On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Charles Matthews<[email protected]> wrote:
<snip> Nice example there of where en-wiki's classification systems are better. Some people would, of course, create a K-theory navbox template. Does de-wiki have those navboxes? > More comprehensibly (perhaps) [[Category:Puritanism]] was bugging me, as > a fairly unverifiable concept in numerous cases. So I created 15 or more > subcategories in the hope of having verifiable historical information > the predominant factor in 17th century English religious history. I'd > like to think I wasn't wasting my time on that. It can be worrying to create lots of subcategories and then have people who have different views on categorisation come along and propose to tear down the structure. The most annoying thing is being unable to point to what a particular area of the category tree looked like before you spent a few days overhauling it. People only really see the end result, not the work done to produce that result. A while back, I overhauled this category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic I was most pleased with this category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_research Mainly because I hadn't realised we had so many articles on Arctic research. Other ones I felt were interesting creations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Industry_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transportation_in_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Environment_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Culture_of_the_Arctic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Protected_areas_of_the_Arctic Admittedly, this one might have been a step too far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_in_fiction But people have been adding to it, so there is demand there. A similarly offbeat category is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_challenges One bugbear of mine is how terminology articles get mixed up with specific place and event articles, so I created this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_geography_terminology A different perspective on Arctic exploration is possible here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Arctic_exploration_vessels This all led to a portal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Arctic An excellent protal, in my view (though not created by me, I hasten to add). There was even a WikiProject started, which may hopefully gather steam again at some point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arctic I'm particularly pleased that someone has taken on the task of tackling this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arctic_expeditions But to get back to categories, there was, at some point fairly soon after that big overhaul of the Arctic category, a discussion on how precise "Arctic" needed to be. The discussion is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_August_23#Category:Settlements_in_the_Arctic At one point, there seemed to be serious consideration given to deleting all the newly created categories because it was unclear what "Arctic" meant. "there [are several definitions to what constitutes the arctic, which in itself is a ground for deleting this category" [...] "there is Category:Arctic with a host of subcats so the problem (if any) is widespread" Some countering views were: "The Arctic Circle demarcates a very real physical phenomenon, and as such is not, in fact, an arbitrary line. (Remember the "Land of the midnight sun", etc.?) The fact that they're all categorized according to their countries doesn't address the fact of their extreme northern latitudes. So I think it's quite useful to have a catalog of all the settlements in this unique region." [...] "I'll give the Arctic a good talking too and tell it to stop crossing national boundries." I made the rather pointed comment: "It would be good if those skilled in categorisation could help out with constructive comments on how to organise Category:Arctic. A centralised discussion would be preferable to having numerous categories put up for deletion in separate debates." Then someone suggested a solution that led to this template being used on the categories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Arctic I would hope that the reason the categories were saved was because they were useful. But I fear it was only because the template satisfied those who wanted precision in category names and classification. And the rather obsessive need to subcategorise everything by country, even in a category that clearly is intended to be a trans-national, regional one, is something I still don't understand. The response to the queries I left at WikiProjects was varied, from nothing, to brief, to some very useful suggestions (I've only given three examples below): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Arthropods/Archive3#Arctic_bumble_bees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Lepidoptera/Archive3#Arctic_butterflies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants/Archive25#Category:Arctic_flora_and_Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arctic_and_Portal:Arctic But the response to queries about a polar map was good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:GeoGroupTemplate/Archive_1#Polar_co-ordinates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Polar_map~ Unfortunately, the Antarctica map seems to have broken, and it seems the template never got further than the design stage. I hope someone chases that up at some point. 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