[Mediawiki-l] [Foundation-l] Red category link is unhelpful

[Roger Chrisman]

Jim Wilson wrote:
> I agree with making a MW system message or $wg control this - but
> which should be the default?  Edit or view?

View

Not "Edit." Category pages do not need edited "content" to be useful 
although defining the category with a sentence or two can help. The 
useful content of a category pages is instead the auto generated list 
of pages that contain that category's tag, eg 
[[Category:Category-name-here]].

*Regular pages* do and should send users to the Edit page automatically 
if the page is empty but category pages are never "empty" -- they 
always contain their auto-generated note at minimum and should not open 
an edit box needlessly. The edit box confuses folks who simply want to 
read the auto-generated list of links.

Roger Chrisman