Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contents/Archive 1

:Category talk:Fundamental
Everyone is welcome to discuss this ontology. Note: When an introduction for a Category:Fundamental category, or similar main category is empty, with no basic article, then Template:Catmore:|See the overview article about is a possible stub which should alert categorizers that there is no main Wikipedia article for the category , as would be the case for a category page with a red link.
 * Category talk:Fundamental is the venue for discussion of the ontology of the Template:Categorybrowsebar which is on the Main Page as:

sj's Proposal
For starters, we should create a wikiproject for this.
 * 1) As a first goal, we could get split up the other lang wikipedias and look at the cat schemes they use on their main pages.  The French schema, for instance, is very detailed and different from ours.
 * 2) As a second goal, we could start working through the top-level topics currently listed on the main page, making them
 * 3) * High-quality, in clarity, tone, imagery and format
 * 4) * Model articles, as overviews - demonstrations of what WP has to offer in each category
 * 5) * Consistent with their top-level category, and not redundant with other top-level topics (currently not the case for all articles listed on the Main Page).
 * see Topic of the week for more. +sj+ 02:12, 2004 May 16 (UTC)

Brent G's Proposal
Hi! I strongly recommend users interested in classification, as I am, check out Library classification. Here you will find some links to existing systems that are more versatile than the tedious linear systems of the Library of Congress classification or the Dewey Decimal System, both of which are fine for physical repositories of books, which have to be linear, but are woefully inadequate for a real knowledge database like the wikipedia. The Colon classification and the Universal Decimal Classification are interesting starts. But those are still limited by being designed for collections of physical documents.
 * IIRC the DDS is subject to copyright and maybe it cannot be used on a free encyclopedia, check up on that. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:24, 2004 Jun 15 (UTC)

I have written a proposal for a classification system for wikipedia on User:Brent Gulanowski/Categorization. Brent Gulanowski 16:58, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

TimNelson's Proposal
My proposal is that we divide the Category Schemes into the five Library Science facets, and then let anyone add their own categorisation scheme under any of these headings. The five Library Science facets are: For example, I've made a Categorisation at User:TimNelson/Categorisation, which is how I currently organise topics in my mind. I could add it under the Personality/Topic heading. I'd suggest that under Personality/Topic, we have: Sure, eventually, we'll end up with bucketloads of categorisations, but that'll mean that we have more data to mine as to what categorisation would be best for Wikipedia User:TimNelson Sat Jun 4 14:22:34 UTC 2005
 * Personality (translation: Topic)
 * Matter (translation: What's the thing made of)
 * Energy (translation: The processes or activities that take place in relation to the thing)
 * Space (translation: Geography; where in space does it happen)
 * Time
 * Wikipedia Categorization (ie. the current Wikipedia)
 * Library Systems (ie. Dewey Decimal, LoC, etc)
 * Lists (Biography and those)
 * Personal Systems (this is where mine would go)

Ancient discussion
A small revision perhaps?

"Visual Arts" and "Design" should not be under the same link. If anything, "Design" should come up as a subgenre under "Visual Arts", as design is one aspect out of many comprising the visual arts, be they 'fine' or 'commercial'.

That's it!

Tracy


 * I have a suggestion about a reorganization within Category:Visual arts and some about Category:Arts generally on Category talk:Visual arts. What's the status on the cfd for Category:Art? I can't seem to find the end of this discussion. :) Clubmarx 02:31, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

There should be a geographic listing to add in addation to the system in place right now. It could go by this format:


 * Continents
 * Major Phyisical Features (Major seas, rivers, mountains, etc.)
 * Ecosystems (Flora, Fauna, treats to it, etc.)
 * Independant states and territories
 * Major issues (War, famine, economic problems, etc.)
 * Oceans
 * Major Phyisical Features (Major seas, currents, underwater mountains, etc.)
 * Ecosystems (Sealife, treats to it, etc.)

Note it would list each item on the page, but to a new page

--Babbler

How about about sorting the pages by most frequently visited? (if that's not already possible) ---

Why not include a page with an alphabetical listing of all Wikipedia articles? This could be broken into subcategories, with each subcategory indexing a maximum number of articles (say 100). To wit:


 * A*

Aa-Ab | Ac-Ad | Ae-Af |. ..


 * B*

Ba-Bb | Bc-Bd | Be-Bf |. ..


 * C*

Ca-Cb | Cc-Cd | Ce-Cf |. ..

. ..

Or has this already been done?

--NetEsq


 * It would be impossible to keep this up manually. Biographical listing probably only has half of the biographies in Wikipedia.  However, you could put in a feature request for a new special:Allpages in which you could select the first letter(s) of the article.  That'd be pretty cool. DanKeshet

The underlying technology of Wikipedia seems to be it's short-coming. The ideal system makes use of XML and some sort of semantic schema. This way, a system could generate alternative knowledge representations based upon the users perspective. One can conceive of a particular field of knowledge as their target knowledge, i.e., their bull's eye. Moving away from their field within concentric rings would be fields of knowledge that relate to the target knowledge. Consider this as a cross section of a tree trunk, with concentric tree rings as related fields.

-- Pierre Johnson

I just had an interesting idea for an alternate category scheme. Right now, the main page has things organized by discipline. Now, a discipline is an area of study, and since humans study most everything, it makes sense that a list of disciplines would result in a list of starting-pages to most everything.

But we could, in addition (in an alternative "official category scheme" have the names of things themselves listed--of course, the most general of them. So, rather than Astronomy, we'd have space or the universe or something like that.  Rather than Philosophy, we would have being, goodness, knowledge, and a number of other basic topics studied by philosophy.  Etc.

One interesting consideration about this idea is that, as in the case of philosophy, very many (perhaps all) disciplines cannot really be regarded as the study of just one thing--i.e., probably, for no discipline there is no one general category, C, such that the subject studied by that discipline is accurate and exhaustively described as 'the study of C'. Therefore, Wikipedia arranged by topic would have to include many more entry points than the present HomePage does, in order to be (more or less directly) connected to the same material that the top-level discipline articles connect to.

This consideration was inspired in part by an article Nupedia's Zoology editor wrote about Zoology. I replied that it seemed to be a really wonderful article about animals, and that we ought to rename the article "Animal." She agreed. A different article, about the study of animals, will be written about Zoology. This then raised the question as to what the top-level article should be for Nupedia: "Animal" or "Zoology"?

Of course, the issue arises here on Wikipedia as well.

--Larry Sanger

I think it wouldn't be that bad to add it as an alternate scheme, but I wouldn't rework the whole thing to use it. Disciplines represent a "natural" (at least among the well-educated segments of our society) way of looking at things; its just a fact that human knowledge is divided up that way. Having Wikipedia structured roughly along those lines helps people find things and to know where to put things.

On the other hand, the point about Animal vs. Zoology I think is good: "zoology" includes not just the object of study, but the people who study it, the history of the study, failed ideas, untested hypothesises; while "animal" is just the object of study. -- Simon J Kissane

Older discussion (probably needs refactoring)

As an example I've put Wikipedia pages into Nupedia's category scheme on the Category Schemes page. A short history of this, then. The Nupedia category scheme is really intended to be a way to organize review groups, not necessarily subject areas (i.e., it's intended to organize people, not content); but, as it turns out, it is also not a bad way to organize subject areas as well.

I devised the category scheme very roughly according to the way universities divide up academic departments. I tried, above all, to be exhaustive; if there is some area of human knowledge that cannot be placed in this category scheme, I'd like to know. The supercategories ("FoundationalDisciplines," " NaturalSciences," etc.) are all reasonably coherent concepts, and in most cases it's clear enough that a category definitely belongs in one supercategory rather than another.

On the whole, I think that as a category scheme it is a lot more coherent than, say, the Dewey Decimal System or the LibraryOfCongressClassificationScheme. But of course others may differ. Feel free to devise your own category scheme and place it on the CategorySchemes page! -- User:Larry Sanger

I'm sorry, but the current organizational scheme that's been used on the homepage just makes me cringe every time I look at it. It seems as if there's no sense - that they're merely random points into the database. I tried to provide a simple three-grouping system to help at least organize it a little, but it appears to have been reverted out. There are few clues as to how to fit new topics into the organizational scheme... How can you tell if some technical topic belongs in TechnologY rather than ScienCe? ArtsAndEntertainment? is an extremely broad subject area; CountriesOfTheWorld extremely specific... -- BryceSorryAndConfusedHarrington

Science includes the principles behind things, but technology includes their uses. A lot of topics will straddle the two, but for a top-level classification I don't think there's a problem. I do agree, though, that there are way to many top-level nodes. Off the top of my head, I would propose a different system:

Understanding the way the world works - PhiloSophy, MathematicsAndStatistics, NaturalSciences Understanding what's actually in it - BiologicalSciences (?), HiStory, GeoGraphy Making stuff for practical use - TechnologY Making stuff for its own ends - ArtsAndEntertainment

The point of having a computerized encyclopedia is not to face some of the traditionnal dilemma of the Editor-In-Chief: meeting the deadline, having a fixed list of articles, publishing a fixed work, having only one table of contents.

I think that apart from quite rational CategorySchemes we should encourage many apparently non-sensical categorizations and make them available through a variant of the CategorySchemes and/or of the PatentNonsense page, like this one:
 * 1) Things written by BryceHarrington
 * 2) Things having kept a wEiRDcAPITALIZATion? in wikiwiki
 * 3) Things whose name is badly spelt by most
 * 4) Things whose shape or color has a cute name in shwahili
 * 5) Birds that cannot fly
 * 6) Subjects alluded to in more than two of the above categories
 * 7) People not wanting to be classified as things
 * 8) Objects not wanting to be called by any other name
 * 9) Objects that can be thrown at someone you despise
 * 10) Savoir-vivre manuals
 * 11) Mirrors, Queens and Rabbits
 * 12) Miscelleaneous and Dinosaurs

--OprgaG

As you can see, I've been tweaking our HomePage category scheme. It probably needs further tweaking, if we're going to follow a nonredundancy rule; e.g., countries of the world is a subcategory of geography. This is something we should perhaps discuss. LMS

Perhaps AstroNomer could explain why Planetary Sciences should be distinguished from Astronomy? For simplicity, I propose to continue regarding PS as a branch of Astronomy. We could, for example, regard Oceanography? as a separate science from Earth Sciences, but again, simplicity seems to recommend that we keep relatively few broadly-characterized categories. Disagree? --LMS

In some Universities in the US, there are Planetary Sciences departments separate from the astronomy departments, and, though they use some of the techniques of astronomy, they also are able to "go there" and observe directly (trips to the moon, unmanned mission to Mars and other planets, the recent landing in an asteroid). They study things as the geology of planets, or the meteorology of others...In a way, I'd say that earth sciences is branch of Planetary Sciences, more than P.S. is a branch of astronomy. There are even some (I hope few) planetary scientists than get offended is someone called them astronomers...

All that said, it is possible than putting it at the top of the hierarchy was a bit extreme, and I'm not moving it back till some pl. scientists joins the wiki and moves it back.

Also, I think there should be a link to Planetary Sciences from Earth sciences -- AstroNomer

The Dewey Decimal System is really more appropriate for a library of books, not an encyclopedia, but still gives an interesting (if old-fashioned!) perspective.

Or the Library of Congress catalogue scheme perhaps. I assume that it's Public Domain, being produced by the US government.

Love the new biography category, this will help us to tie things together really easily. User:sjc

Yep, I like it too! Good idea! --User:LMS

2001-06-01

Hello ! Are new contributions to be posted at the top or bottom of the page? I'd like to propose a TopicMaps approach for the general structure. That is basically a subject-centered non-hierarchical concept, so we won't have to bother much what is top and what is down. And it's very close to the wiki growth concept. The distinction pointed below between concepts, themes, classes or categories(also called universals) and individual objects like you and me and Van Gogh's "Les Tournesols" could lead to something different of the usual encyclopaedias structure.

BernardVatant (will try to give some attention to the French section) - 14 Sept. 2001 What do people think about the category scheme of the Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/). It is the basis that many of the large commercial web directories work from, and so is familiar to many people. --Sunset

I really like the ODP category scheme (it seems to be very carefully worked out), but I think there's a fundamental difference between a category scheme for a set of web links and one for an encyclopedia. --User:LMS

I guess this answers an earlier question from BernardVatant: New posts will be added at the bottom of the page. :) - Sunset
 * Right, sometimes I think it's simpler to do rather than to say. :-) --LMS

Other schemes
Add your category scheme below!

Let's discuss the different category schemes on Talk

A three-part category scheme attributed to Jefferson:


 * Memory : Countries of the World -- History -- Language -- Quotes -- Religion -- United States
 * Reason : HumanComputerInteraction -- Mathematics and Statistics -- Philosophy -- Politics -- Science -- Technology
 * Imagination : Architecture -- Arts and Entertainment -- Dance -- Literature -- Music -- Recreation -- Sports

Found while perusing the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/

Thomas Jefferson, whose personal library became the core of the Library of Congress, arranged his books into three types of knowledge, corresponding to Francis Bacon's three faculties of the mind: Memory (History), Reason (Philosophy), and Imagination (Fine Arts).

JoshuaGrosse says: Off the top of my head, I would propose a different system:


 * Understanding the way the world works - Philosophy, Mathematics and Statistics, Natural Sciences
 * Understanding what's actually in it - Biology, History, Geography
 * Making stuff for practical use - Technology
 * Making stuff for its own ends - Arts and Entertainment,Mathematics

We all know the familiar dot classification design of the Usenet.


 * alt.activism
 * alt.activism.ecology
 * alt.arts.origami
 * biz.general
 * biz.healthcare
 * comp.databases
 * comp.databases.adabas
 * comp.lang.c
 * comp.lang.c++
 * comp.programming
 * comp.sys.arm
 * comp.sys.atari
 * comp.sys.att
 * rec.arts.origami
 * rec.arts.puppetry
 * sci.anthropology
 * sci.archaeology
 * rec.arts.origami
 * rec.arts.puppetry
 * sci.anthropology
 * sci.archaeology
 * sci.anthropology
 * sci.archaeology

why not figure out a similar navigation system ? Let's look at a proposed HomePage :
 * history.* (time) -> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/history_category
 * world.* (physical world - geography) -> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/world_category
 * computers.* (computer related) -> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/computer_category
 * human.* (physical humans, not their mind) -> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/man_category
 * mind.* (works about man's mind) -> http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/mind_category
 * science.* (empirical knowledge) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/
 * language.* (???) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/
 * anima.* (living world around man) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/
 * culture.* (culture itself and sociology) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/
 * rec.* (recreation) http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/
 * and more ? It is open for discussion

And again on http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/history_category page that is labeled &quot;history.*&quot;
 * history.world_war_1.* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/ww2_category
 * history.world_war_2.* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/ww1_category
 * history.roman_empire.* http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/roman_empire_category

and so on...

I think it would be great fun for all of us Wikipedians if such or similar system could be implemented in the inner workings of Wikipedia software. Automatic links feature of Wiki is a revolutionary achievment but wiki was never designed to cater for projects of such magnitude and complexity especially where good classification and navigation is crucial. I wonder if TopicMaps is a viable option to solve classification and navigation problems (in the future). Alternatively maybe beside Page_A.db Page_A.lck there should be a Page_A.cls files holding classification info. Just a thought. --User:Kpjas

I have installed another slightly different scheme in the German version of the wikipedia which is I think a compromise between the standard version and new ones. My intention was to shift the standard somewhat from the purely scientific world view. Three main parts stress this view. Others have or might have a different world view or world feeling. This is even symbolized in the use of some words. Although the german homepage now more looks like a Portal I find this more appropriate. Which should NOT be misinterpreted by anybody to shift the content which should remain being encyclopedic (objective rsp. encompassing different views).

Others should find alternate schemes or portals direct from the entry of wikipedia.

Another scheme is functionally different. I have tried to make something more suitable for direct search. So consecutive pages will supply something if someone knows he searches for a person. ..

--StefanRybo

Above text moved from main article, as discussions were no longer very active Enchanter

Shouldn't wikipedia have a category for International Relations, near or inside the Political Science category? In my opinion, International Relations, even being a category that is related to many other already existing ones, like economy, law and political science, it deserves a category on its own. Terms like Globalization, Trading Blocs, International Law, International Organizations, WTO, International Regimes, Soft Laws, should be in it's own category, too. What do you think? The point is, I am an International Relations student myself, and, as a glad user of the pedia, I miss this category. Thanks Forgive me if I'm asking something lame - I am just a newbie here... p.s.: As i can see, there's a sub category in the Library of the Congress - JZ. BTW, I am willing to make that term - International Relations.<br.

Thanks. User:Yves Marques Teixeira

How about if you create a page International relations and link to it from political science? Several of the topics at the end of the political science article would fall under International relations. AxelBoldt 00:33 Sep 9, 2002 (UTC)

Ok, i'll do it. Yves Marques Teixeira Time (How do I add the current date/time ?)

How about cross-referencing to Wiktionary? - User:Brettz9

The main page's "About our category schemes" would be, I think, more appropriately labeled "Other Category Schemes" (or at least make "Other Category Schemes" one accessible option). Brettz9 02:18 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

The purpose of this would be to show that there were in fact other category schemes besides the by topic scheme on the main page - Brettz9 02:21 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

I personally have always endorsed Melvil Dewey's decimal system. I don't know of any actual real reason not to use it, other than its "non-wiki"ness. Even if it was designed for paper, it's useful; it and Library of Congress classification- user:zanimum

We need tutorials. For instance, it would be almost impossible to learn any mathematics by reading the mathematics pages. There should be structured and incremental courses with exercises for the various subjects. Essentially some form of 'guidance' for knowledge acquisition. Perhaps this could be a separate project codependant w/wikipedia?

Kevin Baas -2003.03.14

---

Pictures with pages
Pages that cover any celebrity/dignitary/other important person should have a picture of that person. I believe that wikipedia should not only be a text archive, but also a picture archive, wherever/whenever possible. Can this be made into a practice, especially for new additions? Perhaps the users can add pictures for older pages as well? Thanks.


 * Hi User:Sray, everyone agrees that Wikipedia needs more images. However, we have to take copyright issues into consideration (please see my note to you on this matter on your Talk page. Also, it would be most useful if you could sign your posts. Best and easist way is with four tildes ~ . When you save your message, this gets automatically converted into your user name and date. -- Viajero 10:20, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Viajero. When I talked abt. more images, the copyright issue was implicit. I was just wondering if people can make a little effort to find a public-domain picture when they are writing abt. someone, and post the image as well.


 * Pictures are good. Will they make the wikipedia grow too fast, in terms of storage? You know, there are thousands of internetizens out there making photo blogs. We could probably enlist some of them. I have already put a request on my personal weblog for Toronto photographers to consider donating images. It's rather hopeless to talk about some subjects without images. (I'm not sure how this relates to categories, though.) Brent Gulanowski 16:58, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Sray 02:19, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Categorization scheme?
Couldn't we change this page to categorization scheme to match the main text title? Sounds much better --(talk to)BozMo 12:38, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

All pages link
The Special:Allpages link is blank; can I take its link out of the main page until it's updated? --Merovingian &#8597; T@Lk 03:23, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

IMHO that should redirect you to Special:Allpages/a or something like that which is less blank. --ssd 02:48, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Persons and Humans and other Abstract Concepts
Category:Human is more fundamental than Category:Person; it should probably be used instead. Neither of these seem like particularly useful categories to point to for navigation, since it's very hard to know what subcategory to click on to get where you want to go. Perhaps they should be removed or better populated. -- Beland 06:34, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Category:Human is about all human related knowledge at all, about a stanalone human and about societies. Category:Person (you can propose another name) - about a human person in environment. It is subcategory of Category:Human. Kenny 08:05, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Regarding Category:Conscious - Is there a way to move a category page, so as to rename this category? Conscious is an adjective in current English usage. It is not used as is the psychological Unconscious. It appears that the sense of this category is the Conscious mind. One possibility is to rename the category Category:Conscious mind Ancheta Wis 08:37, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the discussion here started since "human" and "person" are not on this page, but I just added Protagonist as a heading for biographies (which could also go perhaps under time) and countries as these both are examples of a focus on a particular entity, as opposed to a particular topic (or dealing with time, sequence, and the like). Other items that could go under Protagonist could be persons, animals, etc. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 16:19, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WikiAtlas?
I love WikiPedia, I love the random page function.

but ...

Is anyone else annoyed at how often small town entries come up? It seems pointless to have "Nuclear_winter" and "Dacula%2C_Georgia" [with it's pop. of 3,848] in the same place.

A WikiAtlas would be a great project, but perhaps this is not the time.

Is there a way to seperate all these geographic entries from the rest?

I would say that inclusion of Wallaceton%2C_Pennsylvania is certainly non-encyclopedic ... unless you can open the WorldBook set and find Brights_Grove%2C_Ontario in there.

Thanks for listening to me rant, Dave 4.7.210.125 06:00, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Non-Wikipedia categorization/classification systems

 * Discussion moved from: Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion


 * This is a policy thinktank project ("Article grouping techniques" subsection), derived from categories for deletion/unresolved, presently, lets say, "unattended", although it has been listed RfC for some time.

Someone (not me!) just listed this topic on RfC, linked to this page. I'm not going to moderate this one, only try to help with listing some of the "preliminaries and related topics" I know of (please add if incomplete), in order to facilitate a kick-off of the topic. Note that maybe ASAP this should be listed as a separate policy thinktank topic (but suppose that in that case it would better be moved to a separate (discussion) page --Francis Schonken 13:16, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

4 months later the topic didn't kick-off (see below, removed from RfC) - Probably the categories for deletion policies, which evolved in the mean while, did the trick. --Francis Schonken 22:14, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Preliminaries and related topics

 * From Categories_for_deletion/unresolved:
 * Categories_for_deletion/unresolved
 * Categories_for_deletion/unresolved
 * Categories_for_deletion/unresolved
 * From below on this page:
 * See comments section of Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion
 * Related:
 * "Alphabetical categorization by surname": see Categories_for_deletion
 * "Categorization of people by century": see Categories_for_deletion. This is only one example of such type of category, but there are more, like category:20th century composers. Well, if statistically more than half of the world population belongs to more than one century, what kind of an impossible classification system is this?
 * A related topic turned up in category talk:musical compositions (suggestion by User:Hyacinth): I propose we use the Library of Congress music classification PDF or HTML - HTM
 * "Books by title" discussion partially overlaps with this too: see Categories_for_deletion/unresolved

RFC
Does this page still need to be listed at RFC? Maurreen 04:09, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm deleting this page from RFC. Maurreen 07:22, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks Maurreen: it was on RfC because of the "non-wikipedia classification systems" above, which never really kicked off. Probably nobody had any real problems in that area any more, and most of these things resolved themselves (?) - Also removed the "policy thinktank" categorisation. --Francis Schonken 22:02, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cornerstone/Keystone Articles
I propose that we create an alphabetical list of the "major" articles of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia already contains a list of "unusual articles," but doesn't contain an easily accessible list of "usual articles," the kind of articles that no encyclopedia can exist without, the kind of articles that other articles branch out of. I think that a list of "cornerstone articles" would be very helpful to people (like me) who like to read encyclopedias from cover to cover to understand the major concepts in the vast realm of human knowledge, but who don't want to sift through all of the minor (more specialized) ideas as they go about it. The Encyclopedia Brittanica people tried to get at this idea by dividing their encyclopedia into two sections: the "macropedia" and the "micropedia." I think that an online encyclopedia could do a much better job of listing selected "core" and "essential" articles in one place so that people who read encyclopedias for the "big," "important" articles could go about it much more efficiently. The only problem I can foresee with such an idea would be the debate over what exactly makes an article a "cornerstone / keystone" article. I suspect that the "discussion page" of such a list would be quite active, but the categorization scheme I have in mind should be pretty easily understood by most people: I am simply proposing a list of the major players in world history (From the A list, people like Aristotle and Alexander the Great), and the major ideas in science (asteroids), and the major animals of the world (aardvark) and the major cities or states of the world (Alabama, Abu Dhabi), and so on. A good way to generate such a list would be to look at an existing short (or concise) encyclopedia and see what articles the editors thought that they couldn't live without. Children's encyclopedias are also very good places to find "shortenend" or "core" lists of "essential" encyclopedia articles.

The first ten entries of the A list of such a categorization scheme might look something like this:

A
 * aardvark
 * Aaron, Hank
 * abacus
 * Abolitionist movement
 * aborigine
 * Abraham
 * Abu Dhabi
 * Accra
 * acid Rain
 * Acropolis

And so on. Other letters would proceed in the same way and then a person who is interested in the "major topics" in human knowlege could just go down the list and (given world enough and time) read all of the "essential" articles without having to wade through an index that would insert (in the case of Wikipedia) several articles between each "Keystone" idea.

What do you think? Could this be done?N2lect2el 16:45, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * May have already been done. Check out List of encyclopedia topics and the various subpages. older &ne; wiser 17:05, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

No. That's not at all what I'm looking for. Maybe it would be helpful if we thought about calling it "The Concise Wikipedia" or "Wikipedia: Concise." The whole idea is that I don't want to have to wade through hundreds of articles about the various episodes of various TV shows to get to the "good stuff," which I consider to be the "cornerstone" ideas I discussed above. The subpages of the List of encyclopedia topics are nearly impossible to wade through in an efficient manner. I want to get away from the kinds of lists that I find throughout Wikipedia where I have to bypass hundreds of titles of every recording Motown put out as I scroll toward Mozart. I wouldn't mind seeing Mozambique between Motown and Mozart, but the endless minutiae has to go.N2lect2el 17:28, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have added a Concise page to the encyclopedia and to the categorization page as a "list of articles." I will copy the above comments to that page's discussion section.N2lect2el 20:57, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category Intersection
Is there a way to perform the set intersection operation on two categories in wikipedia?

For example the page on Monkey Island is a member of the category '1990_computer_and_video_games'. It would be favourable to have such a page as a member of the categories '1990' and 'computer and video games'. The fact that the game is a video game from 1990 would be inplicit in it's membership of the two categories. If a user performs the set intersection operation on the two categories '1990' and 'computer and video games', a list of computer and video games from 1990 would be generated.

Also consider the page List_of_Irish_poets. If poets were categorised in the category 'poet', and Irish people were categories in the category 'Irish', by performing the set intersection of the categories 'poet' and 'Irish' a list of Irish poets would be dynamically generated.


 * Category math feature -- Zondor 15:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Deletion Alert!
Warning! Category schemes is nothing but a List. Therefore, it subject to deletion since a category would do a much better job of presenting this information. (Ha, ... Hah, Ha!)

Isn't it queer, that when humans want to easily convey information they overwhelmingly choose to use a bulleted list that clearly shows relationships? -- John Gohde 22:19, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Add template:Categorybrowsebar to top of every Wikipedia page
After about a month of editing articles at Wikipedia, I’m finally getting a general understanding of how the articles are related to each other and how to navigate to them. And that’s only because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure it out. Now, you might say that I’m just particularly slow in such things as finding my own aspects of the situation, but I dare say the navigation structure of this web site deserves at least half the credit. It’s not that a very impressive amount of thought and effort hasn’t gone into addressing the issue, but I believe most visitors would agree it still needs a little work.

My suggestion is simple. Add template:Categorybrowsebar to the top of every Wikipedia page. The amount of useful information crammed into these two lines is invaluable and should be available from any page. If it’s placed at the top of every (or at least one) style sheet, and possibly reduced in size a bit, it would be universally accessible and take up a minimum of page space. Most importantly, novices and experts alike would have the full range of Wikipedia’s category schemes at their fingertips no matter which page they were reading.

If this suggestion more appropriately should be placed on a different discussion page, perhaps someone can point me in the right direction. – RDF  16:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

As another way to think about it, this page and discussion focuses on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that happens to be on a web site. My suggestion focuses on Wikipedia as a web site that happens to hold an encyclopedia. Categorization schemes focus mainly on the logic, while navigation schemes focus mainly on the usability of a web site. As a web site, I would expect Wikipedia to have a top-level navigation scheme, based on the primary categorization scheme, that would help me move about logically and quickly.

Here's a more sophisticated version of implementing the "navigation menu on every page" suggestion. If this version is more difficult to implement than the first, perhaps they can be implemented in stages. If I were going to merge these two schemes at Wikipedia, I would place a drop-down menu that contained the main categories and subcategories (whatever they happened to be at the time) at the top of every page. As a “ninth” category, I would add a “Browse by” button that listed the second row of the Category browse bar, plus maybe a few more, since the space issue would be addressed by the drop-down structure of the navigation menu. – RDF  19:04, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for cleanup
Category schemes looks to me like an attempt to use bullets gone terribly wrong. One should use bullets to list related items, however, it is not clear at all what the items:


 * Lists of articles
 * Using the Category mechanism (see Categorization)
 * Topical
 * Meta (indexes of pages for Wikipedia editors)

have in common to be listed that way. This not to talk about items within items, all the way to the third level. Somebody, please write this page in normal English. Thank you. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Now that professional librarians are contributing to Wikipedia, perhaps you can direct your appeal to them. --Ancheta Wis 11:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I cleaned it up a bit, but it's an important enough so that it still needs work. Xhin 16:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I cleaned up some more. The "List of reference tables" definition still needs a complete rewrite though, and the "Category system" section possibly needs an overhaul? -Quiddity 19:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Categories up for deletion
see Categories for deletion/Log/2005 November 10. Courtland 04:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

"See also" move from project page
removed till it makes sense. --Quiddity 02:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
 * "Category schemes &mdash; what will eventually be a listing of various schemes used for categorization outside of wikipedia. hint, hint."

list of knowledge criteria
Does anyone have an extensive list of knowledge criteria in the form of multiple state independent variables that can be applied by each author to his or her article? ...IMHO (Talk) 20:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)