Wikipedia talk:Categories are different from articles

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Category talk pages

My comment below is why I think the essay must be expanded, in the hope that users who utilise category talk pages can be pointed elsewhere.

I have been tagging the odd Indonesian, and Australian wikiproject article and category talk pages for some time - and I see the importance of a more significant and expanded essay like this one - is for the odd discussion page tabs above articles that are red are the sign of a badly managed project person like me - I think it is vital for the average user to understand that categories and category talk pages are (a) not places for questions (b) places for project tags (c) places for indicating clearly relationships with other categories, projects or management tools for wikipedia (d) not places for discussion about category pages - I believe they belong at project noticeboards or discussion pages to elicit wider viewing than one will ever get at a category talk page.

It is from this that I believe the essay needs quite extensive development - so that wikipedia users who stumble across category pages should see that there are more appropriate avenues for their queries/problems etc Satu Suro 14:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well yes

But this page isn't saying all that much. Note that several arguments on WP:AADD are equally valid in CFD debates (and at least one of them moreso). I suppose the various categorization policies/guidelines need revisiting. >Radiant< 15:38, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Expanded the essay

I took the liberty of expanding the essay and tried to provide some more specific examples of how articles differ from categories and how policies and guideline handle the two entities. Feel free to ammend or discuss or revert as desired, but hopefully some of what I added helps the essay. Dugwiki 19:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very helpful! -- Kendrick7^talk 20:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a rewrite of Wikipedia:Categorization is needed

While I pretty much agree with the contents of this essay, I'm wondering if we should be putting our energy into a re-write of Wikipedia:Categorization. It was last overhauled about a year and a half ago. I'm wondering if there is a better organization for the information. Perhaps, instead of having sub-articles, we could have expandable subsections for the page, with details and specifics collapsed so that they people will expand them when they need more information. There could be some main sections like:

What is a category
How do you make a category
What makes a good category
What makes a bad category
How do you delete a category

--Samuel Wantman 07:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea - perhaps what category discussion pages are used for and not used for! as well! Satu Suro 07:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded. >Radiant< 08:19, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. Dugwiki 15:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some of my initial frustration stemmed from WP:OCAT being misnomered and not being even linked to from WP:CfD; what I was seeing in the few CfD deletions I was involved in where strained attempts to use thing like WP:BLP and WP:NPOV in ways that didn't make a lot of sense, and if any regular CfD'er was pointing the rest of us to the qualities of cat's discussed in OCAT it was lost in the shuffle. I know over categorizing an article is a bad thing so it never occurred to me to even read this policy because this article is titled by an expansive definition of "over categorization" which is too clever by half. -- Kendrick7^talk 17:35, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]