User blog:Holroy/Some griefances on Categorisation


 * Lately I've been reviewing how pages have been categorised on this Wiki, and as part of that process I've seen some strange habits which I would like to address.

Use Proper Sub-Categories
When adding a category to a category you're creating a sub-category, and this creates a tree of categories. A proper sub-category is to be a subset of the parent category, and all the items of the sub-category should be present in the parent category.

A sub category should normally not contain elements which are not logically part of the parent categories.

Also remember that the sub-category is defined on the sub-category page, not the parent page. I.e to make Category:Mobs a sub-category of Category:Entity you need to add Mobs to the Entity category page.

Avoid Looping Categories
Please avoid to loop categories, either direct loops or indirect loops through sub-categories.

Categories does not Belong to the Category
When categorising, please do not add the category as a sub-category to itself. The Category:Mobs  does not belong to Category:Mobs. This creates a meaningless, category loop, indicating that Mobs are a subset of Mobs, which are a subset of Mobs, which are a subset of ... You get the drift.

Parents of Parent Categories are not Sub-Categories
Given the Category tree of Category:Entity -> Category:Mobs -> Category:Hostile Mobs, then it's not natural to add Category:Entity to the Category:Hostile Mobs. This creates an indirect loop, which is just as bad as the direct loop.

A Note on Formatting
If you add the text  it will add the page to the categories where you place it on a page. If you on the other hand want to just link to the category page, use. That is, add a colon in front of  to add a link, instead of actually categorising the page.

These kind of changes needs to be done in the Source Editor, and not the visual editors.

Does a Page Belong to All Parent Categories?
So far, I've been talking about how to handle categories and proper sub-categorisation. Now onto the harder question related to what categories should the actual pages belong to. Currently there is a trend to categorise pages into the lowest and most specific sub-categories and all or most of the parent categories. Do we really want this?

Is it correct for the Zombie to belong to all of these: Category:Entity, Category:Mobs, Category:Hostile Mobs and Category:Non Armed? All of which are proper sub-categories of each other. Note that I don't mind it also belongs to Category:The Overworld which is a parallell categorisation of where you might find Zombies.

Similarily is really all these categories needed for the Carrot page: Category:Food, Category:Items, Category:Farming, Category:Breeding Food, Category:Mob Drop, Category:Renewable, Category:Update 0.8.0, Category:Crop, Category:Organic, Category:Naturally Spawning Blocks/Items and Category:The Overworld

So currently I see these two alternatives for how to handle categorisation:


 * Some/most of parent and sub-categories – This is the current option
 * The most specific sub-categories – Only the most specific sub-category of relecant category trees

What is your opinion on which category a page belongs to, or how to handle this issue? Please comment and discuss below. Maybe in due time we can arrange a poll, and choose where to proceed as a community.