On 8/24/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)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.