[WikiEN-l] Long pages

Wed Jun 23 18:27:21 UTC 2004

Stan Shebs wrote

> The topics lists are not annotated, so they include no information not
> available with a category listing. They are handy for tracking with
> "related changes", which categories ought to be able to do, and don't
> seem to now. But if that's added, then the compelling reason is that
> the lists of topics have to be maintained manually, are error-prone,
> and offer no subcategorization ability.

Well, categories 'have to be maintained manually', too, in the sense that if
no one adds a category to a new page, it won't show up.  Further, as I have
pointed out, the history of a list can show someone what has been added
recently, which is the other thing (besides RelatedChanges) one would really
want in following a topic area.  Also, how does one discern subtle bits of
vandalism/insertion of POV slants in categories, if there is no monitoring
provided?  AFAIK there is no way of monitoring that short of having the
pages automatically added to one's watchlist (and kept there).  Which I
suppose might come in time.

I'm not speaking for the astronomers here.  It's not an area I follow.  I
know the basic maths lists make good use of links to Talk pages, so the
RelatedChanges picks up the talk about everything, too.  That's something
that has been lacking in the software, up to now.

So, categories have been around for a few weeks; and we are hearing already
that the technology is better.  It's not: I should imagine we should want to
have a much longer trial before even being convinced that it is sound for
the intended purpose.

Charles