Last modified: 2012-08-23 18:50:59 UTC
Following up on bug # 14880, I suggest to have a place to store a "root" or "main" or "everything" category, if one exists in a wiki. There are several uses, and many wikis already make use of their local top category at various places. The message should be optinal, default to empty, and except for some Extensions possibly offering additional goodies when the message is not empty, only Gadgets and individal installations will likely use it. Yet, e,g, for templates that can be copied between wikis, Extension code, and others, it is useful to have one common place to look for it. I do not know, which product/component best to choose for this request, so you are encouraged to move it to a more appropriate one.
I support this idea in general, it would be handly for extensions like CategoryTree to have a place to look for the "root" category of a wiki. There's a Problem with that, though: What is the "root" depends on your perspective -- the navigational root for a visitor is the thing that would be relevant to CategoryTree, but that is often not the real root of the tree. Consider Wikipedia, where, depending on your perspective, the "root category" could be Category:Contents, Category:Articles or Category:Fundamental.
Several possible "root" categories should not pose a real problem: 1) Wikis can choose to put the into a common technical or super-root category. 2) "MediaWiki:MainCategory" can be a list istself, with the added benefit of being a bit more flexible in how it is set up, e.g. including little comments explaining what the individual root categories are.
