BoyWiki:Agora/18 April 2015

Agora/18 April 2015

Essays in mainspace

Do you want to include essays in mainspace, or should we create a separate namespace for them? If they are going to be put in mainspace, should they be formatted differently than other articles, so that it's immediately evident that they're essays, or does the byline adequately signal that? Lysander (talk) 19:57, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Essays should go in Category:Life. Plus to be frank, I find it really annoying when people refuse to take the time to categorize their entries properly (or expect me to do it) or following our category layout. I mean there are only three main categories, and they give explanations on what is suppose to go into each section. Category Encyclopedia is a mess and I am not going to clean it up. I will keep categories Entertainment and Life organized but it is up to you guys who are working primary in category encyclopedia to fix it. --Etenne (talk) 13:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

WTF? BoyWiki has no "category layout"!

Index

BoyWiki

Encyclopedia

Entertainment

Life

Portal index

Template index

It is not that it doesn't have a layout, it just needs building upon.--Etenne (talk) 20:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Essays should go where people can find them easily if they are interested in reading them. In fact, everything should be easy to find for anyone interested. Burying an article within one single category because it is the "correct" category, and a category that people would not normally expect that article to be found in, is an excellent way to make the articles just disappear from the reader's view.

With your way of "categorizing" (in quotes because you do not seem to understand the real reasoning and method behind categorization) you have succeeded in burying most articles on BoyWiki so they cannot be easily, if at all, found by visitors.

Why would you want to do that? Why would you not want people to be able to easily find things that interest them? Why do you seem to think that there is only "one correct category" for each article?

BoyWiki is the only wiki in the world that categorizes articles in the way that you do. Doesn't that make you think that BoyWiki perhaps is doing something wrong? Or do you think that every other wiki in the world is wrong in the way they categorize things?

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Floor_500 that is their main category which is different from ours (which is basicly Category:index which is different from others

• http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Browse Walking dead wiki starts at Browse
• http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Browse Game of Thrones wiki starts at Browse also.. They all look different to me. I could add some graphics if you think it would make it less confusing? Or I could rename it Category:Browse if you think index is too confusing a term.--Etenne (talk) 16:35, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Show me which one of your own examples uses the style of determining "the best/the only category an article belongs in," and places it in that category only?!?!

I deny that I have ever said that or even thought that. I may remove them from Category:Encyclopedia where they don't belong or place them in a single Category/subcategory because you have not taken the time to correctly categorize them yourself but I have never said that they had to go in only one category. For example, I ran across this page today Pages which may be prejudicial to BoyWiki and BoyLovers, now I have no idea why that should be in a category about US states but I did not remove it. --Etenne (talk) 18:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Each page I looked at places the page in several categories so that users could find the page according to the user's interest:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Long_Game

[[Category:Ninth Doctor television stories [[Category:Bad Wolf arc [[Category:2005 television stories [[Category:Stories set in 200000 [[Category:Series 1 (Doctor Who) stories [[Category:Stories set in 2012 [[Category:Stories set in England [[Category:Stories set in the far future

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Charles_Dickens

[[Category:Wikipediainfo [[Category:Writers from the real world [[Category:19th century individuals [[Category:Real world people encountered by the Ninth Doctor

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Unquiet_Dead

[[Category:Ninth Doctor television stories [[Category:2005 television stories [[Category:Stories set in Cardiff [[Category:Stories set in 1869 [[Category:Stories set at Christmas [[Category:Bad Wolf arc [[Category:Pseudo-historical stories [[Category:Series 1 (Doctor Who) stories

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Castellans

[[Category:Titles [[Category:Culture & Society

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Gregor_Clegane

[[Category:Characters [[Category:Recurring Characters [[Category:Season 1 Characters [[Category:Season 2 Characters [[Category:Status: Alive [[Category:House Lannister [[Category:House Clegane [[Category:Knights [[Category:Season 3 Characters [[Category:Characters from the Westerlands [[Category:Castellans [[Category:Season 4 Characters [[Category:Recast Characters [[Category:Nobility [[Category:Season 5 Characters

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Locke

[[Category:House Bolton [[Category:Season 3 Characters [[Category:Characters [[Category:Recurring Characters [[Category:Characters from the North [[Category:Season 4 Characters [[Category:Castellans [[Category:Status: Dead [[Category:Smallfolk [[Category:Spies

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Costumes

[[Category:Production [[Category:Culture & Society [[Category:Costumes

http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Costumes:_The_Seven_Kingdoms

[[Category:Production [[Category:Culture & Society [[Category:Costumes

So -- the examples that you yourself gave me as examples of how your method of categorizing pages in "the best category/a single category" is correct -- do NOT follow your recommended style. But they DO follow the style I am recommending.

The pages are placed in several categories so the users can find them in various ways, depending on their interests, and NOT in a single category that is "the best/the correct/the only" category.

So you have proven my point, and not your point with the examples you gave. Go figure!

I have to run -- I've got some important things to do now so I have not read the rest of your response and cannot respond to it now. User4 (talk) 17:50, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea where you are going with this except that maybe you think that essays (non factual articles) should be categorized alone side factual entries under Category:Encyclopedia (in a subcategory) instead of under Category:life in/under Category:Essays which is where I maintain that "opinion" pieces should go? --Etenne (talk) 18:23, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

BoyWiki should allow those who understand how and why things are professionally categorized in the ways that they are to set up a "categorization layout". Of the editors who are now active, which one appears to have the most skills necessary to do that the best? You? Wanker? Lysander? Who?

• User4 (talk) 09:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The reality is that, if people don't categorize their own pages or incorrectly categorize them (esp in category encyclopedia) they end up going where I think they should go after giving it 2 seconds thought because I don't have the time to read every entry and decide what categories it belongs in and perhaps even which categories should be created. So pretty much I dump them where I approximately think they should go and maybe if I have the time later, I go back and organize. That might seem a bad way to go about it and it is... but if the authors doesn't care enough to categorize it correctly (according to the instructions that I have already given), why should I? --Etenne (talk) 13:48, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• Also, you need to Keep in mind that BoyWiki was started long before I got here and the current category plan was laid out by the original BoyWiki Keeper and Curators... I am simply following their plan as to what they intended. When I started working on BoyWiki there were 4 top level Categories (Encyclopedia Entertainment, Life, with Category BoyWiki being the administrative category) There were no indices or portals and none of the templates were categorized and the main page had not been updated since May 20, 2009‎ (I started in Sept 2012). I did add the top level root category (Category:Index) because I did not want to have three completely separate root categories. My overall assessment is that we are making good progress but that we can still do a better job putting entries in to categories as we go. Plus some of the current categories are now big enough to be broken up into subcategories. At some point when I have time, I plan to re-categorize Category:Dictionary alphabetically. I simply can't do everything so when you are working on a page or add a page, you need to spend a little more time thinking about where (on BoyWiki) it should go (keeping in mind that we are not a general encyclopedia like Wikipedia) and if there are other similar entries on this subject that could justify the creation of a new subcategory. --Etenne (talk) 14:12, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

What about the possibility of mimicking Wikipedia's categorization scheme, with the exception that we would put the essays in an "essays" category? Lysander (talk) 19:14, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely Zero. We are not Wikipedia and it makes no sense to try to be like them. Nor are we going to change our top level category scheme. We need to be uniquely what we are... meaning that we need to build from the bottom up or the top down depending on your perspective. That doesn't mean we can't take a look and see how they did it and if it makes sense for BoyWiki, sure we can copy what they do. However, I don't see us ever needing categories on how to groom and fuck women and other things beyond the scope of this wiki. Are you guys really having such a difficult time naming categories on your own? or is it something else? Plus to do that you are talking about.... redoing about 8 or 9 years of work... It would take a team of people working night and day to get that done within a year and who is going to do that? I mean, I am having a hard enough time trying to get people to add things to a single category let alone rename and recategorize everything--Etenne (talk) 19:28, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Also think of it from my perspective because you know that ultimately I will get sick of the mess and work on it myself. Every times someone doesn't take 5 or 10 mins to categories their work means that I have to take that time to do it. Now multiply that by hundreds of pages and how many days, weeks etc... am I going to have to spend on doing it when I could be improving content? This also goes back to us not internal linking well enough. If what User4 said is true that people can find stuff in different categories/across categories, then we are not doing a good enough job at page linking. --Etenne (talk) 20:03, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

It's a difference in wiki-philosophies. It's sometimes considered a lost functionality that on Wikipedia, you could dump a block of unformatted text into the wiki without worrying about categorization, wikilinking, etc. People didn't mind that it was being left for later cleanup. But Wikipedia has a lot of wikignomes running around, apparently eager to do that gruntwork without complaint.

The advantage of copying Wikipedia's categorization scheme is that less effort needs to be put into developing a new categorization scheme, or learning the scheme we already have here. However, I am in favor of having a top-level category, and that seems to be the standard across the wikisphere. MediaWiki.org has mediawikiwiki:Category:Top_level and Wikipedia has wikipedia:Category:Contents, for example. Lysander (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying and in the case of general categories (second level and even third level) they work fine however the more specific categories do not. We may find one "Category:17th-century Polish painters" who is a BL or BL related but I do not think we will ever have enough to justify and to populate having that category --Etenne (talk) 21:02, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Plus I have to admit that to me that is sort of the equivalent of going to the Ku Klux Klan wiki to get the categories for the Black history wiki. --Etenne (talk) 21:14, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point, about the specific categories; in such instances, we could travel up the hierarchy and use, instead, Category:Polish people and Category:Painters. Wikipedia would probably have Category:Polish boylovers if it weren't for their bias. In cases where their bias isn't an issue, we can use their categorization scheme for guidance, unless there's some other reason for reinventing the wheel. (If the wheel's design sucks, that can be a good reason to reinvent it.)

With regard to going to the KKK wiki for the categories, I'm reminded of how Ludwig von Mises pointed out, "The technology of Soviet Russia utilizes without scruple all the results of bourgeois physics, chemistry, and biology just as if they were valid for all classes. The Nazi engineers and physicians did not disdain to utilize the theories, discoveries, and inventions of people of 'inferior' races and nations." Even the country that persecuted Alan Turing didn't mind using his ideas. Similarly, those who hate the Nazis still use the results of Nazi human experimentation that was conducted on unwilling Jews. We don't have to agree with someone's ideology to use their unrelated technology (including categorization schemes). Lysander (talk) 21:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, and in some instances that will work and in some it will not so we just have to do the best we can and perhaps even use a bit of creativity and imagination at times. --Etenne (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Main_topic_classifications Some of this could be used for Category:Encyclopedia --Etenne (talk) 17:47, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I was changing around the categories a bit to mimic Wikipedia's scheme, but it's a tough decision how tall to make the hierarchy sometimes. The simplest way would be to mimic Wikipedia's structure as faithfully as possible, and then add breadth to it (e.g. with categories such as "Boylovers") rather than cutting out levels. Then it wouldn't be necessary to use as much creativity, imagination, and individual judgment. What do you think? Lysander (talk) 20:43, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Right now my opinion is whatever works best for you and the pages or areas you are working on just so long as I don't have to do it all:) I know that categorizing is not the most interesting part of wiki-ing and it's tedious work but it needs to be done. BTW, when you add a category try to remember to add the category header {{CH}} it's not a big deal, but still it is less work for me latter :) --Etenne (talk) 21:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Those types of tasks are good to work on during periods of depression when motivation is lacking to do much of anything else. Unfortunately, sometimes depression also kills the will to do wiki maintenance. Lysander (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)