2006/8/24, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>om>:
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.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels