[WikiEN-l] Category destruction

[Marc Riddell]

>> on 4/29/07 11:14 AM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:
>> 
>>> as policy is descriptive, not
>>> prescriptive, use common sense when categorising, unless you feel the
>>> situation is too complex for your common sense to be right.

On 29/04/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Perhaps the only solution here is to go back to the drawing board - blank
>> the entire Policy Page, and start all over again.
> 
on 4/29/07 4:35 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray at gmail.com wrote:

> And here we come to the fundamental problem. It's all very well to say
> we need to redevelop the category system, to say that the system is
> broken and failing and so on, but in order to do this we need to
> *decide what categories are*.

Absolutely!
> 
> We have yet to manage this. Everyone brings their own conceptions to
> the table; we regularly get complaints about the stupidity and
> wastefulness of the system, which are fundamentally just "my preferred
> concept of what this system is is not being used".
> 
> We need to sort this out before we go any further - and the problem is
> that both sides are entirely convinced that theirs is the self-evident
> only way to work.

I agree completely. My question is this: How is this sort of thing done in
Wikipedia? What is the process? When something (a major, fundamental system
of doing something, e.g.) that already exists in the encyclopedia is found
to be problematic, or just plain isn't working well; what process do you go
through to correct it, or to devise an alternative system?

I'm learning,

Marc Riddell