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