Last modified: 2006-02-26 21:19:02 UTC
Non existent category links is blue. People can mistyping it and still thought it was the correct category.
This was changed just last night...
This needs to be fixed, so I've increased its severity. Red categories are indicative of (1) a category not existing so needs to be created (2) misspellings. Can we please have the old system back?
Tim changed this deliberately, though I'm not sure I agree with it. Categories *exist* by virtue of the existence of pages marked as belonging to them; adding a description page is not strictly required. However it is useful as a hint that you've picked an established category to have a blue link.
Well another problem is I create an article and put it in [[category:foo]], but [[category:foo]] doesn't exist yet, but anyone clicking on it is just taken to a blank page; it has no parent categories. IMHO it is essential that categories have parents, and gives a structure to the whole thing. ~~~~
Please change it back. Categories with no description page are generally not useful, because every category should be categorized. Also, it's important to give the user feedback on whether the category he provided is an established one.
I can't believe this change was done - did anyone try to imagine the consequences? Typos or wrong spelling are a normal thing - in normal text it's just a typo, in the case of links authors still get a feedback, but with categories there is *no* feedback to the author, you can't even see that you were wrong. It was hard work, to create consistent category schemes - and it is even harder work to keep it in place. This doesn't make it easier. Did anyone account for the additional work needed to catch the errors CAUSED by this "feature"? Did anyone account for the additional traffic for checking every category over and over? Did anyone account for the potential for invisible category vandalism (e.g. checking WantedCategories I've even noticed some additions of invisible special characters - at the moment perhaps incidently created by broken browsers, but without seeing the non-existent character of a category that could be more than harmful)? Please disable this new behaviour as soon as possible - and let us first think about ALL the consequences of this change and how to avoid the negative ones.
This needs to be fixed. Tagging with categories is already mistakenly enough because you have to guess the appropriate category name. You should better move the categorization to a metadata-space with an interface to browse and select existing categories. It's a bug, not a feature.
How do I else know, if I mistyped a category? An alternative would be to use CSS in order to find categories without categories.
This change doesn't make sense. Categories are confusing enough for newbies, and red links ought to show what they mean - that the page is blank so far. Maybe this change makes sense from a developer's POV, but not for the end-user. Thank you for changing it back.
Same opinion as many others. Please change it back.
How do we know, now, if a category exists ? I remember, one time, having spent half an hour to try to understand why a year category I put in an article was red, altough it was a recent year and category already existed (There was some invisible symbol that managed to be typed between the category name and the "]]".... If the link had been blue, I would not have even verified this and my typo would have stayed here forever. Please change it back.
like they say.
Idem
It seems to me, that this change isn't usefull. Please look at the reality - and change it back to the old behaviour to ease our work, thanks.
+1 asking to come back to older system.
Like they say, please change it back. (+1)
Undo this.
please, Change it back
I agree, you definitely should cancel it.
Reverted in CVS HEAD per objections and implied consent of Tim Starling.
(In reply to comment #20) > Reverted in CVS HEAD per objections and implied consent of Tim Starling. Links are still blue - is something more to be done?
I like this feature... NOT!
This needs to be fixed.
(In reply to comment #21) > Links are still blue - is something more to be done? It needs to be put live.
undo ASAP, this is, I'm afraid, complete crap. A category is only sensible if it at least contains either a categorization or a bit of describing text.
A category exists as soon as you put a page into it, so there's no need for the link to be red. It's misleading since the category *does* exist even when the link is red. A category is useful even without descriptive text (which is usually pointless ("category:foo is about foo") or parent categories. Relying on red links is no way to spot typos. You should get a proper spell checker. If you're relying on this, how do you know if there's typos in the rest of your text. By this reasoning, we should delete all redirects because it makes links to non-real articles (including common typos) appear blue. Since a category added to a page before the category description page is made appears red *even after* the category page is later made (unless you use &action=purge), making all links blue is a good way to fix this.
(In reply to comment #26) > Relying on red links is no way to spot typos. You should get a proper spell > checker. If you're relying on this, how do you know if there's typos in the rest > of your text. By this reasoning, we should delete all redirects because it makes > links to non-real articles (including common typos) appear blue. Well, there's a catch. Articles can have redirects, but categories can't. This wouldn't be such a problem if categories could be redirected. But even then, I think that the people here are way too used to this to actually accept a new system. I for one liked the old system. :)
(In reply to comment #26) > A category exists as soon as you put a page into it, so there's no need for the > link to be red. It's misleading since the category *does* exist even when the > link is red. > A category is not only a list of articles flying in the middle of nothing... It needs at last a mother category, and if similar category in other langages exist, they must be listed by interwiki links. When this is done, you can consider that a category really exist.
(In reply to comment #26) > A category is useful even without descriptive text (which is usually pointless > ("category:foo is about foo") or parent categories. Ahh, now I see the problem - we are talking about different use of categories (we had long discussions about this topic in the german WP): What are we using categories for? Are we using it as a structured scheme to make content better accessible - or do we just want an index? With this change you are forcing the way to a pure index of key words without structure - it's seems to me you are just making politics to force your point of how categories should be used.
Angela, sorry, but this is IMHO completely out of touch with how catgegories are and should be used. I have categorized thousands of images on the Commons, I know what I speak of. As long as it is not possible to redirect catgegories (or even better: give one catgegory as many names as one likes to, in as many languages one likes to, on a meta level), your "system" (which is: no system at all) will only lead to dozens of small categories for each topic, with no one being able to really see how many articles any wiki has to offer on the topic. Think of: capitalization (yes, there are languages that do use that), singular/plural, synonyms, First Name only/First Name Last Name/First Name Initial Last Name, etc. pp. None of these problems is addressed by a "a category exists because someone types whatever he wants" attitude. Even worse: the user now cannot even be aware that he "missed" the category by a plural "s" or something similar (you see: I am not speaking of typos here, so your point about the spell checker does not apply, being opposed to the Wiki way "as simple as possible" anyway IMHO). If you by all means dislike the colour red, then for god's sake colour these links differently, but not in blue as if everything was all right.
Please don't anybody comment further on this bug report. It was reverted ages ago, it's a non-issue.
