On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:
Larry, I was just working my way through a "feature request" list I keep for myself, and "categories" was one of them. So, I'm sure it was in discussion somewhere. The only mention of it I can find right now is at
http://wikipedia.com/wiki/Feature_requests/Really_ambitious_and_fanciful_fea ture_requests
where you already "answered" that request, as I see now.
OK. :-)
Anyway, the feature isn't meant to *reduce* anything - it is just for making certain things easier.
Of course!
As I said, it is only implemented as a "minimal" version right now.
That's interesting--I'm wondering what the full version would do!
There's no pressure to use it.
Right, but there was no pressure to use subpages either; it was just a feature that happened to be included in the wiki software that we happened to adopt, and people thought it was nifty and started using it anyway.
Yes, it has some drive into the "old-fashioned" categories. But, even in the "web structure" of wikipedia, noone would put a "DNA" article under "fiddle traditions"...
Of course not; that's not what I'm concerned about. I'm mainly concerned about adding unnecessary complications, and imposing useless category schemes--when the content *is* the category scheme--when the information in articles (if well done) provides its own structure in as detailed and precise a way as one could possibly hope for.
I just thought it would make things easier, so *later*, you could restrict your "Recent Changes" to display only articles * without any category information (=not categorized at all) and * those with Biology as a category There's no point in choosing a category at every edit, right?
Well, in fact, there is. Rather than categorizing articles--which, I think, opens up a huge can of worms that is best left in the depths of the pantry--we categorize edits. The *edit* category information for each article is saved with each article, and can be changed by each user (a philosophical addition to [[God]] is filed under the philosophy category, whereas one that gives details about the Muslim conception of God wouldn't be). And that info is used *just* to solve one clear problem, viz., that edits in all sorts of different fields are jumbled together in the present Recent Changes page. (Some people would like that, and they could just choose to view all edits. I'd probably view things that way myself, but I'd like the option of just looking at the philosophy edits too.)
Also, this could be a way to use categories for the "approval" mechanism we didn't decide on yet...
I'm not sure I understand...?
Anyway, I thought I made it pretty clear that you've got a dilemma, and I'm curious what you think about it. On the one hand, you might want the categories to proliferate freely. Then you've just recreated subpages with all their problems. On the other hand, you might want the categories to be of a limited set. In that case, we should have a drop-down box that lists the categories we (somehow) decide on (to prevent misspelling and the proliferation of new categories). Also in that case, it's still just not clear what the *purpose* of the feature is. So far, I can see only *one* purpose that is important enough to warrant all the trouble, namely, categorizing edits (or articles) for purposes of the overgrown [[Recent Changes]] page. If that's the purpose of the feature, the feature, in my opinion, should probably be redesigned so as to include a drop-down box rather than in-the-text data; the data in any case should probably be used just for [[Recent Changes]] categorization, not to inform readers of what category an article belongs to.
If designed with enough flexibility, then, *if* we found some clear advantage or use for categorizing articles (i.e., if we spelled out what article categorization would be used for, such that that would be a clear advantage over the presents system), we could use the same data to categorize articles.
As for the categories, I suggest we use all "HomePage" categories, and, additionally, more specific ones, like "Biochemistry".
Well, I don't know. That would be something that is up to all of us to opine about and hash out. It depends, again, entirely on what the purpose of the feature is! If the purpose is *just* to sort [[Recent Changes]] neatly, I imagine it might depend on how narrowly we can expect people's interests in Wikipedia article edits to be delineated.
Of course, most of that *could* be done with simple [[links]] (treat a link to [[Biology]] as a category, for example), this is just more - well, visible.
If you don't want it, just say so, it'll be gone in a minute... (Remember, I just implement the stuff, I don't think about what it is good for;)
In the interests of simplicity and general lack of headaches, I'd say at least scrap *this* version of it; but save the code, of course, since we might think of a very good use for it.
Larry
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com [mailto:wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Larry Sanger Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 8:10 PM To: Wikipedia-L@Nupedia. Com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Categories in the PHP script
Magnus, can you give me an example of a post or just some point that someone has made, that constituted a feature requirement such that this feature in particular is supposed to fulfill it? There's so much that has been said on the topic of categories that I can't remember. I mean, I'd like to see the feature requirements at the same time we see the feature, so that we can compare the two.
I do remember one feature that I asked for, along with Jimbo (in at least one form--the feature, not Jimbo), and perhaps some other people, that this might help with. Namely, "Recent Changes" has gotten perhaps so large as to have too much noise and not enough signal for someone who is interested only in a few topics. In that case, my suggestion was that we categorize edits (not articles) in one of the front-page categories, by selecting them from a multiple selection box. (Future edits could be automatically categorized the same way, or changed by the user as they become relevant to different areas.) This is a specific, delimited solution to a specific, delimited problem, and it would make Wikipedia more attractive to specialists, which is important.
The category feature you've created could be used in all sorts of ways, and (sorry!) I'm not sure I like all of those ways. First of all, it appears to be a way to get the notion of subpages in through the back door, by distinguishing a "category" category of articles and an "articles in this category" category. So, if used indiscriminately, I'd largely be opposed to this new feature on much the same grounds that I was opposed to subpages in the first place.
If, on the other hand, we as a community were to decide that only a *limited, pre-designated* set of pages could be "category" pages, then this would be, obviously, different from the old main page-subpage scheme. In that case, though, I should think it would be better to select the category for any given page from a drop-down box, so people couldn't mess up the spelling, attempt to add categories that shouldn't be categories, etc. Moreover, while my misgivings with subpages would not apply, for the most part, I'd still wonder--just because I like to be clear about this sort of thing--what the feature, used this way, would accomplish. I imagine that after the philosophy of language article, we'd have the "philosophy" and "language" (and/or "linguistics") categories listed. In doing this, we would *highlight* the fact that the article belongs to a number of traditional academic categories. And we would invite the reader to begin their exploration of Wikipedia with those traditional academic categories. And you know, I agree with the interdisciplinary advocates: I just don't think the traditional academic categories are *important enough*, per se, for us to take this trouble to *highlight* them for the reader. The reader can easily and will naturally deduce the general subjects, at many different levels (not just the broadest-traditional- academic-category level), just by reading the article and following the links in the text. The beauty of a well-written, complete, well-linked article is that one can specifically place its location in the web of knowledge by reading the article itself.
Of course, I could be just failing to remember or realize some other clear benefit of having articles sorted into a limited number of various official categories.
Now, if we *simply* wanted to use this as a standard "see also" section, some modified version of this might work well. But it does too much for just tha right nowt...
Awaiting further enlightenment!
Larry
On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Magnus Manske wrote:
Hi all!
I finally got to implement the often-demanded categories in the
PHP script
(http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml).
It works like this:
- Add "{{CATEGORY A category,Another category}}" to the text of
an article.
Separate the categories by ",".
- Everything between {{ and }} will *not* be displayed within
the text, but
as a category list at the bottom of the page, as well as in the
sidebar, if
you have turned it on.
- In an article that *is* a category, write "{{THISCATEGORY}}"
somewhere.
This will be replaced with a list of all articles which *at that very moment* have a "{{CATEGORY xyz}}" for that category.
See it for yourself at the above site. I put "Gene" and "DNA" into both "Biology" and "Genetics" category. "Genetics" itself is in the "Biology" Category. On the "Genetics" and "Biology" pages, at the bottom,
you'll find
a grey box, listing all the pages that are within that category.
OK, I know this screams "problems" all over, but it's just the
"hooray, it's
running!" version. There's much more to be done, starting with a sorted article output to limiting "Search" and "Recent Changes" to certain categories, and so on. But hey, it's a start...
A more technical note: I also put all the "fixed" text displayed on the 'pedia into variables and collected them in one single file. So, for international versions, only one file has to be changed, the
other files can
get "technical" updates without having to translate/merge the
whole thing
again.
That's all for now, Magnus
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