SkipCaptcha, Automoderated users, edit
3,266
edits
Changes
Conservapedia:Community Portal (view source)
Revision as of 22:57, April 7, 2017
, 22:57, April 7, 2017→STOP! Stop Balkanizing the categories!: new section
I and JDano have differing opinions of how the article [[Fake News]] should be organized and what information it should include and where. I request that other editors give their opinion. --[[User:1990'sguy|1990'sguy]] ([[User talk:1990'sguy|talk]]) 16:45, 5 April 2017 (EDT)
I and JDano have differing opinions of how the article [[Fake News]] should be organized and what information it should include and where. I request that other editors give their opinion. --[[User:1990'sguy|1990'sguy]] ([[User talk:1990'sguy|talk]]) 16:45, 5 April 2017 (EDT)
== STOP! Stop Balkanizing the categories! ==
There seems to be an intense push to reorganize categories, apparently to put all categories in a "tree" structure, and to arrange that a given article is in only one category, that being the lowest appropriate category in the tree. Much of the recent work in this area is being done my new and hard-working contributors, but much of it is wrong. '''Don't do this.'''
While there are are topics for which the "bottom-of-the-tree-only" doctrine may be correct, there are topics for which it is most emphatically not. I particularly refer to physics and chemistry.
Here's the scenario: We are trying to make this place an encyclopedia that school-age students will come to for trustworthy information. (Well, many of us are. Others are just filling up the place with pages about what countries have problems with bestiality, what demographic changes are taking place in various countries relating to evangelical Christianity, and how the traffic on Richard Dawkins' web site is doing. I don't care what categories pages like that are in.) But suppose I'm a junior high school student wanting to read about interesting topics in physics. The place to look is the category. One effectively goes "shopping" there, sort of like a shopping mall. One looks for things that might be interesting. "Oh, look. Articles on protons, neutrons, and electrons. Let's take a look." "Oh, look. Lagrangian dynamics. I've always wanted to know how that stuff works." Or I'm in the Chemistry category and see that I can read about Nitric acid.
But we don't have the big shopping lists. We have huge trees of categories and subcategories. I have to go clicking through the tree. This is ridiculous. If I'm looking at the Physics category, the only way I will get to protons is to see the Subatomic Physics category, click on it, then see the Subatomic Particles category and click on it. How am I supposed to know that? And how am I supposed to have the patience to go through all that?
Similarly, in the Chemistry category, I can't see Nitric acid except by clicking on the Acid–base chemistry category and then the Acids category.
And to get to the Electromagnetic wave article from the Physics category, I first have to click on the Electromagnetism category. No. Electromagnetic waves, and Maxwell's equations, are fundamental topics in physics.
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 18:57, 7 April 2017 (EDT)