[WikiEN-l] Category destruction

[Marc Riddell]

> On 5/2/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Judson,
>> 
>> OK, that's fine. If you are getting what you need - that's what matters.
>> 
>> My needs are a bit different. Repeating (for the upteenth time :-)): Joe
>> Smith died from Cancer; specifically, liver cancer. I want to be able to
>> call up all of the persons who died from cancer, then call up all who died
>> from liver cancer - two separate searches - two separate lists. As WP is
>> constructed now, to do this, both the Categories "Cancer" and "Liver cancer"
>> must be entered in Joe's Article. It's really not that complicated.

on 5/2/07 2:00 PM, cohesion at cohesion at sleepyhead.org wrote:

> Sorry for my sarcasm in comparing categories to random article, I was
> actually agreeing with you, that categories are only useful for things
> like date-based work queues, which I assume was not the reason they
> were made.
> 
> I think for what you want they aren't that useful. And I think that
> MANY MORE people would use it in the way you want than in the way I'm
> using it. Currently they are useful for wikipedians doing specific
> workflows. Ideally they could be used for actually getting useful
> information out of wikipedia.
> 
> I will preface this all with saying I don't take much part in the
> on-wiki category discussions, but here's how I would fix it:
> 
> 1. Forget any concept of hierarchy (except when obviously useful) It's
> never going to be a large scale hierarchy, so don't try.
> 2. Stop worrying about having too many categories on a particular
> article. Maybe every single person *should* be in [[Category:People]]
> why not?
> 
> That or use semantic mediawiki and say [[died from::cancer]] in the
> article, but no one likes that idea for some reason.
> 
Judson,

No sarcasm taken :-). I welcomed your input, and thank you for this. I
believe there are many more persons out there frustrated with the present
Category System. I have read this on many a Talk Page. I'm just trying to
persuade them to speak up in a forum where they can be heard by the most
persons. My needs are very specific, and others have different ones. Many of
these needs are not being met by the present system. I hope all of our needs
are heard by those that have the ability to meet them.

Marc