Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates/Archive 1

message: Good stuff, but the series box paragraph comes out of nowhere.  Without it, the article is factual and informative.  With it, it's just confusing!  Howsabout something more general?  "When to use categories, lists, and series boxes".  Include pros and cons of each and guidelines for use.  Also, document using templates for series boxes!  I'm loving categories, so I'm all for more policy on it.--Sfoskett 21:11, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

message: What's with a category having to answer yes to "Is it possible to write a few paragraphs or more on the subject of a category, explaining it?" A few paragraphs??? Shouldn't the category simply link to the relevant article explaining it's subject? If there is no such article, the category should be explainable in a single sentence (perhaps with another one or two for clarification of what exactly could go in it) - otherwise, to me it sounds far too complex to be a category. ··gracefool |☺ 22:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the point is to avoid pointless categorization such as :Category:Left-handed alcoholics who committed suicide. While there might be a tiny population genuinely interested in such a categorization, having to consider whether there is something more to say in answer to the questions WHY? WHAT FOR? and WHO CARES? than a single sentence is a huge step toward avoiding pointless overcatgorization. older≠wiser 00:56, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like an awkward way to say "The category should be 'important' to a reasonable number of people". Note that I'm working on a policy on what "importance" means (basically, it clarifies other polices like Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not). ··gracefool |☺ 02:07, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It isn't such "importance" per se that matters, but whether the category defines a relevant and substantial relationship among the articles to be grouped within it, rather than a trivial fact they happen to share in common.  One would hope that such substance and "importance" would correlate, of course.  Postdlf 07:43, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: True. A "substantial" relationship is an "important" relationship. ··gracefool |☺ 04:31, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy criticism 

message: In addition, categories do not work, unlike lists to related articles, during server problems. Categories are a real time feature that obviously puts a tremendous burden on Wikipedia's limited computer resources. -- John Gohde 05:59, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The problem with categories

message: So, any and all editors are supposed to assign CAM articles at their own whim to a sub-category, without any advanced planning, guidance, or control from a Wikiproject? The science people like to say that all of alternative medicine is quackery, yet they seem to be failing to put articles in :category:Quackery rather than in :category:alternative medicine.
Wikipedia:Wikiproject:Alternative Medicine/Classification Systems has documented that there are at least seven different ways to classify CAM articles.
The WikiProject's infoboxes currently classifies branches of medicine four different ways.  That is NOT 4 categories.  That is four parallel ways of classifying each of which requires more than one category.
To implement categorization by Classification by Standard of Knowledge and Quality of the Evidence alone requires 5 different categories: Real Science, Protoscience, Pseudoscience, Enlightenment, and the Supernatural. In addition to these 5 categories, two other categories have already been implemented: :category:Quackery and :category:Fraud.
Kindly, explain the difference between the :category:Pseudoscience, :category:Quackery and :category:Fraud categories? What if someone decides to implement :category:Health fraud?
The implications of this is that most branches of alternative medicine articles can be classified 5 different ways and could have up to 5 sub alternative medicine categories alone.
Currently, there are already 11 subcategories in :category:alternative medicine.  Should we add one on CAM stubs?  Medicine already has :Category:Medicine stubs. As time goes by, without guidance and more guidelines to follow the number of these subcategories in :category:alternative medicine will get a lot bigger.
Now, exactly how does the use of categories enable visitors to find articles on alternative medicine? How do all these sub-categories help visitors find articles?
Time spent categorizing articles is a bottomless pit.  Putting infoboxes in articles takes time, but at least the number of articles is finite.  The way it is now, you could categorize articles for ever.  And, somebody is sure to come along at a later point in time to undo what you have spent time doing.
This does not motivate me to spend any more of my limited time categorizing. -- John Gohde 11:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The Paradox of Sub-Categorization