2006/8/24, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
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?
We lack good model categories, I think. For me, a category like "Tokyo" should only contain two things: Subcategories (Geography of Tokyo, Tokyo culture, People born in Tokyo...), and articles waiting to be subcategorised. It's totally consistent with the wiki principle that articles can be dumped in the simplest category, and then moved later by an editor with more "local" knowledge.
I haven't denied that.
To answer your "why?" question: Because subcategories don't work. The princple that "If X is a subcat of Y, then Z should not be in both X and Y" is totally bogus and unworkable - at the moment.
Why that?
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.
There is general blurring of the distinction between classes of things and things themselves. See [[Category:Elephants]] for an example. The solution is probably to branch these categories into "Famous X's", "Classes of X" etc. For a category with only 5-6 members I'm not fussed if it contains both articles on general classes of things and specific instances of those things, but for bigger categories we should be more precise.
This is another case: It is a category for classes, containing a subcategory for instances.
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
Why? It seems to be in the right place, a subcat of both Fictional martial artists and Jeet Kune Do practitioners. Should probably be a subcat of some "Computer game characters" or something too.
Just my gut feeling - what's the use of this category? Would anyone think "Hey, this is a fictional Jeet Kune Do practitioner, I would want more of those". Still, I agree that after all the category is good, because you *would* want to have them in Category:Jeet Kune Do practioners, but when getting to that category from a real person, you don't want to bump into the fictional characters. So, in the end, I'm happy with this one.
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?
I disagree - everything is to be gained by splitting categories whenever they can be unambiguously and precisely split.
I disagree with that. Strongly. A category is to find similar subjects, and that is best done by having a certain size of categories. Split them up further, and you only give more work to those trying to look something up. Going with your principle would leave only categories with 1 page and categories with 2 categories - everything else can be split. The goal of categorization is to make navigation easier, it is not to categorize as much as possible.
Category:Haywood County, Tennessee: The type of case we are discussing. Only parent category: Tennessee counties
Seems to be in good working order?
Well, it's the thing we discussed before. Or at least the thing I thought we were discussing before. It's a subcategory of tennessee counties, but the articles in it are not about Tennessee counties, but about cities. I don't see why you vehemently oppose putting "Jesus" under 'People executed for heresy" yet consider putting "Haywood County, Tennessee" in "Tennessee counties" 'good working order'. To me it's twice the same kind of thing.
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.
What's wrong with "Categorizing for the sake of categorizing"? And what's wrong with underpopulated categories? It's just like a stub - awaiting further development.
We are here to make the encyclopedia, not to make a classification scheme of everything. It would, in my opinion, be so much more useful to have (for example) one category about "1860s in Mexico" than to have to go through 11 categories to find those. Again my question is: What is the use of categories? To me it is, getting similar pages together. And that is done not by splitting up further and further until you have all 1- and 2-page categories, but by bringing them together to a manageable size.