Hi,
I do not understand what's wrong with the first [[Category:...]] approach.
Categories are kind of metadata - not all arguments against metadata apply on them. Categories are not hidden as long as they result in a link on top of the article or somewhere else - they are not more complicated than interlanguage links (which are complicated in some way).
Seperating categorisation and articles in two projects does not make categorisation more easy. In fact I'd also like to move articles and categories around in a hierarchal view but the most common action is to specify the category an article belongs to.
By the way categories are nothing but hierarchical links between articles. Semantically there is no big difference between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a category with a couple of articles in it.
Magnus wrote:
Example: "[[Category:Stuff]]" somewhere in the article will show a link above (similar to language links), leading to the category page ("Category:Stuff"). That will automagically list all pages in that category (meaning, that link there via category link). A category page can be edited like a normal page (the article list is automatically shown below), and can include "super-categories" (e.g., "[[Category:Biology]]" on "Category:Zoology"). Any page can, of course, have many categories.
Ah - that´s the fault! The link [[Category:Stuff]] should refer to the article "Stuff" and not to some special-category-only article. [[Category:Biology]] *is* [[Biology]]! Please have a look at the actual article [[en:Biology]]: What does ==Fields of study in biology== contain but a listing of subtopics? Why introduce a new artificial namespace when you can better name the article for instance "Fields of study in biology"?
The Cunctator wrote: I could imagine a group at the MIT Media Lab or the Cyc project figuring out some bad-ass way of navigating Wikipedia content, etc.
That's still possible with categories. There are a lot of automatic posibilities - most of them based on the links between articles. A special category-link would give more input.
What I'd like to see is an explicit wiki-statement of what is the desired functionality--that is, what is the utility missing--that a category scheme would provide.
Then we can discuss particular implementations separately--for example, is it better to use a system which has a single ontology or a system which allows for dynamic ontologies?
Argl! A wikiontology is a nice scientific project but nothing any normal human beeing will ever able to edit.
Evan wrote:
What I propose it that MediaWiki expand this metadata format to cover other types of metadata, such as:
- categorization -- saying that particle physics is in the physics category, or that Lord of the Rings is in the fantasy books category
- relationships between articles -- break up a single page into multiple chapters or sections, and note that they're all part of the same article
categorization is just a kind of typed relationship. I could also imagine:
[[see:A]] see-also-links that will automatically generate a backlink on article 'A'
[[next:A]] ordering articles
But hierarchical link are the most important ones.
Greetings, Jakob
"Jakob" == Jakob jakob.voss@s1999.tu-chemnitz.de writes:
Jakob> Hi, I do not understand what's wrong with the first Jakob> [[Category:...]] approach.
There's nothing wrong with it. It's really damned good. I think the idea is that we're going to change the syntax slightly ([[category=...]] instead of [[category:...]]) and do some different stuff under the hood. See again:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization_with_field-value_pairs
I think that the two syntaxes are pretty much interchangeable. I think if there's any disadvantage, it's that a page like "Wikitravel:Help" couldn't be a category page, if categories have their own namespace.
Jakob> By the way categories are nothing but hierarchical links Jakob> between articles. Semantically there is no big difference Jakob> between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a Jakob> category with a couple of articles in it.
Not true. From a graphical level, part-whole implies a tree structure -- each child article can be part of one and only one parent article. Category-member semantics are more twisted -- articles can be members of multiple categories.
~ESP
From: Evan Prodromou on Thursday, December 11, 2003 2:34 PM
"Jakob" == Jakob jakob.voss@s1999.tu-chemnitz.de writes:>
Jakob> By the way categories are nothing but hierarchical links Jakob> between articles. Semantically there is no big difference Jakob> between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a Jakob> category with a couple of articles in it.Not true. From a graphical level, part-whole implies a tree structure -- each child article can be part of one and only one parent article. Category-member semantics are more twisted -- articles can be members of multiple categories.
It's true that part-whole implies one-parent relationships.
But Jakob didn't say "part-whole".
So you shouldn't say what he wrote is not true.
The statement " Semantically there is no big difference between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a category with a couple of articles in it," is perfectly true.
The Cunctator wrote:
The statement " Semantically there is no big difference between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a category with a couple of articles in it," is perfectly true.
The practices being discussed here are very different; I'll let you decide whether the difference is semantic. Neither [[Biology]] nor [[List of subfields of biology]] can properly link to ever biology topic on a Wikipedia. That's why [[List of biology topics]] exist now, of course.
Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]] as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting, although Magnus' category code is much further along. Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page; it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]], by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia. (By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].) So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]] but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.
-- Toby
On Dec 11, 2003, at 15:36, Toby Bartels wrote:
Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page; it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]], by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia.
Hmm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actors :
See the following '''lists of actors''':
* [[List of male movie actors]] * [[List of female movie actors]]
* [[List of male theater actors]] * [[List of female theater actors]]
It's a LIST OF LISTS!!!!!! <brain explodes>
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
See the following '''lists of actors''':
- [[List of male movie actors]]
- [[List of female movie actors]]
- [[List of male theater actors]]
- [[List of female theater actors]]
It's a LIST OF LISTS!!!!!! <brain explodes>
[[w:en:List of people]]
Boom!!! ^_^
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]] as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting, although Magnus' category code is much further along. Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page; it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]], by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia. (By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].) So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]] but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.
Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other (e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding "[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of biology topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to [[Category:Biology]].
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Your idea of letting the software interpret [[List of ...]] as in [[List of biology topics]] is interesting, although Magnus' category code is much further along. Also, [[List of actors]] is a rather different page; it's encyclopedic, whereas [[List of biology topics]], by listing pages in Wikipedia, is /about/ Wikipedia. (By rights, it should be [[Wikipedia:List of biology topics]].) So the [[Category:]] plan can replace [[List of biology topics]] but should leave [[List of actors]] as it is.
Which in no way hinders us to take one (existing) list or the other (e.g., [[List of biology topics]]), and run a bot (once) adding "[[Category:Biology]]" on all pages listed there. The [[List of biology topics]] will then be obsolete and can be redirected to [[Category:Biology]].
Yes, this is the straightforward way to apply your code, and it's consistent with Cunc's plea that we start with a small change to the way that people currently use Wikipedia. Your code does this.
My point is that [[List of actors]] isn't quite the same thing. (Although it's iffy -- a better example might be [[List of monarchs of Great Britain]], which any encyclopedia should have among its articles, rather than among its backroom [[Category:]] namespace.) So no bot should be run on [[List of monarchs of Great Britain]] -- or in any case, only a modified bot that won't create the redirect.
Thus, I must decide that ''merely'' changing the software's interpretation of [[List of ...]] pages is insufficient; we should introduce [[Category:]]. Thus your code (or maybe [[Category=]] to avoid overloading the colon) is the way to go, IMO.
We can complicate it more later if we need to. ^_^
-- Toby
"TC" == The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com writes:
Jakob> Semantically there is no big difference Jakob> between dividing an article in subtopics and creating a Jakob> category with a couple of articles in it.
Me> Not true. From a graphical level, part-whole implies a tree Me> structure -- each child article can be part of one and only Me> one parent article. Category-member semantics are more Me> twisted -- articles can be members of multiple categories.
TC> It's true that part-whole implies one-parent relationships.
TC> But Jakob didn't say "part-whole".
TC> So you shouldn't say what he wrote is not true.
OK. I took "dividing an article into subtopics" as "dividing an article into parts". I think there's ways that "subtopics" could be parts, and ways that "subtopics" could be members of a category.
I'd say there's a part-whole relationship if:
* There's an implied ordering of parts. For example, [[US history]] might have parts like [[US history before 1604]], [[US history 1604-1775]], [[US history 1776-1783]], etc.
Contrast [[History of jazz in the US]], [[History of women in the US]], [[History of baseball in the US]]. These might all be members of a _category_ [[US history]], but there's not the same kind of implied ordering.
* There's the one-parent tree structure as mentioned before.
I think we can do interesting things with part-whole relationships. Automated Next, Prev, and Up links might be useful, and an option to read or download or print the whole shebang (container article plus parts) would be neat, too.
Anyways, I've been thinking about parts, as you can tell.
~ESP
Jakob-
Ah - that?s the fault! The link [[Category:Stuff]] should refer to the article "Stuff" and not to some special-category-only article. [[Category:Biology]] *is* [[Biology]]! Please have a look at the actual article [[en:Biology]]: What does ==Fields of study in biology== contain but a listing of subtopics? Why introduce a new artificial namespace when you can better name the article for instance "Fields of study in biology"?
Because this will standardize these lists and automate them at the same time. Currently we have "List of xy topics", with lots of Wikipedia- related meta information, floating around in the regular namespace. These are not really articles and they should not be counted as such. Having [[Category:Mathematics]], [[Category:Biology]] etc. is much more economic and only shows the information to those who care about it.
Possible problem: Does "Related changes" still work on category pages? We might need to modify that.
Regards,
Erik
-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l- bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 5:26 PM To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Categories simplified
Jakob-
Ah - that?s the fault! The link [[Category:Stuff]] should refer to
the
article "Stuff" and not to some special-category-only article. [[Category:Biology]] *is* [[Biology]]! Please have a look at the
actual
article [[en:Biology]]: What does ==Fields of study in biology==
contain
but a listing of subtopics? Why introduce a new artificial namespace
when
you can better name the article for instance "Fields of study in
biology"?
Because this will standardize these lists and automate them at the
same
time. Currently we have "List of xy topics", with lots of Wikipedia- related meta information, floating around in the regular namespace.
These
are not really articles and they should not be counted as such. Having [[Category:Mathematics]], [[Category:Biology]] etc. is much more
economic
and only shows the information to those who care about it.
Possible problem: Does "Related changes" still work on category pages?
We
might need to modify that.
Why do we need [[Category:Mathematics]] and [[Category:Biology]] when we already have [[List of xy topics]]?
Why can't we just add software to recognize that "List of" articles are categorization articles, and use that to automatically categorize things?
E.g. anyone listed on [[List of actors]] we know is an actor. Anyone listed on [[List of American actors]] is an American actor. Anything listed on [[List of mathematical topics]] is a mathematical topic.
Somewhere on the page we could have "This entry appears in the following lists:"
And we could also have a function
"Add this entry to a list" which would pull up the names of lists and could slap the entry into the list.
I guess I'm on the side of Jakob here that instead of forcing people to learn new behaviors and adding complexity to their tasks--something that's acceptable if the only users of a system are to be experts, but not acceptable if you're designing for general use--we should try to make the software smarter and make only minor adjustments to people's behavior.
--tc
Cunc-
Why do we need [[Category:Mathematics]] and [[Category:Biology]] when we already have [[List of xy topics]]?
1) Adding metadata to the article it belongs to makes it easier to find and update. Having it elsewhere would in fact add aditional workload and require additional learning, because to verify whether a categorization is correct, people would now also have to check all the [[List of xy articles]] page where it could be or has been entered. With a Category: approach, they only need to keep an eye on a single page (the article), and the categories themselves are structured through subcategories and therefore easy to pick.
2) Category pages are not articles. Like talk pages and meta pages, they should be logically separated from articles, which has numerous benefits (easier searching/filtering, counting etc.)
3) In terms of information organization, your approach leads to bloated, big pages (the list of lists is going to be hundreds of pages long, the lists themselves are going to be 30K and more), whereas the category approach generates all long pages automatically from the information stored inside the articles. It is much easier to handle.
Regards,
Erik
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