[WikiEN-l] Types of categories

Sat Jun 3 19:50:24 UTC 2006

I've thought a lot about categories and differing (and incompatible)
uses from about a week after the categories were first introduced.  I
agree that categories could be very useful if used carefully.

To my mind there are only two main types of categories:
taxonomies/attributes, and themes.  I don't think the strict taxonomy
category really exists (for instance, using your "bridges" example,
the Golden Gate Bridge is in both [[Category:Bridges in California]]
and [[Category:Bridges completed in 1937]]).  The third type of
category, which you label meta-attributes, is another type, I suppose,
but I kind of ignore these types of categories.

I think the way to make these two main types of categories compatible
is to enforce two rules: 1) taxonomies/attributes are always plural
(and themes are never plural) 2) themes are never subcategories of
taxonomies/attributes (but the reverse is allowed).

Also, there is one exception to the taxonomy rule (mainly just because
it's so commonplace): the article about the taxonomy itself can be
within the taxonomy, but it must be specially tagged so that it is
listed at the very beginning of the category.  (for instance,
[[Woman]] must be tagged [[Category:Women| ]] or
[[Category:Women|*]]).

Also, I think all the taxonomy/attribute categories should be under a
single parent category.  So if you started at the top and only went
down, you'd get all the attributes categories, and none of the themes
categories.  If I remember correctly, this even used to be the case.

Meta-attributes should eventually be replaced by a better meta-tagging
system (or moved to the talk page).  Someone was working on a sort of
to-do management system a while ago.  I'm not sure what became of it.
In the mean time, keeping the meta tags under some
[[Category:Meta-Wiki]] should be sufficient to keep them separate.

Anthony

On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm probably not the only one who envisages all the wonderful things
> that could be done with this massive collection of information that is
> Wikipedia, *if only* we could do something clever with the categories.
> And then you realise that you can't really do anything clever because
> "category" has all sorts of different meanings to different people.
>
> So far I have identified four rough types of categories. I'll invent
> the notion a(X) to mean that article X is in category a. a(b(X)) means
> that a is a subcategory of b, and X is in b.
>
> Taxonomies: Tend to end in "s" and satisfy the rule that "If a(X) then
> X is an a") is a logical sentence. Tend to form strict hierarchies,
> where if a(X) and b(a), then it's perfectly natural and normal that
> b(a(X)). Eg, Bridges in France is a subcat of Bridges, and every entry
> in "bridges in France" is definitely a Bridge.  It's rare for an
> article to be in more than two taxonomic categories at once.
>
> Themes: Tend not to be plurals, and tend not to form strict
> hierarchies. Often it is the case that b looks like it belongs in a,
> but then a(b(X)) is nonsense for certain X. Eg, Paris might be in
> European cities, and the film Amelie might be in Paris, but it's silly
> to say that Amelie is in European cities. (or many worse examples)
>
> Attributes: The category exists to denote some very specific small
> detail of a subject, such that it would be conceivable to have dozens
> or more such categories on an article. Examples: 1943 deaths, Living
> persons, Winners of Nobel Peace Prize, etc. These tend to hierarchies
> that start strict then end up fuzzy. Eg, 1943 deaths is only in 1943
> and "1940s deaths", and these have parent categories of
> "1940s","Years" and so forth, eventually ending up in "History",
> whereupon things become chaos.
>
> Meta-attributes: These are categories about *articles* rather than
> article subjects. The most common examples are stubs ("France
> geography stubs"), sources ("1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica") and
> disputes of various kinds ("Articles lacking sources").
>
> To me, these types of categories are all fairly incompatible, and
> really get in the way of using categories to do anything useful. It's
> pointless trying to draw tree structures when you have attributes and
> meta-attributes involved, for example.
>
> So my questions are these:
> *Can anyone think of other types of categories I might have missed?
> *How could Wikipedia be better if this general problem was addressed?
> *How could this problem be addressed?
>
> Steve
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