On 12/12/06, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)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.