Feminist SF Wiki talk:Categorization - Revision history

Lquilter: /* Categories, lists, and infoboxes */ more

2007-04-30T05:12:09Z

Categories, lists, and infoboxes: more

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:12, 29 April 2007
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	: ... just wikipedia right now. I set up (just today) [[Help:Templates]] with a few links but haven't consistently gone through and added in other main stuff. so much work to do! i'm trying to power through a ton of stuff pre-wiscon. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 22:10, 29 April 2007 (PDT)		: ... just wikipedia right now. I set up (just today) [[Help:Templates]] with a few links but haven't consistently gone through and added in other main stuff. so much work to do! i'm trying to power through a ton of stuff pre-wiscon. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 22:10, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

			:: in general i've just been copying templates from wikipedia and adapting them. i just spent a bunch of time lately trying to understand the "if" language which is all inclued in the "ParserFunctions" magicwords stuff. so that's a good place to begin. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 22:12, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

Lquilter: /* Categories, lists, and infoboxes */ just wikipedia right now

2007-04-30T05:10:28Z

Categories, lists, and infoboxes: just wikipedia right now

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:10, 29 April 2007
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	I understand the impracticality of multiple overlapping categories, so I'm all for finding a way to get around them. But is there a resource with guidelines on how to create infobox templates? --[[User:Ide Cyan\|Ide Cyan]] 21:14, 29 April 2007 (PDT)		I understand the impracticality of multiple overlapping categories, so I'm all for finding a way to get around them. But is there a resource with guidelines on how to create infobox templates? --[[User:Ide Cyan\|Ide Cyan]] 21:14, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

			: ... just wikipedia right now. I set up (just today) [[Help:Templates]] with a few links but haven't consistently gone through and added in other main stuff. so much work to do! i'm trying to power through a ton of stuff pre-wiscon. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 22:10, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

Ide Cyan at 04:14, 30 April 2007

2007-04-30T04:14:39Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:14, 29 April 2007
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	--[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 18:54, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		--[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 18:54, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

			== Categories, lists, and infoboxes ==

			I understand the impracticality of multiple overlapping categories, so I'm all for finding a way to get around them. But is there a resource with guidelines on how to create infobox templates? --[[User:Ide Cyan\|Ide Cyan]] 21:14, 29 April 2007 (PDT)

Lquilter: /* General categorization discussion */ more

2007-04-26T01:58:34Z

General categorization discussion: more

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:58, 25 April 2007
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	:# If an editor adds a writer to [[:Category:Fantasy writers]] I have no easy way of knowing that short of basically memorizing the list and recognizing changes to it. Same if they delete. (You can do "related changes" but I'm still not sure of the parameters of it and it doesn't seem to quite do what one would want or think.) Whereas, if it's a list, I can pull up [[List of fantasy writers]] and see the history and what exactly was added or deleted.		:# If an editor adds a writer to [[:Category:Fantasy writers]] I have no easy way of knowing that short of basically memorizing the list and recognizing changes to it. Same if they delete. (You can do "related changes" but I'm still not sure of the parameters of it and it doesn't seem to quite do what one would want or think.) Whereas, if it's a list, I can pull up [[List of fantasy writers]] and see the history and what exactly was added or deleted.
	:# If there are pseudonyms or aliases or redirects from variant names, those don't show up either. Whereas on a list, you could include all the variant names and say "see james tiptree, jr." after "alice sheldon" and "raccoona sheldon" etc.		:# If there are pseudonyms or aliases or redirects from variant names, those don't show up either. Whereas on a list, you could include all the variant names and say "see james tiptree, jr." after "alice sheldon" and "raccoona sheldon" etc.
			:# You can't fuck it up at all like you could with tags. [[:Category:Women of Color]] is completely different than [[:Category:Women of color]]. Articles you can redirect and they come up anyway with search because search is case-insensitive.

	The hierarchy thing is a great add-on feature -- even if you don't want to use it, it's pretty cool to be able to list "writers" in a hierarchy of "people by occupation"; or "1905" in "20th century years" or whatever. But it's limited, I think, because it doesn't handle synonyms and redirects.		The hierarchy thing is a great add-on feature -- even if you don't want to use it, it's pretty cool to be able to list "writers" in a hierarchy of "people by occupation"; or "1905" in "20th century years" or whatever. But it's limited, I think, because it doesn't handle synonyms and redirects.

Lquilter: /* General categorization discussion */ etc

2007-04-26T01:56:01Z

General categorization discussion: etc

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:56, 25 April 2007
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	--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

	: "African American writers" and ~~all~~ the categories that exist have been created as experiments, and I keep tinkering with them to see what works. So that's why there's AAW, because it seemed intuitive that we needed and wanted it, because it's something we want to make available to people. Same with WOC. So it's not a question of what we want to make available, but how is the best way to make it available. I don't have a full philosophy of categories yet, but I'm starting to develop one. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 18:54, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		: "African American writers" and "Writers" and "Women writers" and everything else in terms of the categories that exist have been created as experiments, and I keep tinkering with them to see what works. So that's why there's AAW, because it seemed intuitive that we needed and wanted it, because it's something we want to make available to people. Same with WOC. So it's not a question of what we want to make available, but how is the best way to make it available. I don't have a full philosophy of categories yet, but I'm starting to develop one. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 18:54, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

	Okay, more succinctly:		Okay, more succinctly:

Lquilter: /* General categorization discussion */ more lengthy ruminations

2007-04-26T01:54:54Z

General categorization discussion: more lengthy ruminations

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 --[[User:Liz Henry|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)
 Okay, more succinctly:
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 --[[User:Liz Henry|Liz Henry]] 16:45, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Liz Henry at 23:45, 25 April 2007

2007-04-25T23:45:54Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:45, 25 April 2007
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	--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

			Okay, more succinctly:
			"that the category system works best when there are a fairly small number of categories on each article (<10 for sure)."

			Why?

			--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:45, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Liz Henry at 23:44, 25 April 2007

2007-04-25T23:44:56Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:44, 25 April 2007
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	Hmm almost none of this was about race. which is fine, because these questions aren't really limited to any one label or identity but are important for figuring out how the technology works and is best suited for our labeling & identifying needs. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		Hmm almost none of this was about race. which is fine, because these questions aren't really limited to any one label or identity but are important for figuring out how the technology works and is best suited for our labeling & identifying needs. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

			Hmmm okay - I know you are way more experienced in Mediawiki than I am. I tend to think in terms of tags. And the Category structure still confuses the hell out of me. I tend to want to make entries, tag them, and then construct lists from the resulting lists of pages that come up when I look for the stuff tagged with what I want to find.

			For me it's also about how I search and how and where I make new pages. So I went to search for women of color etc. and could not find nearly anything and therefore started a list and a category, thinking that the category would develop out. Even after your explanation I don't understand why no category of women of color, but yes a category fo "african american writers" which I did end up finding? Would it be so bad to have that category? for example I would not mind having people tagged with multiple identifiers... So what if there ends up being a page of 300 "white writers" when you look at them as a category? Would that be so bad? I was trying to think in terms of being a person of color and just as I go to books and look up "women" I wanted there to be multiple pathways to finding that information.

			I wish we had free tagging and your hierarchy in place simultaneously.

			--[[User:Liz Henry\|Liz Henry]] 16:44, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Lquilter: /* General categorization discussion */ for now

2007-04-25T18:49:48Z

General categorization discussion: for now

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:49, 25 April 2007
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	For large swaths of intercategory stuff (books with X feature written by X kind of writer; X genre written by X writer; etc.) and for questions of tricky defaults (all female characters; all characters of color; no male writers; etc.) I think I'm coming to the conclusion that the category system isn't the best way to go -- it just lacks flexibility. So I'm using lists instead and also infoboxes -- these I think end up being much much more flexible. So a list of "[[Women SF writers of color]]" I think will be much more useful than the various categories that are starting to pop up (see [[:Category:Writers by ethnicity]], [[:Category:Writers by nationality]], etc. ... I just copied of [[List of female SF writers of color]] from the fsf.org website; it's woefully out of date & unlinked but it's a start. (Was your idea of [[:Category:Women of color]] supposed to just be real women? also characters? what? I'd say, make a list of what you envision. redundant and overlapping lists are easy to deal with over time as we figure out what the scope should be.)		For large swaths of intercategory stuff (books with X feature written by X kind of writer; X genre written by X writer; etc.) and for questions of tricky defaults (all female characters; all characters of color; no male writers; etc.) I think I'm coming to the conclusion that the category system isn't the best way to go -- it just lacks flexibility. So I'm using lists instead and also infoboxes -- these I think end up being much much more flexible. So a list of "[[Women SF writers of color]]" I think will be much more useful than the various categories that are starting to pop up (see [[:Category:Writers by ethnicity]], [[:Category:Writers by nationality]], etc. ... I just copied of [[List of female SF writers of color]] from the fsf.org website; it's woefully out of date & unlinked but it's a start. (Was your idea of [[:Category:Women of color]] supposed to just be real women? also characters? what? I'd say, make a list of what you envision. redundant and overlapping lists are easy to deal with over time as we figure out what the scope should be.)

	The other thing I've realized is that it is a PAIN IN THE ASS to unreconstruct categories if we decide that we went down a wrong direction. I had thought "oh why bother with wikipedia's capitalization rules" but then over time realized that ''i should have taken advantage of the years of experience with mediawiki software that wikipedians have accumulated'' and just fucking followed their example on that matter. once i figured it out there were over >1000 instances of one type of category and many, many more -- i'm still fixing them. so going slow on categories is GOOD because they seem so easy & trivial that people just start using them. they're easy to do, but a PITA to undo. whereas lists can be moved, split up, redone, retitled, edited, etc., very easily. ... and by using lists & infoboxes to start with, we can then ultimately figure out which ~~categories~~ would be really essential and useful. it's not about deprecating the value of the information embedded in potential categories/tags, but about realizing the limitations of the category system and figuring out other ways to embed the vital information.		The other thing I've realized is that it is a PAIN IN THE ASS to unreconstruct categories if we decide that we went down a wrong direction. I had thought "oh why bother with wikipedia's capitalization rules" but then over time realized that ''i should have taken advantage of the years of experience with mediawiki software that wikipedians have accumulated'' and just fucking followed their example on that matter. once i figured it out there were over >1000 instances of one type of category and many, many more -- i'm still fixing them. so going slow on categories is GOOD because they seem so easy & trivial that people just start using them. they're easy to do, but a PITA to undo. whereas lists can be moved, split up, redone, retitled, edited, etc., very easily. ... and by using lists & infoboxes to start with, we can then ultimately figure out which kinds of labeling/tagging/sorting would be really essential and useful ''as categories''. It's not about deprecating the value of the information embedded in potential categories/tags, but about realizing the limitations of the category system and figuring out other ways to embed the vital information. Categories work well for some kinds of information, and we have to figure out other ways (lists and infoboxes, and the search feature, what links here, and related changes, for now).

	Hmm almost none of this was about race. which is fine, because these questions aren't really limited to any one label or identity but are important for figuring out how the technology works and is best suited for our labeling & identifying needs. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		Hmm almost none of this was about race. which is fine, because these questions aren't really limited to any one label or identity but are important for figuring out how the technology works and is best suited for our labeling & identifying needs. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)

Lquilter: /* General categorization discussion */ notes

2007-04-25T18:47:50Z

General categorization discussion: notes

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:47, 25 April 2007
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	The other thing I've realized is that it is a PAIN IN THE ASS to unreconstruct categories if we decide that we went down a wrong direction. I had thought "oh why bother with wikipedia's capitalization rules" but then over time realized that ''i should have taken advantage of the years of experience with mediawiki software that wikipedians have accumulated'' and just fucking followed their example on that matter. once i figured it out there were over >1000 instances of one type of category and many, many more -- i'm still fixing them. so going slow on categories is GOOD because they seem so easy & trivial that people just start using them. they're easy to do, but a PITA to undo. whereas lists can be moved, split up, redone, retitled, edited, etc., very easily. ... and by using lists & infoboxes to start with, we can then ultimately figure out which categories would be really essential and useful. it's not about deprecating the value of the information embedded in potential categories/tags, but about realizing the limitations of the category system and figuring out other ways to embed the vital information.		The other thing I've realized is that it is a PAIN IN THE ASS to unreconstruct categories if we decide that we went down a wrong direction. I had thought "oh why bother with wikipedia's capitalization rules" but then over time realized that ''i should have taken advantage of the years of experience with mediawiki software that wikipedians have accumulated'' and just fucking followed their example on that matter. once i figured it out there were over >1000 instances of one type of category and many, many more -- i'm still fixing them. so going slow on categories is GOOD because they seem so easy & trivial that people just start using them. they're easy to do, but a PITA to undo. whereas lists can be moved, split up, redone, retitled, edited, etc., very easily. ... and by using lists & infoboxes to start with, we can then ultimately figure out which categories would be really essential and useful. it's not about deprecating the value of the information embedded in potential categories/tags, but about realizing the limitations of the category system and figuring out other ways to embed the vital information.

	Hmm almost none of this was about race. ~~i do agree we need much more on identity stuff. i~~'~~ve mostly been just moving individual writers over here~~ one ~~at a time from~~ the ~~fsf.org site~~ and ~~database~~. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)		Hmm almost none of this was about race. which is fine, because these questions aren't really limited to any one label or identity but are important for figuring out how the technology works and is best suited for our labeling & identifying needs. --[[User:Lquilter\|LQ]] 07:23, 25 April 2007 (PDT)