The Cunctator wrote:
I didn't say we should implement a category scheme
purely by code. I can
think of several better methods to providing the utility of categories
than inserting hidden metadata tags.
They are not hidden! Categories would, in fact, be displayed more
promently than "ordinary" links, like language links. And hit "edit",
then you see the matching source. If that ain't visible enough...
I should have more time in the coming weeks to make
some explicit
suggestions--that is, mock up examples, etc.
I think that having a categorization project (a la dmoz for Wikipedia)
would be a fine idea, as long as the work, and the data, are separate
from the root Wikipedia.
How about this: When you edit a page, all "meta-links" (language links,
categories) are parsed out of the article text and displayed in a
smalled edit box below. When you save your edit, these just get pasted
at the end of the article. That way, they will work like they're
separate, and still use the existing goodies (versioning etc.).
In fact, the best thing would be to work on developing
ways for outside
projects to hook easily into the Wikipedia content without having to be
a Bomis-hosted project, prolly by having an XML hook.
If we did so, I could imagine a group at the MIT Media Lab or the Cyc
project figuring out some bad-ass way of navigating Wikipedia content,
etc.
If we (some distant day, after many file cabinets of
consensus-finding;-) do that, then we'd run a little script and extract
all the category links from the database into an XML file. That will
make a great starting point for the MIT people!
Magnus