BoyWiki:Agora/10 November 2015

Agora/10 November 2015

Underpopulated categories

At Wikipedia there is mostly a sound understanding concerning the appropriate use of categories. One of the consensus conclusions there with which I totally agree is that very small categories should be avoided and articles should instead be migrated (upmerged) into a relevant parent category. A summary count I just made divulges that we have 34 biographical articles for people born in the 20th century. These are categorized into 27 categories which specify the year of birth, an average of 1.26 articles per category. I propose that we upmerge all of these category entries to birth by decade for the 20th century. I propose the same for 19th century births. Before that we simply have so few names, less than a handful, the they should just be lumped into one container category, Births before 1800. __meco (talk) 15:20, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

I would welcome adding them to birth by decade but I still want to keep what we have for technical reasons. The problem is Meco, you come to BoyWiki with a very strong understanding of how Wikipedia is categorized as well as how to wiki, most people don't have that expirance. I have had a bear of a time getting people to understand that we need to categories starting with a general category and then becoming more specific as naturally indicated. Some people have said that they don't like our category hierarchy of Encyclopedia, entertainment, and life which I am not willing to change because that is how our creators intended it to be set up and I would to try to maintain their vision as much as possible. Also keep in mind that BoyWiki is not primary an encyclopedia, it is the archive/museum of our history, culture, and heritage and of our expirance as boylovers. However if you wanted to work on categorizing Category:Encyclopedia that would be welcome. (see also Category talk:Encyclopedia) --Etenne (talk) 15:58, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Just so that I understand you correctly, should I add the Births by decade hierarchy and leave the articles categorized to the specific Births by year which they are in at present, or do you suggest I re-categorize but leave the Births by year categories intact but empty (an admin would be the one that'd have to delete those in any case)? __meco (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes add them to both decade and century (if you like) or anything else you feel would be useful and cool, but I also what to keep what we have. Chronology could almost be a full-time job for multiple people so we just have to do the best we can. In other words, I am all for adding more Chronology (including templates) I just want to keep the base we currently have. --Etenne (talk) 17:22, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Sure, by the way, I was central in developing several of the chronological category structures on both the English and the Norwegian Wikipedias. I realize that his is not an important part of this project in its current phase, but I am probably a particular resource in this respect. __meco (talk) 17:48, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Please continue to provide more info on your contributions to Wikimedia projects so that we can add it to the Meco article. Lysander (talk) 17:37, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

OK, I'll see what I can do. By principle I avoid chronicling myself to the extent it isn't necessary for explaining my work, so I'm unsure I'll devote much effort to it. __meco (talk) 18:04, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah but there's no one else to do it. People aren't going to laboriously comb through your thousands of contributions. Also, some of your contributions may have been deleted; lately, it seems as though most of my contributions to Wikipedia have been getting deleted, but they are contributions nonetheless. Lysander (talk) 18:28, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, my position isn't that I won't chronicle my own work as long as someone else does it, so your argument doesn't change my attitude. It is not an imperative for me to "present my case". On the contrary. __meco (talk) 18:35, 27 November 2015 (UTC)