Hi,
I'm new on this mailing list and I just stumpled upon this thread.
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
That's an interesting category system you came up with. I have a few questions about it:
* The link "Categories" at the top of every article is very prominent. Ideally, it should therefore link to something useful. However, the Special:Categories page as it is is not very useful for two major reasons I can see: * It shows *all* pages in the Category namespace, including those that are just redirects and those that don't contain any articles. Maybe those should be hidden by default? * It does not display any kind of hierarchy. Now, of course I know you don't want all the categories to form a canonical hierarchy, but some kind of hierarchy would still be useful. * How about having it list only the "top-level" categories, so you can navigate your way through the "not-quite-a-tree", and have it display a link to a Special:Allcategories page that really lists everything. * 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]]. Of course, this is not ideal: [[Category:Popular but specialised computer science topic]] may have more articles than [[Category: Almost top-level but esoteric topic]].
* Would it be possible to show the categories link only if the article does have categories?
* The list of categories (both on Special:Categories and on the article and category pages) should have the underscores converted to spaces.
* The list is currently formatted link this: Categories : Category1 | Category2 Firstly, I don't like the space in front of the ":", and secondly I don't really like the "|". Wouldn't something like this look more professional? Categories: Category1, Category2
* 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.
* Apparently you've put introductory paragraphs like this into each of the categories: "These are all of the articles about advanced mathematics. If you see an article about advanced mathematics that isn't listed here, then place a link to this page in it: "[[Category:Advanced mathematics]]". 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]].
* 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.
Those are my thoughts on it just now. I've probably forgotten loads, but I'll just send this off now. :) Please let me know what you think.
Greetings, Timwi