Re: [Wikipedia-l] Categories in the PHP script

Magnus, can you give me an example of a post or just some point that someone has made, that constituted a feature requirement such that this feature in particular is supposed to fulfill it? There's so much that has been said on the topic of categories that I can't remember. I mean, I'd like to see the feature requirements at the same time we see the feature, so that we can compare the two. I do remember one feature that I asked for, along with Jimbo (in at least one form--the feature, not Jimbo), and perhaps some other people, that this might help with. Namely, "Recent Changes" has gotten perhaps so large as to have too much noise and not enough signal for someone who is interested only in a few topics. In that case, my suggestion was that we categorize edits (not articles) in one of the front-page categories, by selecting them from a multiple selection box. (Future edits could be automatically categorized the same way, or changed by the user as they become relevant to different areas.) This is a specific, delimited solution to a specific, delimited problem, and it would make Wikipedia more attractive to specialists, which is important. The category feature you've created could be used in all sorts of ways, and (sorry!) I'm not sure I like all of those ways. First of all, it appears to be a way to get the notion of subpages in through the back door, by distinguishing a "category" category of articles and an "articles in this category" category. So, if used indiscriminately, I'd largely be opposed to this new feature on much the same grounds that I was opposed to subpages in the first place. If, on the other hand, we as a community were to decide that only a *limited, pre-designated* set of pages could be "category" pages, then this would be, obviously, different from the old main page-subpage scheme. In that case, though, I should think it would be better to select the category for any given page from a drop-down box, so people couldn't mess up the spelling, attempt to add categories that shouldn't be categories, etc. Moreover, while my misgivings with subpages would not apply, for the most part, I'd still wonder--just because I like to be clear about this sort of thing--what the feature, used this way, would accomplish. I imagine that after the philosophy of language article, we'd have the "philosophy" and "language" (and/or "linguistics") categories listed. In doing this, we would *highlight* the fact that the article belongs to a number of traditional academic categories. And we would invite the reader to begin their exploration of Wikipedia with those traditional academic categories. And you know, I agree with the interdisciplinary advocates: I just don't think the traditional academic categories are *important enough*, per se, for us to take this trouble to *highlight* them for the reader. The reader can easily and will naturally deduce the general subjects, at many different levels (not just the broadest-traditional- academic-category level), just by reading the article and following the links in the text. The beauty of a well-written, complete, well-linked article is that one can specifically place its location in the web of knowledge by reading the article itself. Of course, I could be just failing to remember or realize some other clear benefit of having articles sorted into a limited number of various official categories. Now, if we *simply* wanted to use this as a standard "see also" section, some modified version of this might work well. But it does too much for just tha right nowt... Awaiting further enlightenment! Larry On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Magnus Manske wrote: