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I thought I understood....

Mr. Anderson

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
7
VA
So I was figuring out how to move things and saw that the "Other Mac Wikis" was uncategorized, so I added the Internet at the bottom, effectively creating an Internet Category. It showed up and seemed to work.

So why was it moved back (HexMonkey)? There will eventually be other entries for Internet related sites, so it seems like something we need.

Thanks,

D
 
HexMonkey and others do not appear to be a fan of subcategorization until warranted. On one hand, I agree. Who wants fifteen 1-article subcategories. But, on the other hand, who wants one 150-article category?

We're currently somewhere in between the 1-category/many-subcategory era.

...and some day...
...late at night...
...when i'm bored...
...and drunk...
...i'll go recat everything.
 
mainstreetmark said:
HexMonkey and others do not appear to be a fan of subcategorization until warranted.
Click to expand...

When is it warranted and who makes the decision?

The thing is so sparsely populated as it is, I know - but I find it hard to believe that an Internet sub category won't happen - or at least something very similar.

D
 
well, I think the problem had been that people were subcategorizing too much from the start.

That would lead to duplicate subcategories and essentially empty subcategories.

The basic guideline has been, place into the broadest category first. Once there are enough of one item to warrent a subcategory, that's when we do it... in retrospect. As it's harder to predict exactly what the subcategory should be until there are enough of one type.

Now, for something like Other Mac Wikis which is uncategorized, it's not as much of a concern because there isn't a broader category to place it in yet, so we could create an Internet or Web category....

The problems came when someone would create a page for "RSS Readers" and put one application in it. Is it necessary to have a category for RSS Readers if there was only one example? Why not have the app just go into Software?

arn
 
Sorry I didn't make it clear when I made the change. I'm not against new subcategories, but I think they should be planned (usually through talk pages or forum posts) rather than spontaneously created like that, so that the category hierarchy doesn't become too much of a mess. The problem in this particular case was that the Internet category wasn't a subcategory of something larger, so either it would have been given too much prominence (ie a category with one article on the main page) or not enough (ie tucked away in Unfiled Topics).

I agree that there should be an Internet category though, but it needs to be decided if it will warrant being on the main page, or otherwise where it would belong. Sorry for the confusion.

I guess if an Internet category is created, several articles that are currently in other categories could be added to it (such as Finding Mac Software), so it wouldn't be so empty. It would also need to be decided if it is exclusively for websites, or also includes internet related software.

As a starting point, I'd suggest that it would list website related articles at its root level, but have the "Networking and Internet Software" category added to it (so that it belongs to both Software and Internet).
 
In the case of software, I was kind of keeping the number "5" in the back of my mind. 5 articles (out of a set of 30-ish) probably warrants a subcat. So, if someone made a page for [[Safari]], [[Firefox]], [[Mail.app]], [[Tomato Torrent]] and [[Cyberduck]], I'd make an argument (or an action) to create a "Internet and Networking Software" subcategory under the "Software" category. Likewise, down the road if there's articles for Safari, Firefox, Camino, Omni and Internet Explorer, I'd make the argument for a "Browser Software" subcat of "Internet and Networking Software" category. Them, I suppose, in the distant future, when dogs and cats get along, and someone creates articles for a bunch of Firefox plugins, i'd want to subcat "Firefox Plugins" under "Browser Software".

In the beginning, I was trying to lay out the eventual categorization, but the community convinced me that we should categorize after content.

So. In summary. (My) Rule of Thumb is: No new subcategories without at least 5 articles, and definitely no new categories without group consent.

(PS: look at me trying to wikilink all those things. I'm going to leave them wikilinked, in case Arn wants to hack up vBulliten. :) )
 
I think it's time for a new category. My thoughts are as follows for the structure:

Networking and Internet (top level category, include everything in the Networking category)
-Networking and Internet Software (make it a subcategory of both Software and Networking and Internet)
-Networking and Internet Guides (make it a subcategory of both Guides and Networking and Internet)
-Websites (new subcategory, include articles such as [guide]Other Mac Wikis[/guide], [guide]Finding Mac Software[/guide] and [guide]Vongo[/guide])

Thoughts?

Edit: Category created.
 
So I guess I was just a little ahead of my time last month :D

Good that we have it.

D
 
Yeah, but you can see why I think it should be planned. If we went ahead with an "Internet" category everything would have had to be re-categorized for the "Networking and Internet" category we have now. Good to have something there now though. :)
 
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