User:LoonWoof/Discussions/Categories

Current use of categories on TUG wiki
I thought I should give you a little info on what categories are used for at this moment on the TUG wiki, to use as you continue thinking through categories and category trees. (The "Background" section in this Wikipedia article gives an overview of various ways other wikis use categories.)

Right now, categories have a mostly technical purpose on the TUG wiki: categories determine what shows up on the various list pages. The most complicated example is with all the crafted items: some things show up only in the food list, other things show up only in tools, still other things only in weapons. And then there's the list with "almost everything that's crafted" on Crafting. (Except Hardened Wood.) (If you can decipher them, it's worth taking a look at the #ask queries on all those pages.)

Ok, so there are three things you need to know about the technical side of categories: sub-categories, looking for things that aren't in a category, and properties vs. categories. Here's a summary, though I imagine we'll need to chat for me to fully make sense. I've been working alone, so this is the first time I've tried to put this into words.

First, when a query looks for everything in category X, it also searches through everything in X's subcategories. That means that marking things as sub-categories has the potential to change what shows up in those auto-updating lists - we'll need to each of those through on a case-by-case basis before making the change. It's not that we shouldn't make subcategories, it's that if making a subcategory will change things, the #ask statement will need to be fixed first.

Second, some of the queries are looking for things that aren't in any other category. (Back to the list of Crafting). #ask can find everything in category X, but it cannot find everything that is not in category X. So I created Category:Uncategorized Crafted Item, which makes no sense for any other reason people might use categories.

Third, there's always a way around this link between categories and #ask queries: add a hidden property to a page, and search on that property instead of on the category. For example, if we set  to "yes", we can search on that exactly the same way as if it were a category. And if we were willing to go crazy with properties, we could mark pages like Crude Bed with, which would solve the "Uncategorized Crafted Item" problem.

So, what's the best way of summarizing this? Maybe this:
 * 1) TUG wiki categories are currently not always used the same way as on other wikis.
 * 2) Making a category change, even setting something as sub-category, might change those tables in unexpected ways.
 * 3) We don't have to keep categories the way they are just to keep the ask queries working. There are alternative solutions to any way in which queries currently rely on categories.

As above, I won't be surprised if I need to explain this all in a different way in chat, so feel free.

-Red Agliator (talk) 15:24, 1 October 2014 (UTC)