2006/8/24, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com:
The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will prevail.
I got admonished on the Dutch Wikipedia because I did just complain about the category system, but did not say *what* should be improved. Problem is, the whole 'tree' has more dead wood than useful content. So I looked for 10 random categories, and judged about half of them to have major mistakes. Here a similar attempt on the English Wikipedia:
Category:Cities in Tokyo - is both in "Geography of Tokyo" and "Tokyo". Why? Category:Romanian military aircraft 1930-1939 - there are 3 articles in this category. There's also 3 categories to put it in. Need I say more?
Category:Spanish translators - Why is this divided by nationality instead of language, which I would find much more logical. And I don't consider translators non-fiction writers either
Category:Sendai class cruisers - A category with only 2 pages is functioning more to confuse than to enlighten. A subcategory of "cruiser classes" although it is rather than has cruiser classes. Subcategory of both Cruisers of Japan and Cruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy which have the same content but different locations in the category tree.
Category:British academics: Is this useful? Why is this a subcategory of Education and Educators?
Category:Fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioners: I hate this type of category, but alas, putting it directly in the parent categories would be even worse
Category:Indoor ice hockey venues in Sweden: What is gained by having indoor and outdoor ice hockey venues in separate categories, except that there are more categories with more possibilities for getting lost?
Category:TRS-80 Color Computer games: Well, nothing *major* wrong with this one
Category:Haywood County, Tennessee: The type of case we are discussing. Only parent category: Tennessee counties
Category:Canadian football stubs: Why o why....
Category:1862 in Mexico: That's two articles. And no doubt many similar categories. There's even a category Underpopulated (Year) in Mexico categories.... Categorizing for the sake of categorizing. Or worse.