On 8/22/06, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
The system would need some re-thinking for MediaWiki because in MediaWiki, the category structure is not a tree as it is in my case. In fact, MediaWiki's category structure isn't even acyclic, even though I'm pretty sure most people would agree that it should be acyclic and that the system should enforce acyclicity by rejecting edits that would create a category loop.
Heh, I'm apparently not "most editors". I know I keep harping on, but if we don't define what the relationship "subcategory" means, how do we know that cycles are meaningless? In particular, how would you know where to break a cycle? In some of our fuzzier areas, the subcategory relationships are so vague and arbitrary that there doesn't seem any major harm in following the chain and ending up back where you started.
Steve