Timwi wrote in part:
- Or perhaps show a list of the (say) 500 categories with the most articles? For obvious reasons, [[Category:Mathematics]] is going to have way more articles than [[Category:Abstract algebra]].
That depends on how you count them, of course. If an article links to [[Category:Abstract algebra]], then it generally won't link directly to [[Category:Mathematics]]. OTOH, it will of course link /in/directly to [[Category:Mathematics]].
- Would it be possible to show the categories link only if the article
does have categories?
I don't see the need for the "Categories" /link/ at all, really. [[Special:Categories]] should appear in the list of all special pages; then we can /print/ "Categories:" before listing the categories, if any in fact exist.
- The list of sub-categories on the category pages shouldn't list
categories that just redirect straight back to the same category. For example, http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_algebra has a link to "Abstract Algebra" with a capital A, which just redirects straight back to "Abstract algebra". Maybe it shouldn't list any redirects at all.
But it should list the pages that link to the redirect.
- Apparently you've put introductory paragraphs like this into each of
the categories:
[...]
I'm seeing difficulty in keeping those consistent. Perhaps it would be wiser either
- to automate this paragraph (so category pages can't be edited at all), or
- to make (say) [[Category:Abstract algebra]] act as the article that is now [[Abstract algebra]].
I'm not sure that I agree. I put that text in, but I don't know that it's really the /best/ text. And it's not clear to me that the text should be the same for everything; compare [[Category:Mathematics]] with [[Category:Advanced mathematics]]. Inserting the article [[Mathematics]] would definitely be way too much!
- Another thing I find a little limiting, but it doesn't bother me that
much, is that you cannot link to a category (just like you cannot link to an article on another language wiki) in the middle of the text. All [[Category:something]] will be moved to the list of categories at the top of the page. Maybe it would be wiser to reserve [[cat:something]] for the list, and let users still put [[Category:something]] to link to the category page in the middle of text. This would be especially useful on Talk pages.
Actually, I don't think that category links should be special at all, except from pages in the [[:]] and [[Category:]] namespaces. Similarly, language links don't work in [[...talk:]] namespaces. However, it doesn't matter much, since you can link to a category page, even from within an article in [[:]], using [[:Category:xxx]]. (Note the extra colon.) Try it!
Incidentally, you can also put interlanguage links in an article, using the corresponding interwiki link (like [[EnWikiPedia:xxx]]). But for some reason, this doesn't work on [[test:]], even though other interwiki links (like [[MeatBall:xxx]] work fine.)
-- Toby