2006/8/24, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com:
Problem is, they ARE behaving as they should. Or at least, they are behaving like those who work on them think they should.
I don't know, I've pointed out a few local weirdnesses in categories to people and they've generally been fairly receptive. It *seems* logical at first that Category:John Lennon is a subcategory of Category:The Beatles. But not when you consider that John Lennon ends up being a subsubcategory of Category:English rock bands.
No, then you assume that everything that goes into a subcategory also belongs to the main category. Categorisation is not strict set theory, and bundles similar notions. A category:Germany is thus a subcategory of Category:Country, because it is a country.
You may think it's logical that being in a subcategory means that there some kind of connection with the main category, and I may think so, but others don't. And when they don't think that something is illogical, they don't think their own actions that lead to such a situation are undesirable.
The category system is a mess, a labyrinth. But I don't see any way to improve that any more. I have given up on them, to me they're just the sewer of Wikipedia now. Which is a shame, because they looked so great when introduced. But apparently it's typically something where the lowest common demonimator decides the level of the whole. Where there's two possibilities, both will have people in favor of them, and in the case of categories, it's the stupidest of those two who will prevail.
I interpret it differently. I think categorising stuff well is more difficult than editing articles. Generally, categories are structured relatively badly, and used relatively badly - not through ill will, but just lack of understanding. OTOH, it actually doesn't take that long to totally clean up a category.
It does. At least in the way I want to clean it up. That is, move stuff from too-small subcategories to the main category. You have to apply for deletion of the subcategory, get an objection to that, and nothing happens. That's pretty slow I say - 2 weeks to NOT get what you want.
Maybe 2 hours to evaluate and recategorise 100 articles.
I could go and do some categories, but at best it's a mere small improvement where elsewhere there's double as much worsening. More likely I will simply get reverted. If I'm unlucky I'm getting reverted AND branded a vandal.