Proposal:CategoryTree

Proposal 6.13.06 Category Tree
This is already close to what we have, but I propose that we make it clearer and then adjust the navigation on the main page to work this way. The main issue is that our "Major Categories" are really normal categories also, so we'll need to adjust the categories in quite a few articles to make this happen.

How unrooted categories are actually being used
At the top of this page we have a graphical vision of how categories should maybe work but if we're looking to transition in that direction it would help to know where we are. Personally User:JenniferForUnity thinks that uncategorized catagories in a well tended wiki should either have a single official root category or else a handful of categories for radically different concepts and ways of approaching a wiki. Anything not in that scheme is probably some newbie's attempt to categorize their page and a cry for editing. It means someone with "category wisdom" should fix it and drop a note on the newbie's talk page explaining what they did and why.

So in October of 2006 uncategorized categories had the following content (lumped by "how they were being used")...

Vanity categories (probably too specific and need more general cats)
These categories should probably be deleted and the pages they contain probably need to be edited into better categories.


 * Category:Backpacking — contains something chinese


 * Category:Cheat Codes — contains Cheat Code Wiki -- contains five wikis now


 * Category:Cluster Headache — Clusterkopfschmerz; contains Clusterkopfschmerz: CK-Wissen


 * Category:Karl May World — contains Karl May Indonesia Wiki


 * Category:NotAWiki — contains BiggestWiki and PurposelessWiki and comments questioning it's very exitence; over forty listings as of April 2013


 * Category:WikiManuals — this is empty

Proper categories (that are improperly unrooted or unexplained)
These categories need some kind of attention by people who know what's going on with them.


 * Category:Justice — two related categories ("Peace" and "International development") and 3 articles... this should probably be a subcat of politics along with it's related categories


 * Category:Literature — has 8 articles and no subcats


 * Category:YourWikiSize — this has something to do with a template project

Something fundamental in active use or development
Needs some attention and a description of what's even going on here before changes are made.


 * Category:Browse — Browse is it's own little disaster of untended and unplanned categorization. Someone should sit down and give Category:Browse a similar treatment as uncategorized categories just recieved in this section.

How the "Browse" category and it's branches are actually being used
Category:Browse is currently our root. We'd love to have help fixing it if there's a better way to do it! Thanks. :-) TedErnst | talk 17:48, 16 October 2006 (EDT)