subcategories including the parent category, causing a loop.
Another major problem is that cases like yours ("accidental deaths") aren't really categories at all, they're attributes. Harold Holt was a former Australian prime minister. He *wasn't* an accidental death. He *had* an accidental death. It's an interesting attribute, and perhaps worth searching for, but somehow it would be nice to be able to distinguish the real categories from the attributes.
Steve
on 4/9/07 7:45 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Another major problem is that cases like yours ("accidental deaths") aren't really categories at all, they're attributes. Harold Holt was a former Australian prime minister. He *wasn't* an accidental death. He *had* an accidental death. It's an interesting attribute, and perhaps worth searching for, but somehow it would be nice to be able to distinguish the real categories from the attributes.
But is this distinction really necessary? If I am wanting to have a list of all persons who died as a result of an accident, inserting the Category "Accidental deaths" in this case would accomplish that.
Marc
On 11/04/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 7:45 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Another major problem is that cases like yours ("accidental deaths") aren't really categories at all, they're attributes. Harold Holt was a former Australian prime minister. He *wasn't* an accidental death. He *had* an accidental death. It's an interesting attribute, and perhaps worth searching for, but somehow it would be nice to be able to distinguish the real categories from the attributes.
But is this distinction really necessary? If I am wanting to have a list of all persons who died as a result of an accident, inserting the Category "Accidental deaths" in this case would accomplish that.
Yes, but at the price of meaning you have to wade through potentially hundreds of category entries on a major biographical article to find the one you want.
On 11/04/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
But is this distinction really necessary? If I am wanting to have a list of all persons who died as a result of an accident, inserting the Category "Accidental deaths" in this case would accomplish that.
Yes, but at the price of meaning you have to wade through potentially hundreds of category entries on a major biographical article to find the one you want.
Sorry, that was an entirely different reply, meant for another post! Please ignore...
on 4/11/07 1:45 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, but at the price of meaning you have to wade through potentially hundreds of category entries on a major biographical article to find the one you want.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. If you mean going through a list of categories on a single Article: If they are alphabetized (as they should be) no problem.
But I am not looking for a specific person, but a list of persons who share the same characteristic (category). I can save this list and then explore the individual cases.
I hope I'm clear here.
Marc
On 4/11/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
But is this distinction really necessary? If I am wanting to have a list of all persons who died as a result of an accident, inserting the Category "Accidental deaths" in this case would accomplish that.
The distinction is necessary inasmuch as the word "category" is useful. And to avoid the ridiculous category clutter you get on some articles:
Categories: Semi-protected | Articles with unsourced statements since March 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | George W. Bush | Presidents of the United States | Current national leaders | Governors of Texas | United States Air Force officers | Republican Party (United States) presidential nominees | History of the United States (1988āpresent) | Intelligent design advocates | Texas Republicans | Time magazine Persons of the Year | Christian fundamentalism | Ranchers | Harvard Business School alumni | Yale University alumni | Bonesmen | Americans with Huguenot ancestry | American Methodists | Methodist politicians | People from New Haven, Connecticut | People from Midland, Texas | Bush family | Children of Presidents of the United States | 1946 births | Living people | Unsuccessful U.S. House of Representatives candidates | 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
Steve
On 4/11/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Categories: Semi-protected | Articles with unsourced statements since March 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | George W. Bush | Presidents of the United States | Current national leaders | Governors of Texas | United States Air Force officers | Republican Party (United States) presidential nominees | History of the United States (1988āpresent) | Intelligent design advocates | Texas Republicans | Time magazine Persons of the Year | Christian fundamentalism | Ranchers | Harvard Business School alumni | Yale University alumni | Bonesmen | Americans with Huguenot ancestry | American Methodists | Methodist politicians | People from New Haven, Connecticut | People from Midland, Texas | Bush family | Children of Presidents of the United States | 1946 births | Living people | Unsuccessful U.S. House of Representatives candidates | 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
Steve
I know nothing about the technology, but perhaps collapsed/collapsible categories might be useful, as are seen in some templates...
~~~~
Hi David, All,
Von: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
But in that case, the en-style composite categorization doesn't make sense at all.
Instead of "German 19th century composer" the man should have three tags "German", "19th century", and "composer". Or do you mean this splitting by saying "switched sideways".
Regards, Peter
On 10/04/07, Peter Jacobi peter_jacobi@gmx.net wrote:
Von: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
What is more likely to happen - and has momentum - is that categories will become more like tags. At this point, expect this vast hierarchy of category trees to get switched sideways.
But in that case, the en-style composite categorization doesn't make sense at all. Instead of "German 19th century composer" the man should have three tags "German", "19th century", and "composer". Or do you mean this splitting by saying "switched sideways".
Yes, I was speaking with great imprecision :-)
- d.
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Folks,
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't even look at the bottom of an Article.
on 4/9/07 5:40 PM, Slim Virgin at slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it.
And, now, so have I! I have re-taken the pledge, entered rehab., and will not emerge again until completely detoxed from the Category drug.
The last straw came today when I discovered that the Category Police have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to subcategorize "Deaths from cardiovascular disease" into the multiple subtypes of cardiovascular disease!!!!!
Enough!
Marc Riddell
Marc, All,
Just for torturing Marc Riddell a bit more...
Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
The last straw came today when I discovered that the Category Police have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to subcategorize "Deaths from cardiovascular disease" into the multiple subtypes of cardiovascular disease!!!!!
There aren't only the too specific ones, the everything-is- connected-to-everything faction also supplies strange broad ones:
[[Category:Systems]]
Regards, Peter
Marc Riddell wrote:
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell wrote:
Folks,
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't even look at the bottom of an Article.
on 4/9/07 5:40 PM, Slim Virgin at slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it.
And, now, so have I! I have re-taken the pledge, entered rehab., and will not emerge again until completely detoxed from the Category drug.
The last straw came today when I discovered that the Category Police have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to subcategorize "Deaths from cardiovascular disease" into the multiple subtypes of cardiovascular disease!!!!!
Hmmm! I suspect that this kind of frustration os consistent with the developping symptoms of Wikiholism. :-)
Ec
Marc Riddell wrote:
On 4/9/07, Marc Riddell wrote:
Folks,
I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't even look at the bottom of an Article.
on 4/9/07 5:40 PM, Slim Virgin at slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Marc, I couldn't agree more but I've given up arguing about it.
And, now, so have I! I have re-taken the pledge, entered rehab., and will not emerge again until completely detoxed from the Category drug.
The last straw came today when I discovered that the Category Police have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to subcategorize "Deaths from cardiovascular disease" into the multiple subtypes of cardiovascular disease!!!!!
on 4/13/07 5:51 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Hmmm! I suspect that this kind of frustration os consistent with the developping symptoms of Wikiholism. :-)
Leave me alone. I'm still in rehab., languishing in my denial, and giving my therapist one hell of a hard time (hee hee hee) ;-)
:-)
Marc
This is a mediawiki problem, not a wikipedia problem. Just wait until the categories feature is made a little more sophisticated, and it will all be fine.
On 4/10/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
This is a mediawiki problem, not a wikipedia problem. Just wait until the categories feature is made a little more sophisticated, and it will all be fine.
Wait? Is anyone even working on it? Has anyone even requested anything? Do we know what we want?
Steve
on 4/9/07 7:43 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
This is a mediawiki problem, not a wikipedia problem. Just wait until the categories feature is made a little more sophisticated, and it will all be fine.
Whomever the problem belongs to, this is far too important an issue to wait.
Actually, this appears to be very much a policy problem. The "policies" governing Categories has changed drastically just in the last year.
I challenge the person or persons responsible for advocating and implementing these policy changes, to post to this List their reasons and rationalizations for promoting such changes.
Time to get to the root of it.
Marc Riddell
On 4/10/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I challenge the person or persons responsible for advocating and implementing these policy changes, to post to this List their reasons and rationalizations for promoting such changes.
Um, what changes? If anything, it's probably a bunch of little changes caused by different people. I doubt very much that there's a single person who inflict a set of changes on the rest of us with some clear purpose behind it all that they haven't explained.
Steve
on 4/9/07 8:12 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Um, what changes? If anything, it's probably a bunch of little changes caused by different people. I doubt very much that there's a single person who inflict a set of changes on the rest of us with some clear purpose behind it all that they haven't explained.
Steve,
I've been through this enough to be frustrated with it.
The reality is: In an Article about a person who died from lung cancer; if I would add both the Categories "Cancer deaths" & "Lung cancer deaths" - someone would come along very quickly and delete the main Cancer death Category. If I go back and re-enter the Cancer death Category - the same thing would happen. Options: engage in an editing war, or give up in frustration. I choose the latter. This is happening every day!
Marc
On 4/10/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 8:12 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Um, what changes? If anything, it's probably a bunch of little changes caused by different people. I doubt very much that there's a single person who inflict a set of changes on the rest of us with some clear purpose behind it all that they haven't explained.
Steve,
I've been through this enough to be frustrated with it.
The reality is: In an Article about a person who died from lung cancer; if I would add both the Categories "Cancer deaths" & "Lung cancer deaths" - someone would come along very quickly and delete the main Cancer death Category. If I go back and re-enter the Cancer death Category - the same thing would happen. Options: engage in an editing war, or give up in frustration. I choose the latter. This is happening every day!
I agree with Thomas Dalton -- this is largely an issue about software features and tools to explore the relationship between categories and subcategories. It may be frustrating not being able to browse them easily right now, but fundamentally it's likely the right way to do it. Perhaps the harder question is how to get it listed as a priority for Mediawiki development.
For an example of what can be done with categories, see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree
I'd say tags are not an accurate (or desirable) way to describe the category feature. Categories are much more like traditional taxonomy -- they are a controlled vocabulary with hierarchical relationships. Tags are uncontrolled and flat.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 4/9/07, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 8:12 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Um, what changes? If anything, it's probably a bunch of little changes caused by different people. I doubt very much that there's a single person who inflict a set of changes on the rest of us with some clear purpose behind it all that they haven't explained.
Steve,
I've been through this enough to be frustrated with it.
The reality is: In an Article about a person who died from lung cancer; if I would add both the Categories "Cancer deaths" & "Lung cancer deaths" - someone would come along very quickly and delete the main Cancer death Category. If I go back and re-enter the Cancer death Category - the same thing would happen. Options: engage in an editing war, or give up in frustration. I choose the latter. This is happening every day!
I agree with Thomas Dalton -- this is largely an issue about software features and tools to explore the relationship between categories and subcategories. It may be frustrating not being able to browse them easily right now, but fundamentally it's likely the right way to do it. Perhaps the harder question is how to get it listed as a priority for Mediawiki development.
For an example of what can be done with categories, see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree
I'd say tags are not an accurate (or desirable) way to describe the category feature. Categories are much more like traditional taxonomy -- they are a controlled vocabulary with hierarchical relationships. Tags are uncontrolled and flat.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I'd almost think that what we want is to change default category display. If we have "Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", it would be nice if instead of a pile of category stuff at the bottom, we just had one line per category with the bottom category, intermediate ones, and top one listed per line. So one line with "Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", all appropriately hotlinked.
We have the screen real estate to do that.
On 4/10/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I'd almost think that what we want is to change default category display. If we have "Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", it would be nice if instead of a pile of category stuff at the bottom, we just had one line per category with the bottom category, intermediate ones, and top one listed per line. So one line with "Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", all appropriately hotlinked.
We have the screen real estate to do that.
I'm having trouble visualising what you're suggesting. Could you do a mockup?
Steve
On 10/04/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I'd almost think that what we want is to change default category display. If we have "Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths", with a child subcategory of "Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", it would be nice if instead of a pile of category stuff at the bottom, we just had one line per category with the bottom category, intermediate ones, and top one listed per line. So one line with "Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths -> Lung Cancer Deaths due to Smoking", all appropriately hotlinked.
We have the screen real estate to do that.
I'm having trouble visualising what you're suggesting. Could you do a mockup?
Here, [ ... ] is the box we currently use for the categories.
----
John Smith is an American composer who died. (etc)
[Categories: 1943 births; 2006 deaths; American composers; Accidental deaths by alligators]
----
vs:
----
John Smith is an American composer who died. (etc)
[Categories: Births by year > People born in 1943; Deaths by year > People who died in 2006 Composers > American composers Deaths by method > Accidental deaths > Accidental deaths due to alligators ]
----
on 4/11/07 1:46 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
John Smith is an American composer who died. (etc)
[Categories: Births by year > People born in 1943; Deaths by year > People who died in 2006 Composers > American composers Deaths by method > Accidental deaths > Accidental deaths due to alligators ]
Now we're getting somewhere :-)!
Marc Riddell
On 10/04/07, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
I'd say tags are not an accurate (or desirable) way to describe the category feature. Categories are much more like traditional taxonomy -- they are a controlled vocabulary with hierarchical relationships. Tags are uncontrolled and flat.
No, I'd say that's what the category system on en:wp has *become*. It's one way to approach categories - a grand hierarchical taxonomy - but it's not always such a useful one.
- d.
On 4/10/07, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 8:12 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Um, what changes? If anything, it's probably a bunch of little changes caused by different people. I doubt very much that there's a single person who inflict a set of changes on the rest of us with some clear purpose behind it all that they haven't explained.
Steve,
I've been through this enough to be frustrated with it.
The reality is: In an Article about a person who died from lung cancer;
if I
would add both the Categories "Cancer deaths" & "Lung cancer deaths" - someone would come along very quickly and delete the main Cancer death Category. If I go back and re-enter the Cancer death Category - the same thing would happen. Options: engage in an editing war, or give up in frustration. I choose the latter. This is happening every day!
I agree with Thomas Dalton -- this is largely an issue about software features and tools to explore the relationship between categories and subcategories. It may be frustrating not being able to browse them easily right now, but fundamentally it's likely the right way to do it. Perhaps the harder question is how to get it listed as a priority for Mediawiki development.
For an example of what can be done with categories, see: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree
I'd say tags are not an accurate (or desirable) way to describe the category feature. Categories are much more like traditional taxonomy -- they are a controlled vocabulary with hierarchical relationships. Tags are uncontrolled and flat.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I agree with Andrew. I understand the frustration about the real precision that obsessive categorisers have engendered which sometimes makes the category system pointless, but at the same time, I also understand that this frustration stems from technological problems rather than problems with how we categorise articles. (Although if it's getting to the point where we have a category for each article, then we've probably gone overboard...)
The way I see it, it really makes more sense to develop MediaWiki to the point where intersections and unions of categories are possible and feasible. This would resolve the problem nicely; for instance, if Marc wants to see every article under [[Category:Lung cancer]], he just tells the software to display the union of all subcategories (and presumably all their subcats, and so on) under [[Category:Lung cancer]].
At the same time, though I don't like the tag system that's become almost omnipresent in blogs (mainly for the same reasons Andrew has articulated), I don't see why it shouldn't be ruled out. It'd be nice to have, and I don't see how it could hurt - although obviously since, as David notes, it'll place a huge strain on our servers, it shouldn't be implemented until we have the technical horsepower to handle it. Also, tags should come secondary to a better process for handling categories - I think it'd be far more invaluable to support unions and intersections of categories rather than to simply have tags for articles.
Johnleemk
On 10/04/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
At the same time, though I don't like the tag system that's become almost omnipresent in blogs (mainly for the same reasons Andrew has articulated), I don't see why it shouldn't be ruled out. It'd be nice to have, and I don't see how it could hurt - although obviously since, as David notes, it'll place a huge strain on our servers, it shouldn't be implemented until we have the technical horsepower to handle it.
Technical note: it appears to work much more nicely in PostgreSQL than MySQL - but the chances of Wikimedia's servers moving off MySQL are about zero.
Also, tags should come secondary to a better process for handling categories - I think it'd be far more invaluable to support unions and intersections of categories rather than to simply have tags for articles.
As I understand it, the plan is that categories here will work much like tags do elsewhere. Such that whether you call it a "category" or a "tag" is irrelevant.
Categorisation on Wikipedia will remain an editorial decision, with considerations of NPOV, verifiability and so forth. (And I've just had the idea of references for categories pop into my head. Euwww.)
- d.
On 4/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Technical note: it appears to work much more nicely in PostgreSQL than MySQL - but the chances of Wikimedia's servers moving off MySQL are about zero.
What is "it" exactly? What is the proposal that is so demanding in MySQL, and why is it so demanding? There would seem to be many ways of reducing the complexity of the queries, such as forcing the unions to be defined ahead of time and cached. That is, "American saxophonists" would be a category created by someone that includes the tags "American" and "saxophonist", but you couldn't just randomly query the database for "American bananas that died of lung cancer in Futurama".
Steve
On 4/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Also, tags should come secondary to a better process for handling categories - I think it'd be far more invaluable to support unions and intersections of categories rather than
to
simply have tags for articles.
As I understand it, the plan is that categories here will work much like tags do elsewhere. Such that whether you call it a "category" or a "tag" is irrelevant.
Categorisation on Wikipedia will remain an editorial decision, with considerations of NPOV, verifiability and so forth. (And I've just had the idea of references for categories pop into my head. Euwww.)
Maybe it's just me, but like Andrew, I find the tags system to be not very structured and on occasion, confusing. I still think working with the existing category system would be a better idea - not to mention that it'd probably be more technically feasible.
Johnleemk
On 10/04/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Also, tags should come secondary to a better process for handling categories - I think it'd be far more invaluable to support unions and intersections of categories rather than
to
simply have tags for articles.
As I understand it, the plan is that categories here will work much like tags do elsewhere. Such that whether you call it a "category" or a "tag" is irrelevant.
Categorisation on Wikipedia will remain an editorial decision, with considerations of NPOV, verifiability and so forth. (And I've just had the idea of references for categories pop into my head. Euwww.)
Maybe it's just me, but like Andrew, I find the tags system to be not very structured and on occasion, confusing. I still think working with the existing category system would be a better idea - not to mention that it'd probably be more technically feasible.
The lack of structure in these kinds of folksonomies would make Wikipedia quite useless to anyone who isn't casually browsing. The more prescriptive and pre-determined the organisational system is, the more useful Wikipedia becomes to those who want to use it for research.
Ideally, articles themselves will eventually include structured, semantic data which would make the need for highly structured categorisation far less important.
On 4/10/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
The lack of structure in these kinds of folksonomies would make Wikipedia quite useless to anyone who isn't casually browsing. The more prescriptive and pre-determined the organisational system is, the more useful Wikipedia becomes to those who want to use it for research.
A problem right now is that our category system is structured but what exactly category membership MEANS is kind of fuzzy. Is it IS-A, IS-RELATED-TO, HAS-A, or what? Many of our categories start off as one type of relationship, but which mutates as it goes deeper. For example, London IS-A city, but HAS-A bus system.
Ideally, articles themselves will eventually include structured, semantic data which would make the need for highly structured categorisation far less important.
Todo: make semantic data approachable for newbies and editable in an easy-to-understand way. We're not 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit' if our article source text is a specialised language that can't be learned just by looking at a couple of examples. Our markup is getting too complicated for its own good already.
-Matt
On 10/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Todo: make semantic data approachable for newbies and editable in an easy-to-understand way. We're not 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit' if our article source text is a specialised language that can't be learned just by looking at a couple of examples. Our markup is getting too complicated for its own good already.
I agree entirely. Hopefully this is a problem that the guys developing Semantic MediaWiki (or some other MediaWiki extension) will address. I certainly don't think it is an insurmountable problem. Just off the top of my head: two edit views, one displays simple wikisyntax for everyday editing and the other displays semantic-rich syntax.
On 10/04/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Todo: make semantic data approachable for newbies and editable in an easy-to-understand way. We're not 'the encyclopedia anyone can edit' if our article source text is a specialised language that can't be learned just by looking at a couple of examples. Our markup is getting too complicated for its own good already.
I agree entirely. Hopefully this is a problem that the guys developing Semantic MediaWiki (or some other MediaWiki extension) will address. I certainly don't think it is an insurmountable problem. Just off the top of my head: two edit views, one displays simple wikisyntax for everyday editing and the other displays semantic-rich syntax.
mmm. At the moment, Semantic MediaWiki syntax is a tool for computer scientists. It's not something I'd *ever* put in front of a general user.
- d.
On 4/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
mmm. At the moment, Semantic MediaWiki syntax is a tool for computer scientists. It's not something I'd *ever* put in front of a general user.
I would love to see it translated into something graphical. It would be awesome for people to be able to graphically categorise articles with meaningful symbols. They could place a city *inside* a country, and use some other metaphor to show that someone *is* a scientist *from* that country.
Steve
On 4/10/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
I agree entirely. Hopefully this is a problem that the guys developing Semantic MediaWiki (or some other MediaWiki extension) will address. I certainly don't think it is an insurmountable problem.
Semantic mediawiki pretty much allows you to do anything you want right now, category intersections etc.
Just off the top of my head: two edit views, one displays simple wikisyntax for everyday editing and the other displays semantic-rich syntax.
You know, that sounds so simple you would think I would have heard someone mention that before... but I don't think I have.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 4/11/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 4/10/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
I agree entirely. Hopefully this is a problem that the guys developing Semantic MediaWiki (or some other MediaWiki extension) will address. I certainly don't think it is an insurmountable problem.
Semantic mediawiki pretty much allows you to do anything you want right now, category intersections etc.
Just off the top of my head: two edit views, one displays simple wikisyntax for everyday editing and the other displays semantic-rich syntax.
You know, that sounds so simple you would think I would have heard someone mention that before... but I don't think I have.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
Much of this hinges on the existence of a proper parser for Wikimarkup.
This has been mentioned many times previously -- a parser does not exist, and is not likely to exist anytime in the near future. It's likely a nicely parsed Wikimarkup will require major changes to the syntax, which will be quite painful.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On 4/10/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
A problem right now is that our category system is structured but what exactly category membership MEANS is kind of fuzzy. Is it IS-A, IS-RELATED-TO, HAS-A, or what? Many of our categories start off as one type of relationship, but which mutates as it goes deeper. For example, London IS-A city, but HAS-A bus system.
Yep, and even the "strict taxonomies" have several meanings: * IS-A * IS-IN (geographical) * IS-WITHIN (time) * IS-A-BRANCH-OF (or something. a species "is" not its parent genus)
And the less strict taxonomies are even more diverse (eg, characters are part of their fictional universe, a building may be part of the history of a town). And we haven't even gotten onto the difference between a subcat/parentcat relationship and an article/category relationship.
I don't think there are easy answers, but maybe there are solutions that cover many common cases.
Steve
Mark Ridell writes:
I challenge the person or persons responsible for advocating and implementing these policy changes, to post to this List their reasons and rationalizations for promoting such changes.
Did anyone set out intentionally to make policy changes? Or did it just happen organically?
-Matt
On 10/04/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 4/9/07 8:13 PM, Matthew Brown at morven@gmail.com wrote:
Did anyone set out intentionally to make policy changes? Or did it just happen organically?
That's what I'm trying to find out.
It largely happened organically.
I fear I'm somewhat to blame for this - Phil Sandifer wrote [[WP:CLS]] (categories, lists and series boxes) and I revised it and we kept an eye on it for a while - it's intended as a guideline, but of course has become a black-and-white mechanical rule. Tra la la la la!
- d.