[WikiEN-l] Categories

Wed Dec 13 14:48:00 UTC 2006

Marc Riddell wrote:
> Steve,
>
> It is clear to me from all of the dialogue, that the issue of Categories and
> their use in Wikipedia is not only controversial, but also pretty much
> unresolved and unfocused. And, what could be a powerful tool within
> Wikipedia has evolved into an unfocused mess. I believe it is going to take
> a small group of focused, objective persons, taking an equally focused,
> objective look at it, and formulate a set of firm guidelines for its use 
> starting with, of course, its very purpose.
>   
Hate to be a downer, but this ain't ever going to happen. Just when you 
think it's all figured out, a new group comes along and undoes 
everything, all the while declaiming about how awful your system is. 
Categories are one of those things that editors can do without having 
any writing ability, or even much subject-matter knowledge, so the pool 
of categorizers is quite large.
> I would like to take the discussion back to my original question: May I
> include both a main category and a subcategory in the same article? I would
> like to accomplish this without creating an edit war with another editor who
> thinks it¹s wrong.
>
>   
Although we don't have much consensus on categories, the "no supercats" 
rule is pretty broadly followed. It would be less work to change 
MediaWiki, even if you're not a programmer. :-)

Stan