On 7/26/06, Tels <nospam-abuse(a)bloodgate.com> wrote:
On Wednesday 26 July 2006 18:24, Steve Bennett wrote:
Currently, when linking to a category that "does not exist", a
redlink is shown. However, the definition of "does not exist" is "has
no text describing the category". However, the category actually
functions perfectly well. Since many categories are self-explanatory
(especially for small wikis), I suspect this redlinking acts as an
unnecessary brake on the use of categories. That is, people are
discouraged from pre-emptively linking to a category that doesn't
"exist" yet. Redlinks in the category bar look like mistakes, they
don't look like you've actually done something that is highly
encouraged.
Would it be possible to change the definition of "does not exist" to
> be "has no text, and no articles"? Or maybe something else entirely?
But if the mere act of category inclusion caused a category to "exist"
in this way, then there would never be any redlinked categories at
all, except during preview, no?
Redlinking of categories does serve some useful purpose. Though an
uncreated category may contain articles, it will by definition never
have a place in the category hierarchy and never have interwiki links
to equivalent categories in other wikis. These last two things are
also very important for small wikipedias. Though "blue-linking"
doesn't guarantee either will be the case, it's useful to have
redlinking to spot when they're definitely not there.
That said, you have a point. It is a bit odd that the first thing one
does to "create" a category is submit a blank edit field.
Steve