Wiktionary:Categorization/archive

filing drawer - discussions about categories

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Categories don't work properly?

I was looking at Category:Check_translations (the list of entries that have translations that need to be checked) and noticed that it didn't look very long. I was sure I had added many more terms to the this category using the {{checktrans}} template (which expands to a discussion of how to clean up the translations and adds the entry to the "Check translations" category). Indeed, if I go to the template and click on "What links here", I get a much longer list. Why is this? It can't be that the category takes a long time to update; for example, checktrans was added to abortion on 28 June 2005, over two weeks ago, but it this entry still doesn't feature in the check translations category. I thought it might be a problem with a page having multiple categories, but that is not the case for "abortion".

Does anyone know why this isn't working properly? — Paul G 16:18, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

My theory. The "Abortion" article referenced the "checktrans" template, even thoug the name of the template was "Checktrans" - this was OK in the good old days. Then Abortion was moved to abortion - the system couldn't find the checktrans template for a couple of days until it was renamed to lowercase, and therefore abortion was not in the category. Now that everything is named properly abortion should get put in the category at its next save - the system won't look at it otherwise. I shall now try that out. Yes it worked. SemperBlotto 16:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, well done for working that out. Any idea how we can generate a list of entries that suffer from the same problem? What links here for Template:Checktrans (redirect =no) gives no results. — Paul G 16:56, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I shall think on't. Many templates had to be moved to lowercase, and many had also to be edited to correct the case of the named category. SemperBlotto 17:01, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Looking at this it seems clear that the 50ish entries from June 30th (before the template was moved) are the culprits, and each need a null edit. I'm firing them off now. We'll see in a few minutes if I get 193 of them. (Note edit history does not show up in recent changes for null edits.) --Connel MacKenzie 21:21, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Orrrr, maybe I'll have a browser crash from trying to edit 50 articles at once and decide someone else can chase these down.

This is pretty scary. I know I tend to notice when a template is red, but I wonder how many edits there have been between June 29th and now, where there were templates that include categories, spelled in lowercase (before that template was moved?) I guess one thing to do would be to run through the Template namespace and make sure they are all have a lowercase first letter redirect. At least then, the problem will stop getting worse. --Connel MacKenzie 21:35, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be quite a big "problem" - most entries from category:chemistry are missing for example. However, it is only a big "PROBLEM" if our users actually use categories to search for things - and I have no evidence that they do. SemperBlotto 22:08, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this seems to be a less urgent "problem" than it first appeared to be. Even if an article is missing from a category, it is more likely that the article will simply be edited before being hunted down for a null edit. --Connel MacKenzie 22:47, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The slow updating of category links has been around for a long time, but a null edit does fix them up. I have had little to do with the {{checktrans}} template but things there do tend to stay a long time. I did do things to co-ordinate Category:Chemistry just yesterday and it all seemed to be going fine. Eclecticology 01:42, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Before Brion got on the plane for Germany, I had him run the linksUpdate script. All categories via template that were depopulated during the lowercasing, that have had their templates since then converted to lower case, should now be repopulated. There is a vauge notion it will be run once more, when all the templates are converted to lower case. --Connel MacKenzie 14:21, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, now the Chemistry category is populated, but shows in a random order. And when I add a new article (tannic acid) it doesn't appear. Eh? SemperBlotto 15:12, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

That is really weird! Can anyone look at Category:Chemistry and figure out how to fix this? Gene Nygaard 12:58, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

My guess is that the ones showing need null edits (when this is done, they disappear from the list). Maybe when those needing this get below 200, it will start to work? Or are there just too many items in this category for it to work at all? Gene Nygaard 13:23, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

There seem to be two problems: 1) Terms listed as [[Category:Chemistry|*]] at some point in the past as back in that wrong section and 2) "(Next 200)" link on category page does not take you to the Next 200. When articles get their null edits, they jump to their correct section. I will try to add the navigation template when I get back here. --Connel MacKenzie 16:01, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Ec's edit of Template:Chemistry caused the problem. It wasn't at first apparent, as SemperBlotto had already fixed the template...so it looked like something more serious was broken - but it was not. Yes, each of the items now in the "*" heading of Category:Chemistry needs a null-edit to move (back?) to their correct spots. --Connel MacKenzie 17:38, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I reported the (Next 200) bug here. --Connel MacKenzie 18:13, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Category titles

I've revised all category titles to begin with a Capital letter. (The only one that remains "law stubs" contains only transwikied articles, and will disappear once those articles are assimilated.) One effect of this will be to reserve categories for words in other languages to be listed together headed by their language code in lower case letters. I would also propose that the category titles for foreign language terms be structured to reflect their exact counterparts in the main English list.

Future category development for all languages should still be scalable. A language in which we have a small representation has no immediate need for the detailed subdivision that we have in English. It can be subdivided later when the contents have grown. Eclecticology 05:49, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Category map

I have experimented a little with a category map. See Category:Food and Drink. Did I miss anything there? Can we start doing this for other subject areas? Eclecticology 23:50, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

More, please!

My take on categories (not that anyone asked) is to tag terms with the most specific category appropriate, and then build structures like this on top of those specific categories. There's nothing wrong with putting the same specific category in more than one general category.

The corollary is to keep cleaning up the old topic list, pushing terms down into their appropriate subcategories (e.g., the topology terms go in topology, not math). I had been doing this, but stopped pending resolution of the captialization issue. That seems to be stablizing, so I may well go back. -dmh 15:44, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Looks great!! I will try to add on that... —Sally Ku 15:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Even better would be to get Wiki software to generate it automatically - so it doesn't get out of date. SemperBlotto 16:00, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

These seem like perfectly reasonable subdivisions. Since Wikipedia has played with categories longer, I would expect w:Category:Food and drink to list the subcategories we might want? Did you use that when building your list? --Connel MacKenzie 22:22, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

And since I forgot to say it before: YES, more like this! I wonder what happened to Wiktionary:By topic? Is that the correct starting place for us then? --Connel MacKenzie 22:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

To be perfectly honest, since I never had much to do with that page I had completely forgotten that it was there. Sorry, I'll some thought to the possibility of co-ordinating the two approaches. Eclecticology 08:30:34, 2005-07-23 (UTC)