[WikiEN-l] CATEGORIES!!!!!!

[Marc Riddell]

Folks,

I'm angry right now, so I very probably should not post to the List until I
cool off; but my emotions are overriding my good senses at the moment - so
here goes.

It concerns what has been a pet peeve of mine almost from the beginning of
my work with the encyclopedia: CATEGORIES!

I do a fair amount of research in my work, and one of the things that
attracted me to WP in the first place was the Category feature. If I were
doing research on, say, Accidental Deaths, or Suicides, or Cancer Deaths (to
name just three) I could select on these Categories and, bingo, I would have
an entire wealth of documented cases of persons with these characteristics.
NOW, the Category Police have so diluted this process with trillions of
subcategories, e.g., Persons who died accidentally on a train while
traveling from Newark to Tampa ;-) - that the whole Category system has
become worthless to serious researchers. This, in itself, would not be a
problem, but to add the greatest injury of all, each person included in this
subcategory has been removed from the main one. So to see all cases of
Accidental deaths in the encyclopedia I have to go to each subcategory,
print the lists and collate them myself. Agghh!

I have sworn off Categories. I have taken the pledge. From now on I won't
even look at the bottom of an Article.

There, I feel better now :-) Thanks for your ear.

Marc Riddell