[WikiEN-l] Re: A first encounter with Categories

[K Forstner]

I'm again intrigued by the discussions here, be it categorizations or a user
I seem to have never come across called 172 (?). I came back from a weekend
a couple of hours ago and since then have been trying to access Wikipedia --
to no avail.

As far as categories are concerned, I tried to point out some days ago that
there should be some policy everyone could agree on, but Timwi suggested we
should just go ahead. The result of this approach is being deplored already.

I wonder though if a bot is the right answer.

KF


----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Trump" <wikipedia at decumanus.com>
To: <anthere9 at yahoo.com>; "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2004 6:54 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: A first encounter with Categories


> Yes the bot idea or some variation sounds extremely attractive.
>
> During this shakedown cruise of categories, the main thing I've
> noticed is that they are changing very rapidly. A category is
> created, and articles are added to it. Then someone else creates more
> specific sub-categories and begins shifting articles from the higher
> level to the lower level category. Or the category name is changed to
> reflect standards of capitalization or formatting (as might happen
> the opera singer example)
>
> In any case, this is resulting in many editors going through many
> articles repeated to change the categorization. My watchlist is
> filled with long repeated edits in multiple waves.
>
> The root of this is that unlike lists, which can be changed "all at
> once" by moving a page, categories have to tweaked by hand in every
> single article in a particular category. It is the flip side of the
> auto-generated nature of categories.
>
> I agree with Anthere that some kind of bot system or automated update
> of categories would be a very good thing if could alleviate this
> problem. The current system is not only time-consuming but will
> inevitably generate anger among editors as they see their hard work
> of editing many articles swept away. Unlike page moves, this cannot
> be undone by a simple procedure but requires many edits and hours of
> work to undo under the current system.
>