Forum:Categories, Bird Images, Gay Images, WTF?
People, I think for three that the categories are being semi-ruined, and as each passing hour ticks endlessly by they are being eaten like termites. Lots of diffuse tags are going up, the latest on things like "Gay Images" and "Bird Images". WTF? A picture of a bird goes into cat:Bird Images. Mn-xz says that there are lots of subcats now, and those CA categories (how many users know what CA means? I didn't until last month. Spell it out if it's going to be used, that's what my mum always says). So if someone is going to categorize a bird pic, do they have to memorize all the thousands of categories we have before they put it in "Gay Images" instead, or just put it in "Bird Images" and be done with it. Brain farts everywhere lately. Aleister 21:52 9-6-'11
- Those categories were diffused about 2 years ago when Socky and I build the animal image and pr0n databases. The issue was that if we were to put all the mammal images in one category, it would be way too big to be of use to anyone. No-one wants to look through 3,568 images to find that one goat picture.
- The point of these categories is not to have everyone memorize the arcane sub-cat list, but rather, to have people cat to the "holder category", then have someone who knows the sub-cat do the final catting. The system will work so long as people don't cat to the catch-all cat. Those cats have been empty for over 2 years, and were probably even emptier then because I was maintaining them more consistently. --Mn-z 22:11, June 9, 2011 (UTC)
- Also, if you're using HotCat, you can use it to find subcats for you if you know what a parent is - press the down arrow by the category name. That way even the non-knowy folks can add them directly. If they know about that.
~ 
23:07, 9 June 2011
- The point is to make it as easy as possible for users and visitors to find pictures and articles. If each category is sub-divided into five or ten or twenty subcats, this just slows down the process. "Gay Images" and "Bird Images" have lots of pics in them, and, here is a common sense rule, if "Bird Images CA" (California?) is fine, why not just change the name to, let me think, ah, "Bird Images". I agree that if there are thousands of pics, like in Mammals, then subcats are needed, but anything in the 500 range is just a file for looking though pics you can use. My whole point is that you can subdivide until you lose all coherence, and that harms the wiki and does not help it. Aleister 10:08 10-6-'11
- For the average passerby, 500 is arguably too much - categories only show 200 things at a time on a page, and that includes subcategories, pages and files, and most folks aren't generally that inclined to hit the next page and see what else there may be unless they're serious about finding something more specific.
- The point is to make it as easy as possible for users and visitors to find pictures and articles. If each category is sub-divided into five or ten or twenty subcats, this just slows down the process. "Gay Images" and "Bird Images" have lots of pics in them, and, here is a common sense rule, if "Bird Images CA" (California?) is fine, why not just change the name to, let me think, ah, "Bird Images". I agree that if there are thousands of pics, like in Mammals, then subcats are needed, but anything in the 500 range is just a file for looking though pics you can use. My whole point is that you can subdivide until you lose all coherence, and that harms the wiki and does not help it. Aleister 10:08 10-6-'11
~ 23:42, 10 June 2011
- What Lyrithya said. Also, the setup for those image categories is such that the images that need to sub-catted are obviously shown, and one does not need bot powerz to find articles that need to be categorized. Also, because of the sub-cat purge, Category:Mammal Images would be unnavigable if it contained all mammal images, because the images would crowd out the categories. Also, I'd like to point out that the "catch all" system for images was set up before even Aleister got here. --Mn-z 00:54, June 11, 2011 (UTC)