Hello,
I just entered the cause of death and Category: Lung cancer deaths to the Article on Illinois Representative Charles Arthur Hayes. His name now appears in that Category, but not in the Category: Cancer deaths. Shouldn't he appear in this Category also since cancer is what he died from? It seems the only way to accomplish this is to include both Categories in his Article. However, when I have done this in the past, in other similar situations, I have gotten a whole lot of grief. What gives?
Frustrated.
Marc Riddell
Marc Riddell wrote:
Hello,
I just entered the cause of death and Category: Lung cancer deaths to the Article on Illinois Representative Charles Arthur Hayes. His name now appears in that Category, but not in the Category: Cancer deaths. Shouldn't he appear in this Category also since cancer is what he died from? It seems the only way to accomplish this is to include both Categories in his Article. However, when I have done this in the past, in other similar situations, I have gotten a whole lot of grief. What gives?
Frustrated.
Marc Riddell
Marc,
I can tell you that there is no mechanism in the software to implicitly include articles in categories, such as you seem to want. If you want an article in a category, you must specifically place the category tag on that article.
Note, however, that many templates do include the necessary tag to place an article that uses that template into one or more category.
On the other hand, if you mean "should" as a desired behavior, that's another discussion altogether.
-Rich
on 2/15/07 1:15 PM, Rich Holton at richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I can tell you that there is no mechanism in the software to implicitly include articles in categories, such as you seem to want. If you want an article in a category, you must specifically place the category tag on that article.
I hope we can get beyond this someday.
Note, however, that many templates do include the necessary tag to place an article that uses that template into one or more category.
Be gentle, I'm still a bit computer challenged. I need a bit more explanation of this.
On the other hand, if you mean "should" as a desired behavior, that's another discussion altogether.
I'd rather not go there just now ;-) - I get into enough trouble as it is :-).
Thanks, Rich,
Marc
Note, however, that many templates do include the necessary tag to place an article that uses that template into one or more category.
Be gentle, I'm still a bit computer challenged. I need a bit more explanation of this.
When you transclude a template into an article, any categories included in the template will get treated as if they were in the article itself. For example {{wikify}} includes "[[Category:Articles in need of wikification]]" (or something like that), so any article which includes "{{wikify}}" is treated as if it includes "[[Category:Articles in need of wikification]]", so is listed as being in that category.
I just entered the cause of death and Category: Lung cancer deaths to the Article on Illinois Representative Charles Arthur Hayes. His name now appears in that Category, but not in the Category: Cancer deaths. Shouldn't he appear in this Category also since cancer is what he died from? It seems the only way to accomplish this is to include both Categories in his Article. However, when I have done this in the past, in other similar situations, I have gotten a whole lot of grief. What gives?
The entire category will be in Cancer deaths as a sub category. Including members of sub categories on the main category page would make the whole system unworkable. We keep the size of categories to a manageable size by taking members out and putting them in a sub category.
on 2/15/07 1:18 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The entire category will be in Cancer deaths as a sub category.
But the Article in question cannot be seen as an entry in the Cancer deaths category. Right?
Including members of sub categories on the main category page would make the whole system unworkable. We keep the size of categories to a manageable size by taking members out and putting them in a sub category.
I don't understand "workable" - in what way? As WP grows - to take this to its logical absurdity: What do you do when, say, the Category: People from Philadelphia becomes "too large", create subcategories of the city by wards, then individual streets, thenĀ!
Huh?
Marc
But the Article in question cannot be seen as an entry in the Cancer deaths category. Right?
Right.
I don't understand "workable" - in what way?
If you have 5 pages of articles in a category, the category is pretty much useless. Categories exist to make finding articles easier, finding an article in 5 pages of 200 articles each is far from easy.
on 2/15/07 2:01 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Categories exist to make finding articles easier, finding an article in 5 pages of 200 articles each is far from easy.
Now I am beginning to understand why I am so out of synch here. Where you are looking for specific, individual Articles, I am looking for an index-type list of all persons under a specific Category. E.g., if I were doing cancer research, I would like an entire list of all persons in the encyclopedia who died from cancer. Then, I can select from the list which persons I would like to study.
Marc
Now I am beginning to understand why I am so out of synch here. Where you are looking for specific, individual Articles, I am looking for an index-type list of all persons under a specific Category. E.g., if I were doing cancer research, I would like an entire list of all persons in the encyclopedia who died from cancer. Then, I can select from the list which persons I would like to study.
Picking from a list of 1000 articles on cancer victims is much harder than picking from a list of a few dozen lung cancer victims. If you specifically want victims of various cancers, the subcatagories are all listed at the beginning of the main category listing.
(NB: The numbers are made up for the purpose of an example, I have no idea how many articles are in each category)
on 2/15/07 3:34 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Picking from a list of 1000 articles on cancer victims is much harder than picking from a list of a few dozen lung cancer victims. If you specifically want victims of various cancers, the subcatagories are all listed at the beginning of the main category listing.
(NB: The numbers are made up for the purpose of an example, I have no idea how many articles are in each category)
Thanks for your help with this, Tom. I still feel that the Category System within WP isn't operating in the best way that it could. I would love to see some serious cleanup and rethinking done on it.
Marc
Thanks for your help with this, Tom. I still feel that the Category System within WP isn't operating in the best way that it could. I would love to see some serious cleanup and rethinking done on it.
I think that's quite a widely held view. I haven't really followed the discussions on the matter, though. I'm sure someone here can point you in the direction of existing proposals where you can put forward your ideas.
On 2/16/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
appears in that Category, but not in the Category: Cancer deaths. Shouldn't he appear in this Category also since cancer is what he died from? It seems the only way to accomplish this is to include both Categories in his Article. However, when I have done this in the past, in other similar situations, I have gotten a whole lot of grief. What gives?
This discussion pretty well summarises a perennial problem with categories. There are two choices: Put the article in the broad category and its subcategory, or just in the subcategory.
Problems with putting it in both categories: The broad category can get unmanageably large and impossible to navigate. Problems with putting in just the subcategory: There is no software support to retrieve the set of all articles in all subcats and the broad category. There is also no sufficiently tight definitino of "subcategory" to distinguish between true (taxonomic) subcategories and rough (thematic) subcategories. A lung cancer death is truly a cancer death. But someone born in Strasbourg is not truly someone born in France[1] (and there are much better examples than this).
Steve [1] IIRC, Strasbourg has previously been part of Germany, so you can't assume that a Strasbourgeois was actually born in France.
On 2/16/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
appears in that Category, but not in the Category: Cancer deaths. Shouldn't he appear in this Category also since cancer is what he died from? It seems the only way to accomplish this is to include both Categories in his Article. However, when I have done this in the past, in other similar situations, I have gotten a whole lot of grief. What gives?
on 2/15/07 6:14 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
This discussion pretty well summarises a perennial problem with categories. There are two choices: Put the article in the broad category and its subcategory, or just in the subcategory.
Problems with putting it in both categories: The broad category can get unmanageably large and impossible to navigate. Problems with putting in just the subcategory: There is no software support to retrieve the set of all articles in all subcats and the broad category. There is also no sufficiently tight definitino of "subcategory" to distinguish between true (taxonomic) subcategories and rough (thematic) subcategories. A lung cancer death is truly a cancer death. But someone born in Strasbourg is not truly someone born in France[1] (and there are much better examples than this).
Steve [1] IIRC, Strasbourg has previously been part of Germany, so you can't assume that a Strasbourgeois was actually born in France.
Excellent assessment, Steve. The question, for me, remains is software support to retrieve the set of all articles in all subcats and the broad category being developed? I sincerely hope so.
Marc
On 2/16/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Excellent assessment, Steve. The question, for me, remains is software support to retrieve the set of all articles in all subcats and the broad category being developed? I sincerely hope so.
I believe there are some extensions and some hacks around that allow this kind of thing. Nothing planned in the main branch of MediaWiki that I've heard of, but that doesn't stop anyone writing it. But the lack of a way of distinguishing tight subcat relationships from general ones places limits on how effective this can be. Currently there's nothing stopping a category including itself indirectly as a subcategory.
Steve