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→Categories and sub-categories
*Would you mind giving a couple of examples and illustrating the advantages and disadvantages, please? —[[User:Magda|magda]] 09:15, 6 Jul 2005 (EDT)
==Root category==
I like the root/tree model imposed on a web reality. Since this is basically ''a free for all'' in that any article can be in any or many categories on the whim of any user, and then corrected by the consensus of the community, hard fast rules can not dictate the cataloging structure. A category can be in many categories and those categories can have subcategories that belong to other categories, creating a complicated linking structure that can not be visualized as a tree structure but a haphazard web structure. (It is most likely best not to try to visualize the structure at all.)
A very long time ago, I took a course on Information Theory, the professor told the ''Campus Planning Story''. This is the story on how the designers layout the campus, and put in nice looking walkways. A year later, they come back and pave walkways where the dirt paths develop.
Information linking develops the same way. The paths will form on their own. We should let them. But there should be an attempt at a designed structure. As I’ve seen on other wiki’s, a root category called [[:category:Categories]] is used. This root should be a catalog of other root-like categories having no articles, just other Categories. Think of it as the center of the big haphazard web, a starting point. This category should have hard fast rules. (Such as that it should not be in any other category, no articles should be filed directly in this category, and its own subcategories should be very general, or at least general to the topics of Orthodox Christianity.)
Now the first level of subcategories, after the root, can have rigid structure and hard fast rules, or not. If consensus develops that a subcategory needs rules, they should be stated in the text at the top of the category page. It is not a given that all categories of information will be best cataloged by the same set of rules. (I do think that at this first level subcategories, there should be a rule that articles should not be listed in them if the article is in any of its subcategories.)
As these subcategories beget other subcategories, and the farther from the root it is, I suspect that the rules of that subcategory will let them become more free form. This may give the appearance that the categories have no structure, even the concept of tree-like levels are gone, but that will not be true if one starts from the root or navigates back to it. - [[User:Andrew|Andrew]] 08:50, March 23, 2007 (PDT)
==RFC: Various categories==
