Hello,
I'm a new kid on the block. I am sending this first email mostly to see what happens when I do, and to find out how the process works. What type of subjects are open for discussion? My only warning is that I am hard science and math challenged - in these areas, I will gladly act as an astounded observer. My education, background and experience is in clinical psychology. My interests are many - my curiosity insatiable.
Regards,
Marc Riddell, Ph.D.
Hey, there!
This particular mailing list is home to just about any topic having to do with the English Wikipedia -- recently, we've had topics about clearing various work backlogs, deletion policy, verifiability and reliable sources to cite for information... you name it. I suppose the most common topic is "policy stuff," but occassionally proposals and such come up. There's a pretty wide range of discussion, on here.
And just a random tip, if you're not comfortable posting and would just like to see "how things are done," for awhile, you're welcome to subscribe to the list without posting to it. Many internet regulars would call this "lurking," and I imagine most of the subscribers to the list are doing just that. ;)
Anyway, welcome aboard. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, I'll try to be helpful.
-Luna
On 12/11/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Hello,
I'm a new kid on the block. I am sending this first email mostly to see what happens when I do, and to find out how the process works. What type of subjects are open for discussion? My only warning is that I am hard science and math challenged - in these areas, I will gladly act as an astounded observer. My education, background and experience is in clinical psychology. My interests are many - my curiosity insatiable.
Regards,
Marc Riddell, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Hello, Luna,
Thank you for responding. I have been contributing to Wikipedia for nearly a year now, and the only ongoing controversy - problem! - I have had regards categorizing articles.
My work is in Clinical Psych. The most important work by far is done, of course, when sitting across from a real, live human being. However, long before encountering this person - and during the course of their treatment - a competent clinician will have studied countless case histories of other persons who have experienced similar problems. By identifying and understanding these similarities, the clinician can more confidently make decisions regarding the person¹s treatment.
When I came upon Wikipedia early this year I was thrilled. Here were countless biographies (case histories if you will) of persons who, among other things, were categorized according to similar traits and life experiences. I could, for instance, click on the Category ³Writers who committed suicide² and have hours of work done for me. Now, as the categories become more and more diluted, this is becoming more and more unavailable.
I have complained, but, so far to no avail. All I get in response is a reminder of the "limitations of Wikipedia's server".
I shall persevere and periodically bitch and moan.
Now that I¹ve told you far more than you wanted to know I¹ll thank you for your ear and stop whining (for now).
As for the WikiEN-L - I believe I'll observe for a little while (just a little while) and post and/or respond to an issue when I feel I have something constructive to offer.
Thanks again.
Be healthy,
Marc Riddell
From: Luna lunasantin@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:05:56 -0800 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
Hey, there!
This particular mailing list is home to just about any topic having to do with the English Wikipedia -- recently, we've had topics about clearing various work backlogs, deletion policy, verifiability and reliable sources to cite for information... you name it. I suppose the most common topic is "policy stuff," but occassionally proposals and such come up. There's a pretty wide range of discussion, on here.
And just a random tip, if you're not comfortable posting and would just like to see "how things are done," for awhile, you're welcome to subscribe to the list without posting to it. Many internet regulars would call this "lurking," and I imagine most of the subscribers to the list are doing just that. ;)
Anyway, welcome aboard. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, I'll try to be helpful.
-Luna
On 12/11/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Hello,
I'm a new kid on the block. I am sending this first email mostly to see what happens when I do, and to find out how the process works. What type of subjects are open for discussion? My only warning is that I am hard science and math challenged - in these areas, I will gladly act as an astounded observer. My education, background and experience is in clinical psychology. My interests are many - my curiosity insatiable.
Regards,
Marc Riddell, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
When I came upon Wikipedia early this year I was thrilled. Here were countless biographies (case histories if you will) of persons who, among other things, were categorized according to similar traits and life experiences. I could, for instance, click on the Category ³Writers who committed suicide² and have hours of work done for me. Now, as the categories become more and more diluted, this is becoming more and more unavailable.
What do you mean by "diluted"? If you can give examples, and maybe even some tentative solutions, we would be more than happy to listen to your bitching and moaning.[1]
Steve [1] Well, I would anyway. I think our categories fall well short of what they can and should do.
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.
Then, I began finding many of my edits being reverting by persons who stated that only one of these Categories should be included in an article; that both a main category and a subcategory should not be in the same article. More and more of these articles were being diluted by this argument.
I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the Suicides by firearm¹ Category only, he does not appear in the Deaths by firearm¹ Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory lists and collate them myself.
Another example: Jane Doe dies from breast cancer. Category: ³Deaths from breast cancer² is added to her Category box, but I do not include the Category: ³Cancer deaths². Then, when I click on the Category: Deaths from breast cancer¹, her name is included in this list. But, if I click on the Category: Cancer deaths¹ she is not included.
What I am wanting by adding her name to both Categories is a separate list of ALL persons who died from breast cancer, and a separate list of ALL persons who died from cancer. What is the problem with including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory?
One more example and I¹ll be shut up (for now). If I place the Categories, ³Accidental deaths² & ³road accident victims² in the same article (which I have done) I am immediately taken into custody by the Category Police, and, to make matters worse, nobody bothers to read me Miranda.
I believe an organized Project Group needs to take a long and quite serious look at the whole of Wiki categorization with the goals of deciding what its purpose is, and then to reconstruct it to accomplish that purpose.
Be healthy,
Marc
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:44:20 +1100 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
When I came upon Wikipedia early this year I was thrilled. Here were countless biographies (case histories if you will) of persons who, among other things, were categorized according to similar traits and life experiences. I could, for instance, click on the Category ³Writers who committed suicide² and have hours of work done for me. Now, as the categories become more and more diluted, this is becoming more and more unavailable.
What do you mean by "diluted"? If you can give examples, and maybe even some tentative solutions, we would be more than happy to listen to your bitching and moaning.[1]
Steve [1] Well, I would anyway. I think our categories fall well short of what they can and should do. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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.
Parker
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.
On 12/12/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
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.
No, articles should belong to whichever categories they reasonably fit into.
If an article fits into Mythology, and Greek Mythology, and Pre-Homeric Greek Mythology, and Athenian Mythology all at once, then it should be in ALL of those categories, because each is a different search. Yes, Mythology might encompass all of Greek Mythology, but So What? Someone looking for various mythological figures might grab Mythology first, and we're well served by having them do so and have an easier time migrating to the more specific area from there.
Parker
Parker Peters schreef:
No, articles should belong to whichever categories they reasonably fit into.
If an article fits into Mythology, and Greek Mythology, and Pre-Homeric Greek Mythology, and Athenian Mythology all at once, then it should be in ALL of those categories, because each is a different search.
And, presumably, in [[Category:Legends]], [[Category:Religion]], [[Category:Traditions]] (the supercat's of Mythology); in [[Category:Folklore]], [[Category:Culture]], and [[Category:Anthropology]] (the super-supercat's of Mythology); as well as in [[Category:Ancient Greece]], [[Category:Ancient Greek culture]], [[Category:Pre-Homeric culture]] and [[Category:Athenian culture]]; not forgetting [[Category:Literature]], [[Category:Ancient Greek literature]], [[Category:Athenian Literature]] and [[Category:Pre-Homeric literature]].
Yes, Mythology might encompass all of Greek Mythology, but So What? Someone looking for various mythological figures might grab Mythology first, and we're well served by having them do so and have an easier time migrating to the more specific area from there.
[[Category:Mythology]] will have many thousands of articles ([[Category:Mythology by culture]] has 73 subcategories!). I don't think anyone is well served with such a category.
Eugene
The Cunctator wrote:
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. __________________
Why? I'm not following your reasoning here. It seems to me a good point has been made - if you want all suicides, then having to traverse all subcats is tedious, to say the least.
Puppy wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
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.
Why? I'm not following your reasoning here. It seems to me a good point has been made - if you want all suicides, then having to traverse all subcats is tedious, to say the least.
Sure. But if you're trying to do other things, then not having them subcategorized can be tedious.
It's a blind-men-and-the-elephant problem, I think. Categories are many things to many people, and every time someone says "categories should work *this* way and be used *this* way so I can do *this* thing with them", someone else can always pop up and say "No, they should work this other way so I can do this other thing with them."
As Eugene van der Pijll pointed out in another branch of the thread, we don't know whether category membership is supposed to denote "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationships. (As he also pointed out, and I'm not at all surprised to hear, this has evidently been thrashed out several times before, too.)
Steve,
But thrashed out to what conclusion?
Marc
From: Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:41:23 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
Puppy wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
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.
Why? I'm not following your reasoning here. It seems to me a good point has been made - if you want all suicides, then having to traverse all subcats is tedious, to say the least.
Sure. But if you're trying to do other things, then not having them subcategorized can be tedious.
It's a blind-men-and-the-elephant problem, I think. Categories are many things to many people, and every time someone says "categories should work *this* way and be used *this* way so I can do *this* thing with them", someone else can always pop up and say "No, they should work this other way so I can do this other thing with them."
As Eugene van der Pijll pointed out in another branch of the thread, we don't know whether category membership is supposed to denote "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationships. (As he also pointed out, and I'm not at all surprised to hear, this has evidently been thrashed out several times before, too.) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Marc Riddell wrote:
But thrashed out to what conclusion?
That I do not know, and I'm sorry if I gave the impression it had been. (I wrote "thrashed out" instead of "hashed out" in an attempt to suggest that there had probably been more thrashing than concluding -- though I wasn't part of the earlier discussions, so I don't even know.)
My own take on the question is that Categories in their current form are an imprecise mechanism, and that people should not try to use them for precise tasks, or waste too much time arguing about particular attempted more-precise usages.
We could speculate about nice, more-precise technical solutions to the problem, which would support those more-precise usages. But (like [[m:Wikidata]]), it's not clear when or if mainstream mediawiki might ever get such improvements, nor is it clear that it even should. The relative simplicity of mediawiki -- the absence of complicated features with technophiles (like me!) are always wishing it had in support of more-precise usages -- this simplicity is of course a huge strength, and I suspect that it's more responsible for Wikipedia's success than I'd like to admit. (Which is to say, technical advances like more-precise categories and taggable data, which I would dearly love to see, are even more out of the question than I already fear they are.)
I wrote:
My own take on the question is that Categories in their current form are an imprecise mechanism, and that people should not try to use them for precise tasks, or waste too much time arguing about particular attempted more-precise usages.
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the editors who maintain them will reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a web of loose relationships (e.g. "Topics relating to Paris"), and some will similarly reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a tighter taxonomy (e.g. "Counties in California").
Now, despite what I said about the problem not being solveable without additional and potentially more-complicated technical mechanisms which aren't likely to happen soon, it seems to me that one loose, relatively informal, "soft" solution to the part of the problem would be to try to reflect a category's semantic in its name, e.g. "Category:Counties in California" and "Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today. But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
Thank you, Steve, for making (painful) sense out of this issue for me. I started school with a typewriter and finished post-grad with pretty much the same. The only computer on campus was the size of my dorm.
I'll continue to campaign for changes; although as technochallenged as I am, my arguments will need to remain philosophical.
Marc
From: Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:26:57 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
I wrote:
My own take on the question is that Categories in their current form are an imprecise mechanism, and that people should not try to use them for precise tasks, or waste too much time arguing about particular attempted more-precise usages.
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the editors who maintain them will reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a web of loose relationships (e.g. "Topics relating to Paris"), and some will similarly reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a tighter taxonomy (e.g. "Counties in California").
Now, despite what I said about the problem not being solveable without additional and potentially more-complicated technical mechanisms which aren't likely to happen soon, it seems to me that one loose, relatively informal, "soft" solution to the part of the problem would be to try to reflect a category's semantic in its name, e.g. "Category:Counties in California" and "Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today. But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The important thing is to campaign for what you want -- an easy way to list all of the people who have committed suicide, say
rather than for a particular implementation.
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Thank you, Steve, for making (painful) sense out of this issue for me. I started school with a typewriter and finished post-grad with pretty much the same. The only computer on campus was the size of my dorm.
I'll continue to campaign for changes; although as technochallenged as I am, my arguments will need to remain philosophical.
Marc
From: Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:26:57 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
I wrote:
My own take on the question is that Categories in their current form are an imprecise mechanism, and that people should not try to use them for precise tasks, or waste too much time arguing about particular attempted more-precise usages.
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the editors who maintain them will reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a web of loose relationships (e.g. "Topics relating to Paris"), and some will similarly reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a tighter taxonomy (e.g. "Counties in California").
Now, despite what I said about the problem not being solveable without additional and potentially more-complicated technical mechanisms which aren't likely to happen soon, it seems to me that one loose, relatively informal, "soft" solution to the part of the problem would be to try to reflect a category's semantic in its name, e.g. "Category:Counties in California" and "Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today. But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Excellent point & strategy! Thanks.
Marc
From: "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:11:36 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
The important thing is to campaign for what you want -- an easy way to list all of the people who have committed suicide, say
rather than for a particular implementation.
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Thank you, Steve, for making (painful) sense out of this issue for me. I started school with a typewriter and finished post-grad with pretty much the same. The only computer on campus was the size of my dorm.
I'll continue to campaign for changes; although as technochallenged as I am, my arguments will need to remain philosophical.
Marc
From: Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:26:57 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
I wrote:
My own take on the question is that Categories in their current form are an imprecise mechanism, and that people should not try to use them for precise tasks, or waste too much time arguing about particular attempted more-precise usages.
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the editors who maintain them will reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a web of loose relationships (e.g. "Topics relating to Paris"), and some will similarly reach some kind of loose, relatively informal consensus that they're categories which embody a tighter taxonomy (e.g. "Counties in California").
Now, despite what I said about the problem not being solveable without additional and potentially more-complicated technical mechanisms which aren't likely to happen soon, it seems to me that one loose, relatively informal, "soft" solution to the part of the problem would be to try to reflect a category's semantic in its name, e.g. "Category:Counties in California" and "Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today. But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On 12/13/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the
Well, yeah, unfortunately this is basically true. We should have a well-defined category structure, or use really loose and flexible keywords...we sort of have the worst of both worlds here.
"Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today.
The downside is it's much easier to guess "Paris" as a category name than "Topics relating to Paris". What would actually be good would be stronger, semi-automated systems for funnelling people's guesses into the right names. There's nothing wrong with someone guessing "Paris" if a bot can then channel that into the correct name - or at least highlight it for human recategorisation. Just like we don't "object" to people adding {{stub}} - we have people that come along and do the stage two recategorisation.
Wikis work very well when you tolerate this kind of behaviour - don't ask for perfection up front, but instead appreciate every micro-improvement.
But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
Well we've discussed this at length, and I think we can go some way towards resolving it through either naming conventions or some other way of formally describing categories. Good rules might be "This category should not directly contain pages.", "This category is a geographical hierarchy.", "This category is thematic" etc.
Steve
It is beginning to dawn on me (perhaps the sun rises later here) that there is/would be a great difference between categorizing biographical articles v. non-biographical ones. The biographical would require much less complex layers. Any thoughts on this?
Marc Riddell
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:17:29 +1100 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 12/13/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
By which I mean, the argument usually boils down to trying to decide precisely whether category membership is supposed to denote an "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" relationship. But that can't be answered, so the arguments can never really be resolved, and people have to fall back to using categories not to implement rigid OO-like inheritable hierarchies, but rather, looser collections where the only semantic attached to category membership is "is-kinda-related-to". Some categories and the
Well, yeah, unfortunately this is basically true. We should have a well-defined category structure, or use really loose and flexible keywords...we sort of have the worst of both worlds here.
"Category:Arrondissements in Paris" and "Category:Topics relating to Paris", rather than just "Category:California" and "Category:Paris". And we're probably doing a lot of that today.
The downside is it's much easier to guess "Paris" as a category name than "Topics relating to Paris". What would actually be good would be stronger, semi-automated systems for funnelling people's guesses into the right names. There's nothing wrong with someone guessing "Paris" if a bot can then channel that into the correct name - or at least highlight it for human recategorisation. Just like we don't "object" to people adding {{stub}} - we have people that come along and do the stage two recategorisation.
Wikis work very well when you tolerate this kind of behaviour - don't ask for perfection up front, but instead appreciate every micro-improvement.
But there are still (and will always be) lots of problems when categories contain other categories, and we'll always be wondering whether category membership is or isn't or should or shouldn't be transitive, and it's these larger-scale questions which we can't (under the current architecture) ever fully satisfactorily resolve.
Well we've discussed this at length, and I think we can go some way towards resolving it through either naming conventions or some other way of formally describing categories. Good rules might be "This category should not directly contain pages.", "This category is a geographical hierarchy.", "This category is thematic" etc.
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
It is beginning to dawn on me (perhaps the sun rises later here) that there is/would be a great difference between categorizing biographical articles v. non-biographical ones. The biographical would require much less complex layers. Any thoughts on this?
I don't think there are any simple dichotomies in this. Different kinds of stuff have different kinds of categorisational needs.
We have a current trend towards splitting big categories. We prefer a single category "Dutch authors" rather than adding two massive categories to an article: "Dutch people" and "Authors". However this approach is pretty clearly a dead-end: how many times can we split? What do we split on next, "Dead Dutch authors"? Good category intersections would really help that one...
I guess you're right in that people are just made up of attributes: where/when they're born/died, what field they were primarily in etc, all of which could be much more complex trees.
Steve
On 12/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
We have a current trend towards splitting big categories. We prefer a single category "Dutch authors" rather than adding two massive categories to an article: "Dutch people" and "Authors". However this approach is pretty clearly a dead-end: how many times can we split? What do we split on next, "Dead Dutch authors"? Good category intersections would really help that one...
I just wanted to point out semantic mediawiki extension, as it solves these problems fairly well. It may be a little difficult for many users, but I don't think it's that bad.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 12/13/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 12/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
We have a current trend towards splitting big categories. We prefer a single category "Dutch authors" rather than adding two massive categories to an article: "Dutch people" and "Authors". However this approach is pretty clearly a dead-end: how many times can we split? What do we split on next, "Dead Dutch authors"? Good category intersections would really help that one...
I just wanted to point out semantic mediawiki extension, as it solves these problems fairly well. It may be a little difficult for many users, but I don't think it's that bad.
Yeah, I know about it. The widespread assumption is that Semantic MediaWiki will never happen at Wikipedia. Which is a pity, and possibly a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Is there some small part of the semantic stuff that we could adopt, without taking the whole thing?
Steve
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use starting with, of course, its very purpose.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Marc
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:19:43 +1100 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
It is beginning to dawn on me (perhaps the sun rises later here) that there is/would be a great difference between categorizing biographical articles v. non-biographical ones. The biographical would require much less complex layers. Any thoughts on this?
I don't think there are any simple dichotomies in this. Different kinds of stuff have different kinds of categorisational needs.
We have a current trend towards splitting big categories. We prefer a single category "Dutch authors" rather than adding two massive categories to an article: "Dutch people" and "Authors". However this approach is pretty clearly a dead-end: how many times can we split? What do we split on next, "Dead Dutch authors"? Good category intersections would really help that one...
I guess you're right in that people are just made up of attributes: where/when they're born/died, what field they were primarily in etc, all of which could be much more complex trees.
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use starting with, of course, its very purpose.
It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Don't.
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
Marc
From: "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:41:32 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use starting with, of course, its very purpose.
It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Don't. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Chaos?
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
Marc
From: "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:41:32 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of
Categories and
their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to
take
a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its
use
starting with, of course, its very purpose.
It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I
would
like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another
editor who
thinks it¹s wrong.
Don't. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an explanation.
- d.
David,
I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision needs to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no Wikipedia crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what Wikipedia is now?
Marc
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an explanation.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
David,
I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision needs to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no Wikipedia crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what Wikipedia is now?
Essentially there's always been a Wikipedia crowd; by that I mean decisions have never been terribly top-down. Larry Sanger was the master herder of the early decision-making.
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia unfortunately lacks a full history (a good project for the Foundation to tackle) but you can see a relatively well-formed set of early policies.
See also http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary
In November Sanger started segregating policy suggestions he liked from those he didn't to create meta.wikipedia.com (well, it's more complicated than that, but that was part of the impetus).
This is also a good early page: http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia/Our_Replies_to_Our_Critics
Click around and learn more.
Marc
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the
problems of
Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to
chaos
then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an
explanation.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
"For what do you hunger, Lord?" Moneo ventured. "For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?" "You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind." Frank Herbert - "God Emperor of Dune" (p.55)
I have read everything that has been written here, as well as the links detailing Wikipedia's history on the subject. A lot of thought - some excellent ideas. But change can happen only if enough people believe it needs to. I believe the Wiki Category system needs some serious study & re-evaluation. Does anyone else believe it's worth a try?
Marc
From: Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:44:38 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
David,
I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision needs to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no Wikipedia crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what Wikipedia is now?
Marc
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the problems of Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to chaos then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an explanation.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I would recommend someone building a yahoo/dmoz style interface for Wikipedia, using the categories. If we have that interface, people will do the work to make categories work better.
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
"For what do you hunger, Lord?" Moneo ventured. "For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?" "You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind." Frank Herbert - "God Emperor of Dune" (p.55)
I have read everything that has been written here, as well as the links detailing Wikipedia's history on the subject. A lot of thought - some excellent ideas. But change can happen only if enough people believe it needs to. I believe the Wiki Category system needs some serious study & re-evaluation. Does anyone else believe it's worth a try?
Marc
From: Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:44:38 -0500 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
David,
I read it. A crowd can never come to a decision about anything; they can only make enough noise to call attention to the fact that a decision
needs
to be made. At some point, very early in its history, there was no
Wikipedia
crowd. How, and by whom, were the decisions made that evolved into what Wikipedia is now?
Marc
From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:56:09 +0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories (was: Hello)
On 13/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I am not suggesting that a "small committee" (your term) fix the
problems of
Wikipedia - just one small part of it. And, if flexibility leads to
chaos
then it does more harm than good - and is ultimately destructive.
The trouble is that this trick never works. See [[WP:PRO]] for an explanation.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Cunctator wrote:
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Don't.
I disagree. The answer is "it depends", and what it depends on is utility in navigation. There are a number of cases where people have managed to do this and it was the right decision. But, in every case you will have to win a small war over it.
In general if all of the non-sub-category members of a category can be placed in a sub-category then they should, and you should not try and do both.
I think the special case of putting an article in both is when there is a compelling reason for navigation purposes. While not common right now because of the way we do it and because few people have put time into making the Category system an interface to the site, this could become common that someone would use the category tree to "browse". In such a case they should be able to find articles with basic knowledge of the subject. Take for example [[Chess]], did you know it is in the [[Chaturanga|Chaturanga game family]] and therefor [[Category:Chaturanga game family]]. This category being on the article us useful for people already at the article, they learn something new. But for the person who is navigating the category tree this is almost with out value unless he happens to know that the chaturanga game family is and that Chess is a part of it. The person using the Category system (our veriosn of an index) will get as far as [[Category:Abstract strategy games]] and not know where to go. To solve this problem [[Category: Chess]] is a subcategory of both of these even though one is a subcategory of the other. And the article [[Chess]] has all three (though I am inclined to say that [[Category:Abstract strategy games]] should be removed form the article itself.
There is another great example I think involving articles n the individual members of the Beatles and weather they should be included in a category as being members of the Beatles and also as being musicians.
Somethign I wrote about this when I first became a wikipedian comes to ming so I dug it up. It was in the form of a proposal (I do not expect it to be accepted which is why I never formalized it) but I think it is worth thinking about on this issue.
This is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Categorization&...
Proposed Guidelines
I have run into this issue a few times in my very short stay (so far) on Wikipedia and did some thinking about the situations where I think an article should be in a category as well as a sub-category. I came up with two guidelines and wanted to see if other people had similar ideas or if I am smoking crack. This seems to be the best place to get opinions on this issue so here I go ....
Qualitative vs. Quantitative
If the articles in a category are fundamentally the same type of article (i.e. about people or places etc.) and the difference between the category and sub-category is fundamentally qualitative then the article should only be listed in the sub-category. This is the example from the main page: Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her. To say it a different way Queen Elizabeth would not be put in "Queens of England" just because she was a better/more famous/more notable person. The other side of this is when the difference is primarily quantitative. The example than I ran into that is good here, is the category "Chess grandmasters" and "Chess players". A person DOES go from being 'just' a chess player to being a Chess grandmaster by being a better chess player, so the difference is primarily quantitative and the article should be listed in both. A good way to tell if you are in this situation is: If the sub-category were deleted and all its contents imported into the super-category would it significantly reduce the usefulness of the super category? This brings me to the second guideline.
[However I now think this should be modified by the notion that if all the articles of a specific type, in a category can be put into subcategories they should and the super-category should be dropped from the articles. Using the same example is a set of acceptable and inclusive sub-categories (grandmasters, International masters, masters, ... , unrated) could be agreed on so that no people articles remained then that should be done and the category [[Chess: chess players]] should be restricted to non-people articles. (a good example of this is [[Category:Magnet schools]] which has the schools themselves in sub-cats and only has a few articles on the topic itself in the category.)]
<SNIP OUT MY NAVIGATIONAL UTILITY SECTION AS ITS THE SAME AS WHAT I WROTE AT THE TOP>
Summary: I hope this is the right place for this, and as a clueless newbie I hope I am not re-hashing something that has already been discussed into the ground and resolved. If so and there has been some succinct treatment of the issue somewhere a pointer on my talk page would be awesome, even though I put "Proposed guidelines" above I am really just asking since I keep running into this and I am a but of a meta data freak. Dalf | Talk 02:18, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
SKL
On 12/14/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It didn't evolve into an unfocused mess -- it started as an unfocused mess. As did Wikipedia. We don't necessarily need a small committee of experts to "fix" the "problems" of Wikipedia.
One of the things that makes Wikipedia great is its flexibility.
My understanding is that most processes in WP start small and unfocussed, spread out to become large and unfocussed, then are slowly refine and are distilled to become small and focussed again. For example, a policy document usually starts with some rant by an individual. It expands as other individuals join in the ranting. Then common sense starts to emerge. Finally, it can be reduced to a couple of sentences that are actually helpful.
With categories, I think we've got to the "huge mess" stage, but I don't see a lot of distillation or refining going on.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
On a practical level, it's obviously very useful to have both the cat and supercat on an article sometimes. The prohibition on this presupposes some mediawiki treatment of sub/supercats that just doesn't exist.
Steve
Marc Riddell wrote:
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use starting with, of course, its very purpose.
Hate to be a downer, but this ain't ever going to happen. Just when you think it's all figured out, a new group comes along and undoes everything, all the while declaiming about how awful your system is. Categories are one of those things that editors can do without having any writing ability, or even much subject-matter knowledge, so the pool of categorizers is quite large.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Although we don't have much consensus on categories, the "no supercats" rule is pretty broadly followed. It would be less work to change MediaWiki, even if you're not a programmer. :-)
Stan
Stan,
You're absolutely right (on most counts ;). The one I have trouble getting my mind around is, "this ain't ever going to happen". Crowds, noise and, yes, the occasional violence have always been crucial in bringing attention to the need for change. But, what always has ultimately brought about that change is a small group of dedicated, focused people coming together to plan the substance of that change.
Marc
From: Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 06:48:00 -0800 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories
Marc Riddell wrote:
Steve,
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused, objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use starting with, of course, its very purpose.
Hate to be a downer, but this ain't ever going to happen. Just when you think it's all figured out, a new group comes along and undoes everything, all the while declaiming about how awful your system is. Categories are one of those things that editors can do without having any writing ability, or even much subject-matter knowledge, so the pool of categorizers is quite large.
I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who thinks it¹s wrong.
Although we don't have much consensus on categories, the "no supercats" rule is pretty broadly followed. It would be less work to change MediaWiki, even if you're not a programmer. :-)
Stan
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On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Stan,
You're absolutely right (on most counts ;). The one I have trouble getting my mind around is, "this ain't ever going to happen". Crowds, noise and, yes, the occasional violence have always been crucial in bringing attention to the need for change. But, what always has ultimately brought about that change is a small group of dedicated, focused people coming together to plan the substance of that change.
Yes, but our "small group of dedicated, focused people" is busy implementing single signon. ;-)
Although the above statement is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the kernel of truth in it is that making the category system sane will require major technical changes, which will require nearly the full attention of our core developers. Since they're already backlogged on at least two high-priority tech upgrades, there's little to be gained by asking them to devote time to the Category Question just now. Unlike other respondents, I think it can and will be fixed, but I agree that *it will not be fixed soon.*
Until then, I would otherwise recommend the CatScan tool on the Toolserver, but the Toolserver hasn't updated from en since June; a situation which certainly hasn't escaped the notice of the community of Toolserver users on en. So until a functioning toolserver is restored to our lives, I'm afraid there's no good way to solve this problem.
Patience is a virtue (or so I've been told) - and since it's the only one I have left - I am willing to wait. In the meantime, I would love to know there are some concrete proposals being worked on.
Marc
From: "Michael Noda" michael.noda@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:19:47 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Categories
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Stan,
You're absolutely right (on most counts ;). The one I have trouble getting my mind around is, "this ain't ever going to happen". Crowds, noise and, yes, the occasional violence have always been crucial in bringing attention to the need for change. But, what always has ultimately brought about that change is a small group of dedicated, focused people coming together to plan the substance of that change.
Yes, but our "small group of dedicated, focused people" is busy implementing single signon. ;-)
Although the above statement is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the kernel of truth in it is that making the category system sane will require major technical changes, which will require nearly the full attention of our core developers. Since they're already backlogged on at least two high-priority tech upgrades, there's little to be gained by asking them to devote time to the Category Question just now. Unlike other respondents, I think it can and will be fixed, but I agree that *it will not be fixed soon.*
Until then, I would otherwise recommend the CatScan tool on the Toolserver, but the Toolserver hasn't updated from en since June; a situation which certainly hasn't escaped the notice of the community of Toolserver users on en. So until a functioning toolserver is restored to our lives, I'm afraid there's no good way to solve this problem. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/13/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much unresolved and unfocused.
Hehe, this really is a good welcome to wikipedia-policy thread! :D
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
Tedious for a human; not for a computer.
On 12/12/06, Puppy puppy@killerchihuahua.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
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. __________________
Why? I'm not following your reasoning here. It seems to me a good point has been made - if you want all suicides, then having to traverse all subcats is tedious, to say the least. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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.
Then, I began finding many of my edits being reverting by persons who stated that only one of these Categories should be included in an article; that both a main category and a subcategory should not be in the same article. More and more of these articles were being diluted by this argument.
I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the ŒSuicides by firearm¹ Category only, he does not appear in the ŒDeaths by firearm¹ Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory lists and collate them myself.
Yes. This is actually a very simple thing to do programmatically.
What you are calling dilution is the exact opposite.
Maybe we should add a feature that traverses category trees automatically, but it also seems like a nice outside-of-Wikipedia javascripty feature someone could build pretty easily.
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the ŒSuicides by firearm¹ Category only, he does not appear in the ŒDeaths by firearm¹ Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory lists and collate them myself.
This has been knocked about a few times, and the latest proposal put forward that I recall was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_intersection which the tech opinion felt might strain the servers, looking at the talk page it appears the tables might take at least several seconds to display. Or something. I don't pretend to understand it, to be honest. I only know it would be a useful feature but it is difficult to practically implement.
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.
Then, I began finding many of my edits being reverting by persons who stated that only one of these Categories should be included in an article; that both a main category and a subcategory should not be in the same article. More and more of these articles were being diluted by this argument.
I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the ŒSuicides by firearm¹ Category only, he does not appear in the ŒDeaths by firearm¹ Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory lists and collate them myself.
Another example: Jane Doe dies from breast cancer. Category: ³Deaths from breast cancer² is added to her Category box, but I do not include the Category: ³Cancer deaths². Then, when I click on the ŒCategory: Deaths from breast cancer¹, her name is included in this list. But, if I click on the ŒCategory: Cancer deaths¹ she is not included.
What I am wanting by adding her name to both Categories is a separate list of ALL persons who died from breast cancer, and a separate list of ALL persons who died from cancer. What is the problem with including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory?
It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it into the parent category.
Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious.
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
Marc
From: "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:24:45 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
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.
Then, I began finding many of my edits being reverting by persons who stated that only one of these Categories should be included in an article; that both a main category and a subcategory should not be in the same article. More and more of these articles were being diluted by this argument.
I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the Suicides by firearm1 Category only, he does not appear in the Deaths by firearm1 Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory lists and collate them myself.
Another example: Jane Doe dies from breast cancer. Category: 3Deaths from breast cancer2 is added to her Category box, but I do not include the Category: 3Cancer deaths2. Then, when I click on the Category: Deaths from breast cancer1, her name is included in this list. But, if I click on the Category: Cancer deaths1 she is not included.
What I am wanting by adding her name to both Categories is a separate list of ALL persons who died from breast cancer, and a separate list of ALL persons who died from cancer. What is the problem with including the same Article in both a Main Category and a Subcategory?
It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it into the parent category.
Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
Sam,
Sounds very good to me!
Marc
From: "Sam Korn" smoddy@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:44:08 +0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
-- Sam _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Sam Korn wrote:
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
Perhaps an option on the category page which allows a choice of "expand" upwards (category tree) and/or downwards (articles)? -kc-
Sam Korn schreef:
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html).
Eugene
I don't know that what I am asking for is as complex as your example. Cancer
Lung cancer. Suicides > Suicides by firearm >> Deaths by firearm. I believe
limiting the number (and specificity) of the subcategories would help to keep the process within manageable limits.
Marc
From: Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:16:25 +0100 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
Sam Korn schreef:
On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I don't understand how it would defeat the purpose of subcats. My goal is to be able to retrieve lists of persons with like characteristics. Unless a person is included in a subcategory, they will not be included in that list. A person who dies from lung cancer, also belongs in the larger list of persons who died from cancer.
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html).
Eugene _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/12/06, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html).
Hmm. I hadn't thought of those points. Fair enough.
On 12/12/06, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html).
Eugene
This is a real problem, which an extension, semantic mediawiki, (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki) was made to solve. It's definitely worth taking a look at for situations like this. It allows you to do things like say, "Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]]. You can then do fun things like say, show me all the cities with populations over 20 etc.
For this original example, Fred is a [[profession::writer]] who committed [[type of death::suicide]]. [[Category:People]] etc. You could then query all the writers who's type of death was suicide without having to have one million categories for every possible union. I hope one day we can (maybe cross your fingers) use some of this on the main wikipedia. It's usefulness as a replacement for a lot of categories is one of the biggest benefits.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
For Wikipedia's purposes, it would be much better to work on computation to "translate" the text.
One of the fundamental tenets of wikis is that they remain as close to natural language and markup as possible -- the wiki format should remain readable.
This:
Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]].
is not.
On 12/13/06, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 12/12/06, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
Categories as implemented now have mixed meanings: they can describe "is-a", "has-a" or "is-related-to" connections. See earlier discussions on this list in September 2004 and June 2006 (http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-June/048183.html
).
Eugene
This is a real problem, which an extension, semantic mediawiki, (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki) was made to solve. It's definitely worth taking a look at for situations like this. It allows you to do things like say, "Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]]. You can then do fun things like say, show me all the cities with populations over 20 etc.
For this original example, Fred is a [[profession::writer]] who committed [[type of death::suicide]]. [[Category:People]] etc. You could then query all the writers who's type of death was suicide without having to have one million categories for every possible union. I hope one day we can (maybe cross your fingers) use some of this on the main wikipedia. It's usefulness as a replacement for a lot of categories is one of the biggest benefits.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The Cunctator wrote:
For Wikipedia's purposes, it would be much better to work on computation to "translate" the text.
One of the fundamental tenets of wikis is that they remain as close to natural language and markup as possible -- the wiki format should remain readable.
This:
Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]].
is not.
I don't know about the "translation", but some of us are old enough to remember when articles were written in natural language. Some task-oriented people become so focused on what they believe would be easy that they often forget that there's a real world out there where people don't speak markup.
Ec
On 14/12/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]].
I don't know about the "translation", but some of us are old enough to remember when articles were written in natural language. Some task-oriented people become so focused on what they believe would be easy that they often forget that there's a real world out there where people don't speak markup.
So write the article in natural language, and bung in all the metadata stuff at the end where the templates, inter-language links and other markup goes. Inlining the sort of thing quoted above is pointless.
On 12/14/06, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
So write the article in natural language, and bung in all the metadata stuff at the end where the templates, inter-language links and other markup goes. Inlining the sort of thing quoted above is pointless.
Yes, my example is inline, but it of course works anywhere.
Also, people may want to look at this thread on wikitech-l right now http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-December/040402.html Someone is working on a way to get category intersections, which would be helpful probably.
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 12/13/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I don't know about the "translation", but some of us are old enough to remember when articles were written in natural language. Some task-oriented people become so focused on what they believe would be easy that they often forget that there's a real world out there where people don't speak markup.
Ec
I just have to see what people think about things like that occasionally, but I am thankful for other views, and have no doubt that if you let crazy tech-solutionists like me run amok wikipedia would be worse for it. :)
Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]
On 12/14/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
One of the fundamental tenets of wikis is that they remain as close to natural language and markup as possible -- the wiki format should remain readable.
This:
Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]].
is not.
Agreed. I don't see a major benefit in attempting to write "semantics" *in* the text. This would be fine:
Paris is a city in France with a population of 10,000,000. ... [[Category:...]] [[Type:=City]] [[Location::France]] [[Population:=10000000]]
Perhaps rather than attempting to fuse that stuff with the text, try fusing it with an infobox, which is inherently a way of formatting raw data?
Steve
Or making the edit box as fancy-shmancy as the article -- like being able to collapse some features... or previewing images! or WYSIWYG editing box! or telepathic article writing!
What about pressing a button and finding that 100,000 featured articles have been written?
On 12/17/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/14/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
One of the fundamental tenets of wikis is that they remain as close to natural language and markup as possible -- the wiki format should remain readable.
This:
Paris is a [[type:=city]] in [[located in::France]], with a population of [[population:=1,000,000,000]].
is not.
Agreed. I don't see a major benefit in attempting to write "semantics" *in* the text. This would be fine:
Paris is a city in France with a population of 10,000,000. ... [[Category:...]] [[Type:=City]] [[Location::France]] [[Population:=10000000]]
Perhaps rather than attempting to fuse that stuff with the text, try fusing it with an infobox, which is inherently a way of formatting raw data?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/18/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Or making the edit box as fancy-shmancy as the article -- like being able to collapse some features... or previewing images! or WYSIWYG editing box! or telepathic article writing!
What about pressing a button and finding that 100,000 featured articles have been written?
Who are you mocking here?
Steve
No one, of course! I just felt like going off on a tangent of features that I (and hopefully others) would delightfully want to have, with the intent that as I continued writing, the ideas would grow more and more unlikely-to-happen-soon.
On 12/17/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/18/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Or making the edit box as fancy-shmancy as the article -- like being
able to
collapse some features... or previewing images! or WYSIWYG editing box!
or
telepathic article writing!
What about pressing a button and finding that 100,000 featured articles
have
been written?
Who are you mocking here?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Sam Korn schreef:
The suggestion is that some kind of tool -- as yet, I believe unwritten -- could generate a list of all members of a category and its subcategories. I imagine this would suit your purpose.
Unfortunately, it would not. At least, not completely. Categorization is not transitive: if article A is a member of category C, and C is a subcat of D, A need not be a member of D. For example: [[Seine]] is in [[Category:Paris]], which is in [[Category:Cities in France]], which is in [[Category:France]], which is in [[Category:Republics]], which ultimately is a subcat of [[Category:Thought]].
But the Seine is not a thought, a republic, or a city in France.
I agree that this often happens, but in my opinion some of these sorts of things are bad uses of the category system and can be avoided (which I do in my own categorization). In particular, categories that are very clearly collections of things, like [[Category:Cities in France]], should *not* contain "related-to" subcategories. The article [[Paris]] should be in [[Category:Cities in France]], but [[Category:Paris]] should not be.
-Mark
On 12/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it into the parent category.
Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious.
There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing. It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it into the parent category.
Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious.
There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing. It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
But it's by far the most logical construct to make, and there is very little reason to keep the software free from any support of that construct (even if it is to the detriment of other, more exotic constructs).
On 12/14/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing. It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
But it's by far the most logical construct to make, and there is very little reason to keep the software free from any support of that construct (even if it is to the detriment of other, more exotic constructs).
I wasn't implying that MediaWiki *shouldn't* support the notion of "supercategory". The opposite, in fact. It would be extremely to be able to treat all members of all subcategories as also belonging to that category - for certain categories.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/14/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing. It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
But it's by far the most logical construct to make, and there is very little reason to keep the software free from any support of that construct (even if it is to the detriment of other, more exotic constructs).
I wasn't implying that MediaWiki *shouldn't* support the notion of "supercategory". The opposite, in fact. It would be extremely to be able to treat all members of all subcategories as also belonging to that category - for certain categories.
Kind of like how ls has a recursive feature, but it's off by default, and how find is recursive by default, but you can limit it?
On 12/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Kind of like how ls has a recursive feature, but it's off by default, and how find is recursive by default, but you can limit it?
Not exactly - there you're talking about the function (searching, browsing, navigating...) dictating whether subcategories are included. I was thinking letting the category decide: "Category:Artists" should, when browsing, include "Category:French artists". By default, it should not, however.
Steve
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:55:24 +1100 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
On 12/18/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Kind of like how ls has a recursive feature, but it's off by default, and how find is recursive by default, but you can limit it?
Not exactly - there you're talking about the function (searching, browsing, navigating...) dictating whether subcategories are included. I was thinking letting the category decide: "Category:Artists" should, when browsing, include "Category:French artists". By default, it should not, however.
Steve
Another example that recently occurred. In the Article on [[Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok]], the Categories, 'Poets', 'Russian poets', & 'Jewish poets' were each included. An editor came along and deleted the 'Poets' Category, saying it was a 'duplicate category'. If I now clicked on that Main Category, 'Poets' would Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok, the poet be included in that list?
Marc
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On 12/19/06, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
Another example that recently occurred. In the Article on [[Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok]], the Categories, 'Poets', 'Russian poets', & 'Jewish poets' were each included. An editor came along and deleted the 'Poets' Category, saying it was a 'duplicate category'. If I now clicked on that Main Category, 'Poets' would Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok, the poet be included in that list?
According to the vague proposal I'm suggesting? Yes, for some definition of "included". Probably articles should be shown grouped, but on the same page. And there should be much more interesting things done with categories that would also include these "subcategories".
I wonder, how should this relationship be expressed? Some extension to the [[Category:...]] notation? [[Category:Poets||Isa]] ? Definitely a poor man's semantic MediaWiki but a start?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/13/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
It pretty much defeats the purpose of having subcategories.
By putting an article into a subcategory, you are effectively putting it into the parent category.
Maybe we should figure out a way to make that more obvious.
There is absolutely nothing at all in MediaWiki that makes a page in a subcategory behave like it's also in the parent category. Nothing. It's completely and utterly a construct in the mind of the user.
That sounds like a good argument for uprading the software.
Ec
I have complained, but, so far to no avail. All I get in response is a reminder of the "limitations of Wikipedia's server".
Wikipedia's servers aren't that limited. I doubt there is any need to reduce our use of categories for the sake of the servers - the developers will tell us if there is.