Hi, 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?
Steve
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Moin,
On Wednesday 26 July 2006 18:24, Steve Bennett wrote:
Hi, 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?
Even worse in my opintion is that you _have_ to fill some text into the category page, or otherwise links to it wont work. Usually the text thus reads along the lines "All foo articles:" for Category:Foo.
Best wishes,
Tels - -- Signed on Wed Jul 26 18:36:45 2006 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
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On 7/26/06, Tels nospam-abuse@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
On 7/26/06, Stephen Forrest stephen.forrest@gmail.com wrote:
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?
Well I was thinking of a middle ground, whereby if two pages linked to the same "non-existent" category, it became "existent" - well, blue at least. It would be nice to encourage people to think about ways of dividing up big categories. I've come across some monsters on EN lately, such as [[Category:Poetic form]] and [[Category:XML-based standards]].
A lot could be done to make category reorganisation easier. I don't have many concrete ideas yet, but displaying local hiercharies is another thing that would be cool...
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
Yes, but there are many problems like (eg, pages that aren't linked to, pages that don't link to anything, pages that aren't categorised) that best dealt with through "special pages". "Category has no super-category" does not seem an appropriate reason for the category to be a redlink - especially since it's easy to have a category with no super category that *isn't* a redlink.
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.
I actually meant wiki in the general sense when I said "small wikis". Not very clear I admit :)
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.
Yep. When users have to do strange, non-intuitive things to reach normal situations, you know something is probably not quite right.
Steve
On 26/07/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, but there are many problems like (eg, pages that aren't linked to, pages that don't link to anything, pages that aren't categorised) that best dealt with through "special pages". "Category has no super-category" does not seem an appropriate reason for the category to be a redlink - especially since it's easy to have a category with no super category that *isn't* a redlink.
I would say that for a category to be considered to "exist" it needs to be related to other categories (and, via these, the rest of the category tree). So to exist it needs to be categorised (contain the text "[[Category:Foo]]"), and so be no longer red. Therefore, redcategories typically indicate unlinked (and unuseful) categories.
On 7/27/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
I would say that for a category to be considered to "exist" it needs to be related to other categories (and, via these, the rest of the category tree). So to exist it needs to be categorised (contain the text "[[Category:Foo]]"), and so be no longer red. Therefore, redcategories typically indicate unlinked (and unuseful) categories.
Honestly, category relations aren't particularly useful in MediaWiki at the moment. Since there's no category math, and there's no way of seeing all items in all subcategories on one page, intercategory links are no more useful -- for the time being -- than normal interpage links.
There are also cases where categories do not need to belong to another category to be "useful", like "1911 Encyclopaedia" or "Pages needing cleanup" or whatever. They can be made *even more useful* by categorising, but that's not saying much...
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
There are also cases where categories do not need to belong to another category to be "useful", like "1911 Encyclopaedia" or "Pages needing cleanup" or whatever. They can be made *even more useful* by categorising, but that's not saying much...
Steve
They are self-explanation but, how do you know that such category exist? It's the reason of the category trees. So you could arrive to "Pages needing cleanup" from "Wiki maintenance" and "1911 Encyclopaedia" from "Articles by sources". And, would you write "1911 Encyclopaedia" or "1911 Encyclopedia" ? It's an easy mistake, so you end up with both categories...
On 7/28/06, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
They are self-explanation but, how do you know that such category exist? It's the reason of the category trees. So you could arrive to "Pages needing cleanup" from "Wiki maintenance" and "1911 Encyclopaedia" from "Articles by sources". And, would you write "1911 Encyclopaedia" or "1911 Encyclopedia" ? It's an easy mistake, so you end up with both categories...
How do you know that any page exists? Don't confuse the ideal situation with "anything but the worst possible situation".
Anyway.
Steve
This was discussed extensively and a decision was made by the contributors: the categories shouldn't be blue all the time, i.e. red categories are red for a reason (misspellings being one of the reasons that I can remember). As a matter of fact, categories were all blue for a couple of days, but then reverted back to normal after a huge (IMO) outburst of users.
Cheers Filip
Steve Bennett wrote:
Hi, 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?
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