OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
I suggest starting at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
Magnus
P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)
Magnus-
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
Nice! Since you coded it, you may call it a "Magnus style scheme" ;-)
Some feedback:
1) If there's just one article, it still gets a semicolon appended. I have no opinion yet as to whether the list should be formatted as one big block or as a list, though.
2) We don't seem to have parent/child categories yet. If a category is itself added to a category, the parent category should have a section called
== Child categories ==
And the child category should have a section called
== Parent categories ==
By having this kind of automatic directory-like organization, we could avoid a lot of category redundancy by only adding the most relevant, lowest level category to each article.
3) Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
* Biology ** Medicine * France ** French monarch ...
4) I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".
5) After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the category list, e.g.
[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]
I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
I'm worried about this if we don't have hierarchical categories. Otherwise, I think we can avoid creating a too big mess by coming up with a reasonable hierarchy.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Some feedback:
- If there's just one article, it still gets a semicolon appended. I have
no opinion yet as to whether the list should be formatted as one big block or as a list, though.
Fixed.
- We don't seem to have parent/child categories yet. If a category is
itself added to a category, the parent category should have a section called
== Child categories ==
Done.
And the child category should have a section called
== Parent categories ==
Unnecessary. They're displayed as "normal" categories of this very page.
- Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
- Biology
** Medicine
- France
** French monarch ...
What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology" and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?
- I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".
Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.
- After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the category list, e.g.
[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]
*Way* too complicated without a separate database table (which, I won't get tired of reminding you, was my initial implementation ;-)
I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
I'm worried about this if we don't have hierarchical categories. Otherwise, I think we can avoid creating a too big mess by coming up with a reasonable hierarchy.
Let's see how this works out...
Magnus
Magnus-
Bug report first: The new "Subcategories" links do not point to the Category: namespace but into the main namespace.
And the child category should have a section called
== Parent categories ==
Unnecessary. They're displayed as "normal" categories of this very page.
Of course! D'oh.
- Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
- Biology
** Medicine
- France
** French monarch ...
What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology" and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?
Yes, I think it should appear under both. A little redundancy here won't hurt.
- I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".
Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.
I agree, looks fine to me.
- After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the category list, e.g.
[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]
*Way* too complicated without a separate database table
I presume you're using the LINKS table. Why not add a LINK_ID to the table and have a separate LINK_AS table that includes the sorting criteria and can be looked up for categories? Updated on page save?
As for separation, let's keep the idea of a meta namespace open -- we can always move this stuff if need be. I envision a scheme where by default, a user sees two edit windows for each page, the big article editor and a small meta editor, but he can decide to disable the meta stuff if he doesn't care about it at all.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Bug report first: The new "Subcategories" links do not point to the Category: namespace but into the main namespace.
Whoopsie ;-) Fixed.
- Similarly, it would be neat if the list of categories would be
structured according to parent child relationships, i.e.
What about double entries? "Biochemistry" is both in category "Biology" and "Chemistry". Should that appear under both?
Yes, I think it should appear under both. A little redundancy here won't hurt.
Maybe later today...
- I think the categories should be put under the page subtitle, or at the
bottom of the page, but definitely not next to "printable version".
Trying your first suggestion. Looks OK.
I agree, looks fine to me.
One thing I can leave unchanged :-)
- After I initially proposed the scheme, Brion suggested that it would be
useful to have some way to specify how an article should be sorted in the category list, e.g.
[[Category:Author|King, Stephen]]
*Way* too complicated without a separate database table
I presume you're using the LINKS table. Why not add a LINK_ID to the table and have a separate LINK_AS table that includes the sorting criteria and can be looked up for categories? Updated on page save?
Yes, that should work. I'll have a look at that part of the code.
As for separation, let's keep the idea of a meta namespace open -- we can always move this stuff if need be. I envision a scheme where by default, a user sees two edit windows for each page, the big article editor and a small meta editor, but he can decide to disable the meta stuff if he doesn't care about it at all.
Maybe that could be done "on-the-fly", when showing the edit page? Like this: 1. Load the article to edit from the database. 2. Extract all meta information. 3. Show the article in a big box, and the meta stuff in the small one. 4. Upon saving, attach the meta stuff at the end of the article. Advantages: 1. No need to change the database at all. 2. No need to change *any* code except the edit page code. 3. Option to display "classic" (like now), "split" and "article only". 4. Visual separation of article and meta data for the user. Disadvantages: 1. No internal separation of article and meta data. (Which doesn't matter for the categories, as we do them via the links table anyway.)
Magnus
Magnus-
some further thoughts&comments on the current implementation:
1) I think the "Categories:" link at the top should only show up on pages that actually have categories assigned to them. Otherwise it's slightly confusing to click the link and end up with a list of categories which have no relationship to the current article (and it also shows up somewhat annoyingly on special pages). If you want a generally available "List of categories", that seems to be a job for a special page.
2) I'm not sure the "|" is a good category separator. When I see
Categories: Biology | Medicine | Health
This suggests to me a kind of hierarchy, whereas
Categories: Biology, Medicine, Health
seems to indicate better that it is a list of items that do not necessarily have a relationship to each other.
3) The categories are not currently displayed in the Cologne Blue skin. Since you seem to like it, I thought I'd point that out ;-)
Once we have this set up, we'll have to think long and hard about related policies. What to put on category pages? Should parent categories be linked when child categories are already linked? Should we replace the current Main Page navigation with a category-based one? Should currently hand-maintained pages like "Needing attention", "Votes for deletion", "Fix a stub" be automated using categories? (Maybe we need MetaCategories?) etc. etc. Boy, this is gonna be fun ;-)
Maybe that could be done "on-the-fly", when showing the edit page?
Yes, that might be worth doing. I suggest waiting with the implementation until it becomes a real problem, though. Of course if it's all optional, I have no complaints about having it implemented right away. :-)
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller schrieb: [about separate edit boxes for meta information]
Yes, that might be worth doing. I suggest waiting with the implementation until it becomes a real problem, though.
The interlanguage links already are a real problem. Please implement it as soon as possible. Of course they shouldn't be shown to new users, only as an option in the preferences. But then you'd have to create accounts on every Wp just to make interlanguage links. That's annoying.
I still prefer a separate meta namespace.
Kurt
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
I suggest starting at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
"Biology is the science of wet things."
LOL !
ok; that works. technically :-)
I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
btw, what is that link about interlanguage links at the top ? I hope it is not planned that interlanguage links will only be displayed in another page than the article page ? If so, this is very very bad imho.
Magnus
cheers
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Anthere wrote:
btw, what is that link about interlanguage links at the top ? I hope it is not planned that interlanguage links will only be displayed in another page than the article page ? If so, this is very very bad imho.
No worry, it's just an attempt to get the language links into their own database table; just another experiment, it has nothing to do with the category scheme.
Magnus
On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 12:57:22PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
I suggest starting at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
The "Categories"-link that is added to the top of each article is also added to the special pages or to talk pages. (OK, the later could sometimes need a [[Category:Flame War]]). I would expect categories to be limited to the article namespace.
Regards,
JeLuF
Magnus Manske wrote:
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
Cool!
Comments:
When you list subcategories on a category page, you link to [[XXX]] when you should link to [[Category:XXX]]. On [[test:]] at least, this means a lot of spurious red links!
If I add a category link to an article and return to the category page, then my browser isn't told that the category page has been changed. This means that I should never trust a category page without reloading. A simple solution might be to never cache category pages, yet this will be problematic when the category pages become long. The more complete solution is to tell the cache to expire whenever the table of categories is changed for that category, rather than only when the category page itself has been edited; but I don't know how well that would fit into your code.
If a category page doesn't exist but I go to it anyway, then all I see is "(There is currently no text in this page)". There's no indication that there are already articels in the category. Could we still list them after "(There is currently no text ...)"?
The following two concerns may have a combined solution:
There is no support for redirected categories. For example, [[Category:Abstract Algebra]] redirects to the correct [[Category:Abstract algebra]] (and we want to allow this, or people will duplicate things!). Yet [[Category:Abstract algebra]] doesn't list the items that link to [[Category:Abstract Algebra]]. Instead, it only lists [[Category:Abstract Algebra]] as a subcategory, which is not what it really is. Category redirects were an important feature of Erik's idea.
You also don't list subcategories of subcategories. We don't really need this, since you can look at the subcategories, but it could confuse people as to what categories already exist. Now, we could ask people to link to [[Category:Mathematics]] whenever they link a category page to [[Category:Group theory]] (of course, you would not require this in ordinary articles). OTOH, you could list subcategories of subcategories fairly cleanly by using nested list structures in the rendered HTML; without that, it would end up being pretty messy.
The combined solution: Use a nested list structure similar to that on [[Special:Whatlinkshere]]. Then [[Category:Mathematics]] (as things now stand on [[test:]]) would say: "== Subcategories == "* [[Category:Advanced mathematics]] "** [[Category:Abstract algebra]] "*** [[Category:Abstract Algebra]] (redirect) "**** [[Category:Group theory]] "** [[Category:Set theory]] "* [[Category:Logic]] "* [[Category:Philosophy of mathematics]] "** [[Category:Foundations of mathematics]] It would be nicer, of course, to elide the redirect entirely, but perhaps that would be more difficult to programme? Potentially, you could stick a list of all articles in each subcategory inside this nested list structure, but that would probably be too long. (BTW, I've decided that [[Category:Advanced mathematics]] is a bad idea, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)
The following comments are not very important, so don't hold off on implementation because of them:
Links to categories probably shouldn't show up as stubs (brown text). But they should still show up as nonexistent (red text) when applicable.
If I put category links or interlanguage links at the bottom of a page, then this puts additional whitespace at the bottom of the HTML that really shouldn't be there; and this is not a new problem. It makes [[Category:Logic]] (for example) look kind of funny.
Shouldn't category pages have yellow backgrounds? I'm conflicted.
The list of articles in a category would look nicer if titles were given using spaces instead of underscores. The same goes for the list of subcategories of a category and the list of all categories on [[Special:Categories]].
P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)
Perhaps this should be announced on <wikipedia-L>? After all, we've been discussing category schemes over there. Then give them maybe a week?
-- Toby
Magnus Manske wrote:
OK, preliminary version running at test.wikipedia.org.
I suggest starting at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy which already has the categories Biology and Medicine (see top bar). Following such a link, you'll go to "Category:Biology" / "Category:Medicine", which are normal articles, except they have an automatically generated list of articles in that category at the end.
I still worry that we'll create a mess like we did with the interlanguage links. But, here, you go anyway.
Magnus
P.S.: This time I'll try to outsmart you all; unless I hear about some real problems with this scheme in the next few days, I'm going to put this into the CVS! Be warned!! ;-)
I'm just glad that something is happening. I do have some concerns similar to those expressed by Magnus. I'll be away for the next month, and I'll be looking forward to see what goes wrong in my absence. :-) I do believe that most of the real problems won't show up until the scheme has had a chance to be tried by Wikipedians in general instead of on test Wiki.
Eclecticology
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
On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Timwi wrote:
- 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
Personally, I like the |'s better.
- 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.
I would propose the [[:Category:something]] syntax here, because an equivalent piece of syntax already exists for images and such ([[:Image:something]] gives a normal link to an image page).
One thing I would like to remark, is that for interwiki use, if at all possible the word "Category" should be softcoded, so that it can be overruled in a language's language.php.
Andre Engels
Andre Engels wrote in part:
One thing I would like to remark, is that for interwiki use, if at all possible the word "Category" should be softcoded, so that it can be overruled in a language's language.php.
Yes, [[Category:]] should be a namespace. Right now it technically isn't.
-- Toby
Timwi wrote in part:
- 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]].
That depends on how you count them, of course. If an article links to [[Category:Abstract algebra]], then it generally won't link directly to [[Category:Mathematics]]. OTOH, it will of course link /in/directly to [[Category:Mathematics]].
- Would it be possible to show the categories link only if the article
does have categories?
I don't see the need for the "Categories" /link/ at all, really. [[Special:Categories]] should appear in the list of all special pages; then we can /print/ "Categories:" before listing the categories, if any in fact exist.
- 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.
But it should list the pages that link to the redirect.
- Apparently you've put introductory paragraphs like this into each of
the categories:
[...]
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]].
I'm not sure that I agree. I put that text in, but I don't know that it's really the /best/ text. And it's not clear to me that the text should be the same for everything; compare [[Category:Mathematics]] with [[Category:Advanced mathematics]]. Inserting the article [[Mathematics]] would definitely be way too much!
- 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.
Actually, I don't think that category links should be special at all, except from pages in the [[:]] and [[Category:]] namespaces. Similarly, language links don't work in [[...talk:]] namespaces. However, it doesn't matter much, since you can link to a category page, even from within an article in [[:]], using [[:Category:xxx]]. (Note the extra colon.) Try it!
Incidentally, you can also put interlanguage links in an article, using the corresponding interwiki link (like [[EnWikiPedia:xxx]]). But for some reason, this doesn't work on [[test:]], even though other interwiki links (like [[MeatBall:xxx]] work fine.)
-- Toby
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