Wikipedia talk:Enforce inclusion of categories

message: Unless we get the watchlist feature first it's a bad idea because it will lead to people putting things in random categories to get them to save, making it harder on both readers and editors to find things.  But the category watchlist idea would be wonderful - I hope it's just a case of busyness of the developers not a performance issue... JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm... I hadn't counted on making the no-save feature contingent on the watchlist feature, since I'm counting on the former having a deterrent effect... I suppose a dedicated (e.g. WoW-type) vandal might pick a random category just to make the save, but I don't imagine the typical page-making or page-blanking vandal would bother. That's just my opinion, tho. bd2412 T 23:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that would be my one objection. Bogus categories are worse than no categories at all, because it makes Special:Uncategorizedpages useless. —Keenan Pepper 23:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is true to the extent that an uncategorized article is often the sign of a newbie, possibly a vandal, and the special page brings those out into the light... ok, here's a thought: what if whenever someone tries to save a page without a category, that not only triggers the prompt to add a category, but at the same time triggers a function which adds that page to a list of pages for which such a prompt was required? Then the page already has a category, so if the category is bogus, the page can quickly be spotted and cleaned up, but if the category is correct, then no further work is required of the person checking that page. bd2412 T 23:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems overly complicated, and frankly not that different from the current situation. How about displaying a warning, but allowing them to save it anyway? —Keenan Pepper 00:15, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree with that, but it would have to be a pretty strong warning, and would have to require some kind of acknowledgment - no page in the identified namespaces (other than a redirect) should ever be saved without a category... I suppose with a warning like that, anyone who disregards it and saves anyway would stick out pretty quick. Perhaps a bar with two buttons could pop up, stating the warning and giving the editor the option to "Save without a category" or "Select a category", with the latter leading them to a category menu. bd2412 T 00:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd support the optional version, whereby the software just reminds once that a category is not entered. Maybe it can be integrated into the user preferences, similar to the "prompt if I save without an edit summary" option. "Prompt if I save without putting the page in a category"? Kimchi.sg 00:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's integrated into preferences, it should be done the other way around - the default should be a warning, but experienced users should be able to 'turn off' off the prompt. bd2412 T 00:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text:  Or at least automatically add an  tag to the article if the creator didn't add catgories. That actually would also work in other cases. As soon as an article looses or doesn't has categories the article gets an  tag. IMO Special:Uncategorizedpages is already useless anyway, since it takes while to update and it only shows the first 1000. But concerning this proposal, I am not sure. One one hand it would force editors to do find a category, but on the other hand new editors already have difficulty with making their first article good, let alone that they find the right category in all the categories. Garion96 (talk) 00:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I envision a category menu, much like the menu you might keep your favorites in on a web-browser. You pick a meta-category and it shows you all the subcategories, and so forth. bd2412 T 00:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Something like CategoryTree?  --Interiot 18:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow - yeah... but only showing the cats themselves, not articles within each would probably speed things up. I would hope. bd2412 T 18:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Watchlist feature first

message: I've found that if you add a tag requesting categories, the person who created an article is usually very willing and capable of providing excellent categories. They just forgot to, or didn't know better. I honestly believe that the huge majority of people who'd be unwilling to spend 60 seconds adding categories are people who're creating articles that get deleted rather quickly anyway... and them adding bogus categories would just make their vandalism even easier to detect.
That said, it would be an annoyance to some people, and more importantly we probably would lose some contributions. So, like I detail on my userpage, I think we should have a warning screen, telling people the article they're creating is uncategorized, and that if left like that, it will be disorganized and hard for people to find, and telling them how to add categories. But they can click a box that says "I understand, create the article anyway" to opt out. --W.marsh 00:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The proposals on your page are very good - I like the idea of warnings which require the editor to acknowledge the deficiency - have you proposed them at the Village Pump, or in a like setting? bd2412 T 00:31, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've occasionally mentioned my ideas for improving article creation, but gotten a pretty lukewarm reception.. "we don't need it" or "this won't work" stuff, though honestly as someone who does as much maintenence as anyone, I can attest that we do need change, and these concepts at least deserve discussion. But alas, actually changing policy/site operations requires substantially more effort than clearing a 1,000 item maintenence backlog, I can attest. --W.marsh 00:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My thoughts...

message: This is going to be a problem -- I do a lot of categorization, and I frequently have to create new categories, particularly people, places, or things from smaller countries (today I had to create "Sri Lankan albums").  Any rule shouldn't bar someone from creating a new article and putting it in a newly-created category.  Whether the rule is still workable with this limitation, I don't know. NawlinWiki 02:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "A legitimate existing category" 

message: Put it this way. What's worse, an article with no categories, or one with incorrect categories? The incorrectly categorized is still more likely get noticed and improved than the uncategorized one. And I don't really get what harm incorrect categories would cause... most of these would be vandalism/vanity/etc. and all the added categorization would mean would be that we'd find it more quickly. It's not like adding :Category:Living people is A) obvious to average vandal and B) The category is hardly any kind of protection against the article being deleted as vandalism, etc. It actually helps us find it faster.
So sure, there'd be some incorrect categories. Most would be on articles that would be promptly deleted anyway. And an incorrect category on a few hundred articles would still be better than having tens of thousands of articles without any category... just floating around out there, unconnected to people who might want to improve them, waiting for some reporter who wants to write an easy Wikipedia-bashing article along the lines of "Look at this terrible article I found!" --W.marsh 03:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I prefer an uncategorized object to a badly categorized one.  If the user really doesn't know how to categorize his article or can't find an appropriatete category for it, I'd much prefer that he just add  or something like it. -- ProveIt (talk) 06:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that good-faith contributors will make an effort to find the best category, and I hope we can create a system that makes it very easy to browse and pick categories - but we can also give them the option to put it in a "Category:Unsure of correct category", which would make for really easy identification of such articles by editors who do the cleanup. bd2412 T 15:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Category:Unsure of correct category" => :Category:Category needed.  I think I agree with BD2412, that people are on the whole good, and the intentionally wrong categories with vandalism would be a downside, but that the benefit of having new users make at least a rough guess would be a net positive.  --Interiot 18:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What's the harm of an incorrect category?

message: Automatically adding an  tag, as suggested by Garion96, seems like the best option to me. Enforcing inclusion of categories as a requirement prior to saving would be a major hassle. Even just being forced to acknowledge a warning prior to saving could be irritating at times. The template is sufficient notify the editor that a category is required, and it doesn't interfere with saving.
A potential problem with adding the  tag is that this could flood :Category:Category needed with articles that should be deleted rather than categorized. Using a modified  template which would add them to a distinct category such as :Category:New uncategorized articles or some such, should prevent this. Dv82matt 03:27, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds reasonable. Anything would be better than the current system, that does very little to help people create better articles. --W.marsh 03:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also like the idea of a slightly modified  template, and would also recommend adding new uncategorized categories to :Category:New uncategorized categories, and templates to :Category:New uncategorized templates.   It would be best if the effect of the automatic  was also visible during preview.  -- ProveIt (talk) 06:04, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Honestly, I think that would defeat the purpose of the change - users who are familiar enough with Wikipedia to select such an option in preferences would be unlikely to forget to add categories; the initial warning (or the no-save feature I had originally proposed) is intended to deter vandals, inform newbies, and generally reduce the categorization cleanup load. W.marsh has similarly proposed warning screens for the creation of orphan articles and articles with no formatting, all of which could be accomplished with a single popup warning that would address three problems common to most newbie articles. bd2412 T 15:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I think forcing the addition of  would be the only change I could support related to this proposal. There's too much confusion, biting of newbies (by raising the threshold for starting new pages), and unanswered ways in which this would interact (for instance, what happens if categories/entire pages are blanked?) -- nae'blis 17:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reconsidered - a warning followed by automatic addition of a dated  would be a great improvement over what we've got. With respec to Nae'blis' second point, under my original proposal, a page which had been blanked (or where the categories had been blanked) simply could not be saved (unless it were made into a redirect). Under Kimchi's suggestion, the user would get a warning and the page would automatically be tagged with a dated , which would provide a quick alert to vandal-hunters. bd2412 T 18:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. Nossac 17:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only add {{tl|uncat}} tag 

message: The :Category:Redirects subtree already exists to contain them. Bo Lindbergh 05:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops - would've been useful to know about the month before last when I did about 2,000 last-name-first redirects (e.g. Smith, John --> John Smith). bd2412 T 15:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why exclude redirects? 

message: A bit related, there is a discussion here on using a bot to add the  tag to all articles without categories. Please comment there your objections or approval. If the enforce inclusion of categories would be implemented, this bot job would only be needed once. Garion96 (talk) 12:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Massive adding of {{tl|uncat}} tag to older articles 

message: There are some good ideas on this page - I'd like to drop a poll as to how folks here feel about the following specific proposals:
===Create a watchlist that indicates when category contents change===
*Support That really would be handy. Garion96 (talk) 02:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opinions on individual proposals/components 

message: *Support That really would be handy. Garion96 (talk) 02:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Create a watchlist that indicates when category contents change

message: *Neutral Still not sure about this one. We don't want to deter new editors, but just a small warning editors can click away can't hurt either. Garion96 (talk) 02:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Create a warning screen informing editors who try to save an article without a category

message: *Support At least this way articles won't dissappear on the million+ articles. Garion96 (talk) 02:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto-tag articles created without a category

message: *Figured I'd add this too, since it's the same basic concept. We already have an existing system for splitting these up by months, see :Category:Orphaned articles. I support this, I've observed that there's about a 5-15% chance that the creator will come back within a week or two and create inbound links if you add the tag within 3-5 days of article creation (which is what my bot currently does) - I can only imagine the success rate would be much better if the tag was added faster and more completely. --W.marsh 23:12, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto-tag articles created without incoming links (orphaned articles)

message: Is there any way you could get the articles to automatically bear the  tag if they contain no outgoing links? At any rate the proposal itself sounds like an excellent start, and would cut down some of the repetion of various cleanup jobs. Salad Days 19:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto-tag unwikified articles

message: . It took 8 edits on the new article for him to get categories into his new article. I think the links on the welcome did help. It shows that people that want to learn will learn - others are beyond redemption. Agathoclea 19:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I definently think most editors (who are creating stuff that isn't vanity/vandalism/etc) do genuinely want to create good articles, and just don't know how. I think we should be devoting a lot more energy as a project to giving them some much-needed help. --W.marsh 00:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  case study new editor 

message: I like this proposal a lot. I don't think we should shy from doing something bold like this just over the possibility that some newbies might be scared off. Wikipedia needs software upgrades to work better and achieve its mission. I have a suggestion about stubs that are created by anonymous and registered users: can we (1) modify the software or (2) commission a bot that tags articles with less than 70 words as "Recently created stubs?" This new category can be sorted out by people who have experience, and will be more helpful to newbies. Rama's arrow 00:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note this is slightly different from the proposals discussed above. For uncategorised articles in general, we should break them down to prevent an oversized inventory from being created. "Stubs" is one possible classification. We could also commission a bot to (1) Look for keywords like name of country, a date or if the first 5 words includes a proper name, so it can be classified as uncategorised "geography," "period" or "person/bio" article. Rama's arrow 00:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Example see Ghazi Salahuddin. This was a stub created without a cat, but a bot could pick up the keywords of "Pakistani,"  "journalist." Rama's arrow 00:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Recently created stubs" 

message: I noticed someone changed this proposal into a "feature request." Has anyone submitted this yet? Also, is there enough discussion here to claim community support? Salad Days 20:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a followup, I'm curious too:  Did anyone actually submit this yet?  If not, I'd like to move forward on it.  Considering Wikipedia's exponential growth (size has effectively quadrupled in one year), I feel like trying to handle it manually, is going to be a losing battle. --Elonka 17:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks like we're still waiting on this to be submitted, eh? --Elonka 05:04, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Feature Request

message: I brought up this proposal in the context of current software capabilities at the village pump. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Mandatory categorization of new articles. --Eliyak T·C 08:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  At the Village pump