Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/User/Genre and media categories

This is a discussion of the proposed guideline for all genre and media related user categories. - LA @ 09:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Why is this needed?
I don't see the point. --Kbdank71 10:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the naming conventions proposed here deserve to be discussed, but I don't think a formal guideline is needed. In this case, I think new naming conventions can be more-or-less formalised through a standard discussion and relatively informal agreement among participants. (If I'm not mistaken, the current naming conventions for user categories came about as a result of talk page and CFD discussion...) Black Falcon (Talk) 15:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm all for naming conventions, but for categories that are by consensus needed. From reading this proposal, it seems a given that all of these categories will be created if they don't already exist, which would appear to go against emerging consensus for several open discussions at UCFD.  --Kbdank71 15:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a fair amount here that's problematic, based on previous consensus. I know threading can get wearisome, so I'll try to start separate sections. - jc37 17:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Who like
This part is pretty close to being a dead proposal.

The use of "interested in" was a rough compromise between those who wanted "...interested in collaborating on..." and those who felt that the latter (probably) was needlessly long for a category name.

"...who like/love/enjoy..." cat naming is consistantly being weeded out, as simply not indicating collaboration, particularly since userbox transclusion may be involved.

So, I rather strongly doubt you'll gain any traction on this as usage. - jc37 17:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I strongly oppose a "who like" naming convention. I like tons of things that I am not interested in collaborating on at Wikipedia, so I think having that name encourages using categories as bottom of the page notices.  I agree that "interested in" isn't perfect, but it does convey more of a collaborative intent than "who like".  My personal preference is "Wikipedians interested in collaborating on topics related to x". but that is rather lengthy.  As for "by genre", I agree with Jc37 that genre can sometimes be subjective, so I think there is a better way we could categorize these. VegaDark (talk) 20:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think "who like" needs context. I agree that most of those "who like" categories are useless, but I've seen a lot that could be of value to the Wiki. Yes, believe it or not, liking something, but not being interested in editing that topic, can be of value. I'm fine with a general discouragement of "who like" categories, but I find it somewhat frustrating to see some of them being brought to uCfD only because they contain "who like". -- Ned Scott 01:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Example? --Kbdank71 12:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

This part of the proposal is to use a more active word which in turn leads to shorter category names. From the example for all of The Addams Family categories. Shorter category names lead to less that needs to be stored and retrieved for display. I think that a lot of people tend to forget that there are some who do not have high speed internet access. Those of us with slower internet connections are being pushed away from most websites these days due to the extreme length of time it takes to load them due to the file sizes of the pages.

Categories: Wikipedians who like horror television | Wikipedians who like comedy television | Wikipedians who like horror films | Wikipedians who like comedy films | Wikipedians who like horror games | Wikipedians who like comedy games | Wikipedians who like horror literature | Wikipedians who like comedy literature | Wikipedians who like non-fiction books

Categories: Wikipedians interested in horror television | Wikipedians interested in comedy television | Wikipedians interested in horror films | Wikipedians interested in comedy films | Wikipedians interested in horror games | Wikipedians interested in comedy games | Wikipedians interested in horror literature | Wikipedians interested in comedy literature | Wikipedians interested in non-fiction books

As you can see, interested in is longer. Think about all of those "interested in" categories on the user pages and just how much longer they would be than the above. - LA @ 17:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Longer only by five characters per category. LA, I think that that's a weak argument that most people will simply discount, and that you should therefore avoid relying on. &mdash;ScouterSig 18:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Five characters across hundreds of categories on thousands of pages with multiple edits. It adds up. Also, please see my reply below. - LA @ 19:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Not really. You only are downloading those extra 5 chars per category per page. It's not a cumulative effect over your entire browsing experience; just on that page. Even at 20 user categories like this, that's still only 100 extra characters, which really makes almost no difference at dialup speeds.  howcheng  {chat} 23:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Though I like the structured nature of this proposal (though that too may have problems), my viewpoint on "who like" versus "interested in" is essentially the same as VegaDark's. While "to like" may be more active than "to be interested in", interest is more relevant to collaborative intent than liking. Black Falcon (Talk) 17:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Empty categories
That the proposal is very structured is good (we need everything to have a place), but it perhaps over-prepares for growth (we don't need a place for everything). I don't think there is a need for Category:Wikipedians who like western role-playing games, Category:Wikipedians who like romance comics, or Category:Wikipedians interested in book technologies, now or really ever. &mdash;ScouterSig 15:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OMG! The categories will not all be created at once. They will be created as needed, say after 5 or 6 subcategories or 10 to 20 users. The last one you mentioned would cover a lot, from the printing press to paper making to electronic book readers such as Amazon.com's Kindle. - LA @ 17:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that they still aren't necessary: western role-playing games probably are very few (and so don't need a category, since collaboration can easily be done elsewhere), and "book technologies" (thank you for helping me understand what that is) is so broad —from Gutenberg to Google)—that it's almost meaningless. &mdash;ScouterSig 21:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Franchise vs. genre
This proposal also shows the difficulty in categorizine "I like ___" or "I am interested in (collaboraing on) ___". (I assume "interested in" categories imply a collaborative effort per standard UCFD discussions.) Category:Wikipedians who like The Chronicles of Narnia is a good category (other than "like") because it is broad enough to facilitate collaboration; but to drop it into the subcat Category:Wikipedians who listen to film scores I think is silly: while I would put myself in the Narnia cat, I would never listen to the movie score because I have no interest in the score itself. &mdash;ScouterSig 15:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "I like (and will collaborate on) X" vs. "I am interested in (but know nothing about) X" would be more accurate. I am interested in titles of nobility, know what some of them are and a very basic structure for them, but I know nothing nor care about the history of the titles. However, I like Dungeons & Dragons and know a lot about it, enough to collaborate on articles. All I have to do is look above my head right now to make a pretty long book list. (I can at least add titles, authors, copyright, and ISBN though scanning the covers would be a bad idea since my books and boxed sets are pretty banged up from use. I even own the first film and want to own the cartoon.)


 * Once The Chronicles of Narnia film series is complete there may be four film scores, so it really should go into the film scores category once the second film score is released. Also, film scores are usually either relegated to the bottom of the film article or not covered. The film scores category might highlight the fact that the scores should be covered. (Personally, I would love to own the film scores and soundtracks for all films and television series that I like, including The Chronicles of Narnia.) - LA @ 18:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Parent cats, intersection, and navigation

 * The majority of these are parent cats. And this proposal seems, generally, to be about inter-subcatting these parents through intersecting categorisation.


 * I just don't think that such a system is a good idea for several reasons.


 * First and foremost, such a system could be done for any topic of study. Consider literature, for example. Or how about non-fiction. So we have a category which is a children's story, an action story, a non-fiction, a comedy story, a dramatic story, etc. Imagine a children's book on the life of Charles Lindberg, for example. Or worse, consider how many literature versions of these categories could be placed on a user's userpage due to liking Harry Potter. Or how about the TV series M*A*S*H? And that's just two. Consider that "single film" cats are consistantly deleted. So instead of a single cat for a single film, the user would have several cats for the single film? (I'm looking directly at this section of the proposal) Really bad idea.


 * This is just not the best of all possible worlds, but rather, the worst of all possible worlds. In looking over Overcategorisation, I see several examples of overcat by various intersection. This is just a variation on that. And do we really want our editors having to go 2 or 3 or more parent categories deep to find people who may be interested in collaborating on this or that?


 * And further, since these are going from the broad to the specific, we end up with intersections that leave us with groupings that may describe only a few articles. Or on the converse, which may include only a few Wikipedians each. Help to navigation? Not so much.


 * And the subjectivity of genre means that people may become confused as to which categories to include themselves in. And what about the person who's interested in it all? Do they have to add themselves to all these myriad categories? No? Then how would someone find that person? Through a top-level category?


 * Let's look at this another way. Do you think that a task force (much less a WikiProject) of any of these names would ever be created? Probably not.


 * And can you imagine the category list at the bottom of the user's userpage, with even a couple of these?


 * Honestly, this really just looks like subcatting just for the sake of subcatting. And does not appear helpful, even for navigation, much less for help finding others to collaborate with.


 * If there was a need for this system to be put in place, pehaps it would be worthy of discussion at least. But honestly. as it is, most of the television/media cats are populated merely by those who happen to have a userbox they like, or found humourous, for something they may enjoy experiencing, but may or may not have any interest in collaborating on. And if you doubt this, I'll point you back to a few WP:CFD discussions in which a few dedicated Wikipedians attempted to bring a bunch of motley-named user categories into a single set of naming conventions. Anyone who doesn't like "who like" would scream at these names.


 * Anyway, this all should be about a user's intent. Not the user's state of being.


 * I apologise if this seems harsh, as it's obvious that a lot of thought and work went into this.


 * Perhaps if you'd take some time looking over previous CFD/UCFD discussions to learn previous consensus, it may help with future attempts at organisation. As I've said before, help would be greatly welcome, I just would like to save you needless work that may end up being reverted or deleted. - jc37 16:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)