On 12/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, there are people who think categories are superior to lists in all regards. I like to think there are exceptions.
Cats are superior? Since when??
One of the interesting differences is their role in the actual process of organising information (as opposed to the end result). Categories are good when you spot a similarity between a number of articles and want to start formalising that link. Lists are good when you see a need for a set of related articles that don't yet exist.
Both are ok for allowing navigation through sets of related articles, but IMHO navigation boxes are much, much better.
Incidentally, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2004 edition on CD) seems to use hierarchical lists as its preferred method: At the bottom of an article, you get a list with varying levels of indentation. Clicking on an item takes you to another article guaranteed to have that same list. It works pretty well!
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, there are people who think categories are superior to lists in all regards. I like to think there are exceptions.
Cats are superior? Since when??
I love cats, they taste like chicken. Oh wait...
A category can't have annotations, but that doesn't mean they're not useful; some of us like our information in large unadulterated doses :)
One of the interesting differences is their role in the actual process of organising information (as opposed to the end result). Categories are good when you spot a similarity between a number of articles and want to start formalising that link. Lists are good when you see a need for a set of related articles that don't yet exist.
Yes...
Both are ok for allowing navigation through sets of related articles, but IMHO navigation boxes are much, much better.
Navboxes don't obsolete categories though. Would you have a navbox for "living people"????
Incidentally, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2004 edition on CD) seems to use hierarchical lists as its preferred method: At the bottom of an article, you get a list with varying levels of indentation. Clicking on an item takes you to another article guaranteed to have that same list. It works pretty well!
Sounds a lot like an "expanded" category/navbox.
On 12/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
A category can't have annotations, but that doesn't mean they're not useful; some of us like our information in large unadulterated doses :)
I certainly didn't say they're not useful...
Navboxes don't obsolete categories though. Would you have a navbox for "living people"????
...or that they are totally replaceable by navboxes.
Sounds a lot like an "expanded" category/navbox.
Yeah, with the proviso that the categories are usually pretty small.
There are times when a hand-edited, hand-annotated list is the only real way to go (like lists of tallest structures, biggest countries...) Similarly, being able to add articles to categories by editing the *article* not the *category* is an indispensable capability. And for navigational ability and visibility of related articles, nothing beats a navbox. With the tools currently available, we really need all three...
But what would really beat them all would be being able to store semantic information on pages and have navboxes/lists generated dynamically from that. I can't remember whether semanticwiki can do this, but it would certainly be cool to be able to say on the article {{building|500m}} and have that article automatically take place in the relevant list, category and navbox...
Steve