[Wikipedia-l] Categories: An implementation

[Erik Moeller]

Magnus-
> Well, let's say we have carefully searched and tagged each and every
> "sexually explicit" article in the 'pedia as such. Then user:Michael
> (lacking a better example) comes along and deletes the category. All
> work for nothing. All tags are gone.

Let's say user:Michael comes along and blanks all our articles. All work  
for nothing. All text is gone.

;-)

See, because we have to make the wiki principles (reversion, watchlists,  
rc, diffs, attribution, protection, deletion, undeletion ...) work for any  
solution that is outside the article space, I prefer one that is simply  
part of the article space.

>> All in all, I obviously like my [[Category:Foo]] proposal more.
>>
> Been there, had it implemented. Long time ago (Phase II, IIRC). No want,
> no need, too complicated.

Then your implementation was obviously in need of improvement ;->.

> Most of this only shows that we need to improve Recent Changes...
> Seriously: diffable is no argument, if the article text is not changed
> (as in my implementation).

Wikipedians have certain workflows. They write articles, revert to prior  
revisions, do comparions over 10 past revisions and so forth. By creating  
a completely separate scheme, you require them to add another workflow to  
their routine. The system becomes more complex and the user is  
increasingly confused. This should be avoided when implementing the same  
feature within the existing workflows is reasonably possible. I believe  
this to be the case with categories (but not necessarily with  
interlanguage links).

> I don't recall...
> I still have the code of *my* implementation in the test wiki, if that's
> what you mean. I just can't find the database structure anymore :-(

Hm, that's why it's a good idea to use CVS branches for that kind of  
ideas. Then they don't get lost. Test.wiki code is overwritten every  
couple of weeks.

Regards,

Erik