Help talk:Categorization
Okay, so Help:Categorization does not exist yet, but I'm starting to write a categorization guide. We had that discussion on the Races and Creatures category, but I thought we'd discuss that stuff here. There's also some additional categorization stuff I want to discuss. Mission one, the Races and Creatures thing.
With articles like Scrak being categorized in Races and Creatures, I am finally persuaded that okay we should probably really do something about that category :P I was going to reply to that with a delightful counterargument that, like species, ethnicity and nationality is intrinsic and so they have the same "role"... but! Scrak poses some problems. So I've been thinking about this, and I discussed this a bit with Windy, so I think this may be a solution. There were many issues, because we definitely needed a category to contain Plants (because that was kind of a lame category). It was also tricky to come up with a name for a group that contains disparate members such as Seons, spren (which are not biological), Inquisitors and Lifeless (which are constructs), and biological races like Parshendi. Those all fulfill similar roles. Then, finally, the problem was that, what category should contain things like Scrak? Races and Creatures was a category that contained collections of things, but not individual members. Like, individual Seon articles like Ashe were not in Races and Creatures--as it should be. Seon was contained, not the original Seon article. But, at the same time, Scrak is not a character, so it cannot be categorized in Characters. And then the final motivation was that we have certain "high level" content categories (the ones that are in the sidebar, with a few others), and I would like to minimize the amount of those categories. Which, in this Google doc which will eventually be the categorization guide, I call Tier 2 categories (Tier 0 being Root level, and Tier 1 is Content/Administration. Tier 2 is the usual high level category for all intents and purposes. This is not at all important right now :P).
Here's my proposal. It ultimately splits Races and Creatures into three categories, but removes Plants as one. Not too bad.
- Separate out ethnicites/nationalities into a new category, Ethnicities and Nationalities. I group them because I don't want two additional high level categories, and they are pretty deeply related. Nationalities that are predominantly one ethnicity (like Emuli being Makakabi or whatever, and Arelish and Teoish being Aonic) would be subcategories of the given ethnicity. I don't really care if we shorten the name of the group to just "Ethnicities" or just "Nationalities" (though of the two, I'd go with Ethnicities) simply for name length. We could simply mention the other one in the category description (and in the description in the future category guide). Not a big deal.
- Create a Flora and Fauna category. We would remove the Plants category. Or I guess make it a subcategory of this, but I don't feel the need for it, honestly. This category will be pretty sparse anyway, so I don't think we need Plants, especially when it had just three elements in it. This category would contain species/things that are "natural" (as in, not greatly magical), and members of those species/entities would presumably not get viewpoints. For example, Axehounds, Skyeels, mistwraiths. Additionally, this category would contain specific animals or plants. Like Scrak.
- (This one will be most contentious, simply by the virtue of name.) Have a Races category. This category contains collections of non-humans races of a sentient or magical nature. Basically, it's all the random crap in Races and Creatures category, like kandra, koloss, Inquisitors, Seons, spren, Lifeless, etc. In this case, "races" is referring to the common fantasy term of "non-human races". The name of this category will probably be contentious. Joe, I know you want Species, but I dislike that because spren aren't a "species". This category can contain things that aren't even biological, so I don't feel comfortable with that. I was thinking of using "Non-humans" but that's the most boring name ever. "Non-human Races" isn't much better. As long as it's understood that in the context of the categorization, Races refers to things of a less human nature and Ethnicities are human subgroups--which will be stated in the category description--I think it's not too bad. I wouldn't mind a better name, but it's next to impossible to choose one.
- One problem, however, is Template:Character. Under this system, I envision that Race will mean either ethnicity or non-human race, in this context. I don't think there's a need for a separate ethnicity parameter. I'm not sure if this is really a big deal. After all, Seons are Seons, and though they are "characters" they don't need an ethnicity slot and a race slot. It may just need to be understood that the Category the Race template spits out in the character infobox is either ethnicity or a non-human race, depending on obvious context.
So, that's my thoughts. Furthermore, some other minor things:
- Change the name of "Groups" to "Organizations". I know you suggested Joe that ethnicities could be a subcategory of Groups, which is totally valid and I considered that. But, I figured if Groups meant "all groups of humans" that could get really unwieldy really fast and make the category lose its meaning. Right now Groups means Organizations, so I say we just rename it to that to avoid possible confusion.
- I am on a quest to think up a new name for the Items category. I've never liked that two ships are in that category, because Items implies, in my mind, "stuff you can fit in a backpack". The idea is right--objects/things that you can possess--but items is not the right word.
What do you think? This is just phase one, there's much more categorization to be done :P -- Chaos2651 (talk) 05:15, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
So, I'm gonna put out a number of examples which we need to figure out what goes where: