SamuelWantman
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Thanks for your time. I'm an administrator at English Wikipedia. I've spent a good amount of my time during the last two years working on categorization policy. I am the original author of Template:CategoryTOC and one of the co-authors of Category intersection. I facilitated a recent overhaul of en:Wikipedia:Categorization and have worked on creating some of its subpages.
The English Wikipedia is having growing pains around the categorization system. There seem to be competing ideas about what it should be. Many people actively try to delete categories that seem trivial or non-defining characteristics of an article. This has led to creation of pages like Wikipedia:Overcategorization.
Before there were TOCs for categories, a system of combining nationality with profession became the norm. Articles about people were expected to be categorized in the most specific category they belonged. Since the advent of TOCs, some people, myself included, have argued that articles should be put in (what I am calling) 'primary index' categories, such as "Italian" and "Actor", along with the intersection categries they belong in, such as "Italian Actor". There is widespread resistance to this and to having large categories. The Category intersection proposal mentioned above discusses this in more detail. I met Jimmy Wales a couple of times, and the last time I saw him, I discussed the category intersection proposal. He said that the German Wikipedia had already made a decision to not populate intersection categories. The category intersection proposal, while having wide support among categorization regulars and developers, is on hold for technical reasons. I think it will eventually be implemented in some form, but I don't know when that will happen.
I'm wondering what the German policies are about Overcategorization, category duplication and category intersections. I did a quick look at some of your categories and I did not find that categorization was being done consistantly one way or the other. You have populated many primary index categories that are not populated in the English version (like nationalities and professions). Some intersection categories exist, and some don't. What are your guidelines about this?
I am also thinking about creating a system of labelling categories based on how they are used. I have proposed This. I'd be interested in feedback about how these labels would correspond with what has been set up here.
Any other differences that you think are worth mentioning between our two systems would be welcome.
Thanks for your time. -- SamuelWantman 21:06, 23. Dez. 2006 (CET)
- The Categorization Project in the German Wikipedia should be the worth to visit. Regards, --ThT 01:02, 28. Dez. 2006 (CET)
- Benutzer:Thomas Tunsch/Archiv/Archiv2006#The categorization project: I think you can ask any question in English as well. --ThT 15:12, 5. Jan. 2007 (CET)