[WikiEN-l] Types of categories

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 6/6/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
> I guess the reason I am only mildly interested in hierarchies is that many
> interesting attributes (dead/alive, colors, professions) don't fit well
> into hierarchies. I think the real power comes from combining attributes.
>
> The German WP is much closer to that. For instance, they don't have
> categories like "Polish Chemists". They only have the attribute categories
> "Polish" and "Chemist". From a practical point of view, that's less usable
> than what we have (they basically need to use CatScan which is fairly
> limited, and casual users don't know about it anyway). But it's
> conceptually cleaner, and they are in a better position for making
> interesting experiments.
>

That brings up another, longer term, to-do for categories: they should
be language independent.  For instance [[Marie Curie]] is in de: and
en: (they happen to have the same title, but even if they don't they
are linked via interwiki links).  [[Kategorie:Pole]] is linked to
[[Category:Polish people]].  So there should be no need to categorize
Marie Curie twice (multiply by the actual number of languages which
have a Polish people category and an article on Marie Curie).

This is pretty simple theoretically.  The only real problem is getting
the multiple category schemes in sync.  Considering your point about
how the German categorization scheme differs from the English one,
this might be a lot harder in practice than it is in theory.

> > > Your definitions of taxonomies and attributes need work :-).
> >
> > Heh :) Input welcome! I think the distinction between "taxonomy" and
> > "attribute" is probably a sliding scale. It comes down to what is
> > natural. Do we really think in terms of "nobel laureates"? I doubt it
>
> Combining rigid rules with common sense is hard. I am tempted to quote your
> line about inevitable disaster.
>
Personally I don't see the difference between taxonomies and
attributes, as described.  But I suppose one (taxonomies?) could be
described as partitioning (an article can only be in one taxonomy
category) whereas attributes can be mixed.  Under that definition
though, all taxonomies are attributes (but not vice-versa).  I'm not
sure how close that definition is to reality though.

Anthony