[WikiEN-l] Types of categories

[Andrew Gray]

On 06/06/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> 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).

Hmm... it won't work well.

Basdically, there is no hard and fast en:Article <-> de:Artikel
relationship, there's no single "meta topic" which manifests itself in
specific articles in different languages. For some things, like
people, it does appear so; for others, it'll break down.

This is partly due to the incomplete nature of the project, but also
because different language communities - which, especially for
languages like German and Polish, represent individual and reasonably
distinct cultures in a way that en: doesn't - will naturally have
different emphasis, there'll be different levels of coverage and
different approaches to fragmenting articles.

Let's say, oh, [[History of Country]].

In one language, this might be a single article. In another,
time-divided articles (overview; ancient history; history to 1500;
1500 to 1900; modern history). In a third, it might be a thematic
divide (political history; religious history; military history;
overview).

What combination of categories would work best for *all* of these pages?

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk