On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
How would you describe the relationship between Category:John Lennon and Category:The Beatles, knowing that Category:John Lennon contains songs that have nothing to do with The Beatles? Actually, just to flesh this out, what are the relationships between these (possibly fictional) categories: English rock bands, The Beatles, John Lennon, John Lennon songs, The Beatles songs. Similarly, into which categories would these articles go: [[The Beatles]], [[John Lennon]], [[I Am The Walrus]] (John Lennon/Beatles song), [[Imagine (song)]] (John Lennon solo song).
It's simple. Look up at my earlier subcategories of humans:
==Subcategories== All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.
* People by city * People by company * People by country of residence . . .
The key line is "All of the following are {{PAGENAME}}.". Well, let's rephrase that slightly: "All articles in each of the following categories are {{PAGENAME}}." Given the line "All articles in each of the following categories are British rock bands", does Category:The Beatles fit?
Now, one problem here is that "The Beatles" actually means "Beatles-related things" here, just as "Jesus" means "Jesus-related things". This is something that will need to be clarified. To that end, notice that I've introduced multiple constructions *hard-coded into the category page* that assume that the category name is in the plural--no more lazy ambiguous shortcuts like "Category:Jesus". If "article X and Y are in category Z" is not synonymous to "article X and Y are Z", then the category is wrong.
Of course, people could change the interface back, but with some encouragement I don't think they would. You just have to make a change that will allow them to have "related to" built into the system, and combined with easy recategorizing/category renaming, I think they'll see the light.