[WikiEN-l] Hello

Tue Dec 12 18:21:47 UTC 2006

On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Here are some examples, my main argument and a proposal:
>
> When I began contributing to Wikipedia, there was a Category ³Suicides².
> If
> a person¹s article stated they committed suicide, the category, ³Suicides²
> would be included. If this person had committed suicide by using a
> firearm,
> the Category, ³Suicides by firearm² would be also be included. In this
> case
> the Category, ³Deaths by firearm² would also be included. In this way, the
> researcher can call up, individually, all persons in the encyclopedia who
> had committed suicide. Then, if they chose, they could also call up
> separate
> lists of those who committed suicide by firearm, and a separate list of
> all
> persons who died by firearm. This was wonderful for the researcher.
>
> Then, I began finding many of my edits being reverting by persons who
> stated
> that only one of these Categories should be included in an article; that
> both a main category and a subcategory should not be in the same article.
> More and more of these articles were being diluted by this argument.
>
> I have been in constant conflict with some who state that it is not only
> redundant to enter a single Article into both Categories; it is actually
> against Wikipedia policy. At present, if I enter John Doe into the
> ŒSuicides
> by firearm¹ Category only, he does not appear in the ŒDeaths by firearm¹
> Category list. Consequently, if I want to call up all persons in the
> encyclopedia who have died by firearm, I must call up all the subcategory
> lists and collate them myself.

Yes. This is actually a very simple thing to do programmatically.

What you are calling dilution is the exact opposite.

Maybe we should add a feature that traverses category trees automatically,
but it also seems like a nice outside-of-Wikipedia javascripty feature
someone could build pretty easily.