Help talk:Advanced Categorization

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Tips Needed
We need to add tips on how the Library of Congress Authorities (subject headings catalog online) helps to find useful, standardized category titles. Ritcheymt 08:24, 24 January 2008 (MST)

Added Text to Category Pages
On each category page we create, we should add text to the category page which tells where we got the heading or what our decision making process was in taking ideas from FHLC, LC, and other sources to create the new heading/category. That way, people who are tempted to rename a category can at least see the thought process that went into the name so far. Ritcheymt 08:30, 25 January 2008 (MST)

When to Use Categories
Realizing just how huge the issue of categorization is, I took a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization#When_to_use_categories to try to figure out what information we need on our site.

I need help!

This page is 5297 words long. If pasted into MS Word, it would take up 17 pages.

Now I know what you're thinking: "C'mon Mike, what are you worried about? Our users can't possibly need all that information." And I agree. But now try reading it. There are some issues you can pretty easily redline, saying "This is advanced stuff we won't need until the site matures." But really. Try to cut it down to its simplest elements. Try to whittle it down to, say, three or four screens worth of information. You'll find yourself cutting information that our editors will be asking for within weeks months.

So the knee-jerk reaction may be "Okay, let's just make a simple page on our wiki that links to the one on WikiPedia and let our users use their guidelines." But it's not that simple, either — the page contains the following elements which give information that's not germaine to our site, such as:

Examples that are non-genealogical (it's hard for the reader to imagine how these examples would apply to our genealogical content) Links and processes which rely on bots we don't have. Links and processes which rely on templates we don't have. Links and processes which rely on tags we don't employ. ...and all these require a myriad of other supporting pages we don't have. And there's another problem. Since we don't use the GNU license, we can't even copy sections of the text and republish them on our site. So everything will have to be written from scratch to avoid violating fair use. Ritcheymt 15:57, 25 January 2008 (MST)

Category: United States of America
Hi all,

I just wanted you to know of a mistake I made so that hopefully what I learned will help you (and save you lots of time and anguish) when you create category names.

When it was time to name the category for the country we live in, I was told that the term "United States" didn't just apply to our country, but to another one as well. I thought it would therefore be a swell idea to call the category "United States of America." It's the real name of our country, after all, so this name should help distinguish between our country and that other country whose people know it as the United States (of something or other).

Well, as fate would have it and as anybody with better intelligence than mine would predict, some folks created a United States category. The last time I checked, it was associated with 17 articles. When I saw it, I thought, "Gee, I really need to have a talk with those folks so I can bring them into the fold and we can merge these two categories."

Lately, though, I've been thinking my choice of category names is going to present search problems for those who just use the terms "united states." So I checked the Library of Congress authorities to see what they use. Sure enough, United States of America is listed with zero bibliographic entries, with a See Also that leads to United States, which has gobs of bib entries.

So now the wiki has a long list of articles associated with United States of America which need to be disassociated with that category and associated with United States instead....

....but I'm not going to touch this yet. First I'm going to figure out whether we want to implement Wikipedia's page=category instead of page is related to category philosophy. Because if we're going to go that route, I don't want to recategorize things twice.

Anyway, just thought I'd share this with you in case it helps in your work. Ritcheymt 12:26, 12 February 2008 (MST)


 * All articles have been from Category:United States of America have been recategorized as Category:United States. The United States of America category has been deleted. Molliewog 10:48, 17 March 2008 (MDT)

Sorting
Do we need a section or page on sorting (explaining use of sort templates, etc.?) See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort_keys. I have notice in our list of categories the template has not been used where entries containing modified letters are not sorted as if the letters were unmodified (for example, Łódź has the sort key "Lodz").Parrisl 06:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for Wikimedia tools
I am a categorizer. I love categorizing and have been making that one of my main tasks over at Wikimedia Commons for several years. I requested editing privileges on this wiki in part because I found that categories here are a bit underdeveloped.

But now that I've been granted editing privileges, I think I have an inkling as to why that is. Without some of the gadgets we use over on the wikimedia projects, category maintenance and development is extremely tedious. I'd like to suggest adding Cat-a-lot and HotCat gadgets as well as the Edittools gadget that provides wikimarkup below the editing box. It's for adding text like "[[Category:]]" and "" and foreign language diacritics.

Are there any plans to add these sorts of tools to this wiki? Is there a way to enable them at the user level, like adding a line to one's user.js file? There is an Extension called Gadgets that covers some of them. Since everything over at wikimedia is covered by some type of sharing license, there shouldn't be a problem using them. Or am I missing something? Thanks! --Laura1814 (talk) 09:06, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Please Don't Change Our Categories Yet
Your suggestions about gadgets are fascinating, and we are investigating the apps you recommended. However, already one of the category changes you made was not consistent with our plan for categories. Our categories and what we need them to do for us may be quite different from what you are used to. Please do not make any more category changes until we can meet with you and train you in how our system works.Hanna5974 (talk) 02:54, 9 August 2017 (UTC)Hanna5974


 * I haven't made any further changes and don't know when I'll be able to get back to this sort of thing. My house was destroyed in Harvey and my family and I are still recovering.  I have very limited energy and simply don't have enough to spend on projects like this.


 * I get that there are already some systems in place. But one of the magnificent things about wikis is how you can bust out of traditional ways of looking at things and group (categorize) items according to whatever criteria the users find useful, within very broad guidelines.  There's no need for one rigid, prescribed structural tree where an item only fits in one category and one category only.  It can instead go into multiple parallel (or non-parallel) structures as the user discovers new ways of grouping items and thinking about them.  Categories here are (they were last August anyway) extremely underdeveloped and therefore not very useful.  I sincerely hope that you've been able to move forward in installing gadgets and tools that make them more useful for everyone.  Keep up the good work.  Hope I'll be back sometime.  Best wishes, Laura1814 (talk) 02:39, 3 May 2018 (UTC)