Wikinews talk:Categories and topic pages

We really need
We really need to add a list of existing catergories to this page, but I don't know how to do that. Can someone else have a go? Dan100 08:53, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * There is a list here: Special:Categories. At 223 and growing, thre are probably too many to be useful to the average user. -- Davodd | Talk

Our categories page is a mess. This reduces its usability. There are badly formatted dates that compete with the regular dates, and a lot of topics that do not have widespread coverage. I propose that we limit the number of categories to just major news-generating categories for usability reasons. Wikinews is not Wikipedia. Our news categories should be limited to major items that are likely to generate repeated stories over months and years (Geographic regions and countries, along with a small list of subjects). For anything else, they can use the search engine. Categories are to facilitate browsing, which they utterly do not do if there are 2,000 categories. DouglasGreen 16:00, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Please don't redirect all categories!
Redirecting categories to a topic page makes it impossible to get a full list articles in a particular category. It is the point of the category system that such lists can be generated, and not just for the "dynamic page" list generation software. Often users will want to be able to see all articles published under a particular category. Lexor 12:24, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Categories Discussion
I'd like to open a discussion about categories and category/topic management. Currently the list of cats, with its cruft of dates is cluttersome and unusable. We need to get our shit together. I wanna help. Can someone offer me assistance in figuring out a way around of NOT displaying the dates on this Categories page as a rule. At the moment there are 1644 Categories. It appears most of these are dates... Anybody got any coding solutions. Talk on my talks page. Or here. Or suggest somewhere else... Cheers, --elliot_k 14:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Why not create a link on Categories_and_topic_pages (under the entry For a list of categories, see Special:categories) to the list being kept on CGorman's Categories page until it can be automated? (Done 01:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC))

And the real question, or the solution to all of this, is "Why can't lists of entries of useful things be automated?". Karen 23:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Code. Code. Code. There would be a way. A little beyond me today but I'll keep thinking and asking folks. Also, perhaps geeks can add a "category" button in the edit icons above the text box, which could enter the wiki code for cats. Also on edit pages, a highly visible link to the categories list page. And finally a well orgaanised page for cats. However, I just realised theres the SectionMenu or Portal page that could be linked. I wonder if Portal is the same as Category/Topic. Cheers... --elliot_k 07:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's another little wonder about categories - the day and month categories, and year categories have to be manually entered into each story. It's more likely that each story will benefit from the categories day and month, and year being assigned to them by publication date.  In some cases the reported date won't be the event date, and perhaps no date or year category in others would be useful and would need to be manually removed.  But right now most stories which should be categorized in this way are not. Karen 19:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Update
Best practice has evolved a great deal since this page was current. A policy on the matter does not now seem appropriate; although some elements of our infrastructure are policies, much of our important best-practice evolves from know-how to essay, perhaps to guideline, and stops there. I've marked this page historical, and I'm in-process of writing an essay Categories; once that essay is complete I may modify the hatnote here to send readers there. --Pi zero (talk) 16:11, 21 September 2019 (UTC)