2006/8/24, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com>om>:
On 8/24/06, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)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.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels