Hey, everyone! I am here to officially propose that all in-universe category pages be split into Canon, Legends, and non-canon categories. I wanted to see what the community thought about it so I know if a consensus track vote is necessary, and to see what you think of my idea.
I have recently been looking through some large category pages, trying to get a list of every member of that category in a particular continuity. It is extremely difficult to do so, because all of the Canon, Legends, and non-canon articles are all jumbled together, and I have to go through most articles and see the canonicity of it. Even though legends articles with a canon counterpart have /Legends in the title, most don't have a canon counterpart. As you might imagine, when a category has thousands or tens of thousands of members, it's depressingly exhausting to go through it. There's really no reason why we should plop Canon, Legends, and non-canon articles together in one category. Who does it help? Presumably, category pages are to help users find articles about related topics, but it doesn't work if all the continuities are mushed together. It would be far more helpful for people to be able to find related articles in the same continuity, instead of sifting through a huge soup of Canon articles, their Legends counterparts, Legends articles without counterparts, Canon articles without counterparts, non-canon articles, LEGO articles, and other category pages.
Since Wookieepedia generally avoids lists for some reason, categories are the only alternative. Unfortunately, they do a really bad job at this. Say I want a list of all humans in canon. The Human page doesn't have anything of the sort, and nor should it, and the Category:Humans page has 13,097 members, and most of them don't have /Legends to easily distinguish them. That is a monumental task to sift through that! If the continuities were separated, I would instantly know how many human characters there are in Canon so far, and have a handy list. We would also have smaller, more manageable categories!
I recognize that this might be quite a large project (unless there is some sort of shortcut that bots could use?), and I am willing to devote a lot of time and effort to making this happen. I think that it will make Wookieepedia an even better place.
Thanks for listening to me, and be sure to mention any additional/alternative solutions you have, any objections or suggestions below, or if you can commit to helping with this project, so I know if I need to change anything before/in case I start a consensus track vote.
Jarhead002 (talk) 20:03, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Discussion
- This discussion has popped up before on the Discord at least but it's good to see it brought before the entire Wook. I would certainly back a split between Canon and Legends. Braha'tok enthusiast Hello there 20:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- I think that splitting the categories up, especially now that category intersection is gone, would definitely be beneficial; however, there's a fair few things that need to be considered. Firstly, what format will we used for the new categories? The most logical option would be to follow the page structure and have Category:Humans and Category:Humans/Legends, otherwise we'd need to use something like Category:Canon Humans, which would be less useful since you'd have to type out all of Canon or Legends each time before getting any kind of autofill suggestions. Secondly we'll need to work out how parent categories work; would the there be a parent category for Humans that includes both the canon and legends subcategories, or are they in entirely separate category trees? Finally, and really most importantly, is this at all feasible with bots? If not, then it's something that'd have to be manually changed for almost every single page on the wiki, which is a task so huge that it would leave a lot of articles in a state of inconsistent flux for a pretty long period of time as each of the various categories is changed over. I too would love to see this happen, so definitely keen to hear peoples thoughts, especially bot operators. Ayrehead02 (talk) 20:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- To add onto necessary discussion to be had, what of in the event multiple subjects fill a category from Legends but only one from Canon? Should the canon version get it's own category or be categoryless? I'm of the opinion that we should create one but that kinda goes against current policy. Also in the event it cannot be botted I don't think we should change our decision. The longer we put it off the worse it'll be when we do commit. We should rarely be against a positive change just because it will be difficult to implement. (Pro for the record). NBDani (talk) 20:37, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- It is trivial to add "/Legends" to every category on all Legends pages, but I imagine there are tons of categories that only contain Legends pages (and thus no need for /Legends?), and categories that only contain one page of either continuity (and thus shouldn't have a category...or?). 1358 (Talk) 20:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- To be honest I don't see a huge issue with having /Legends on Legends only categories even when there is no canon equivalent. It means people are less likely to accidentality add a canon article to the category if one appears in future work. Ayrehead02 (talk) 21:24, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- It is trivial to add "/Legends" to every category on all Legends pages, but I imagine there are tons of categories that only contain Legends pages (and thus no need for /Legends?), and categories that only contain one page of either continuity (and thus shouldn't have a category...or?). 1358 (Talk) 20:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- To add onto necessary discussion to be had, what of in the event multiple subjects fill a category from Legends but only one from Canon? Should the canon version get it's own category or be categoryless? I'm of the opinion that we should create one but that kinda goes against current policy. Also in the event it cannot be botted I don't think we should change our decision. The longer we put it off the worse it'll be when we do commit. We should rarely be against a positive change just because it will be difficult to implement. (Pro for the record). NBDani (talk) 20:37, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- I also support the idea, but it needs to be bot-driven to implement. I personally think we should have be Category:Humans for the Canon material, with Category:Humans/Legends being a subcategory of Category:Humans. Would we also implement separating Canon and Legends categories for images as well? I think that is the next logical step if we move forward with this. - JMAS
Hey, it's me! 20:50, 16 March 2022 (UTC) - I've supported splitting categories for a while, but there are two major things that need to be discussed. First is what we'd do about articles that are suddenly alone in a category. Historically it's been frowned upon (with good reason) to make categories with just one article; however, there are likely to be a number of subjects, mostly from canon, that will face this problem. We can put the articles in more general categories, but that reduces their effectiveness. Personally I'd support allowing an exception for categories that only contain one article despite this move. However, this solution is imperfect and it'd be awesome if someone else has a better idea. The other big question (which has been talked about a bit already) is the botting question. I disagree with Dani that this could be done by hand--just the category for humans would require an incredible amount of work, thereby reducing our ability to make progress on other projects. If there's no way to effectively bot these category changes, then I would oppose any proposal to divide categories by continuity. VergenceScatter (talk) 21:11, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- Potential solution to the single item categories: We could rule that categories with only one item are allowed to exist only if there is a matching category in the other continuity with multiple items. Ayrehead02 (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- This has certainly crossed my mind whenever the topic comes up on Discord. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 22:48, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- I think that the split would be very beneficial. There have been many occasions where I was looking for Canon members of a particular Category, and I couldn't find many because of all the Legends articles.ThrawnChiss7 (talk) 20:50, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you all for your comments! Here's what I think. We should separate out Category:Humans, for example, into the Canon Category:Humans and Category:Humans/Legends. In each category page there would be a link to the other continuity, in the description at the top. Every Legends category would have /Legends, even if no Canon counterpart exists. I also think that as long as a category has at least one member, it can exist, so there is a place for new articles that would be placed in that category to go, and it wouldn't need to be created, and the new article wouldn't accidentally be placed in the wrong continuity. But the Canon Category:Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't exist, because the Yuuzhan Vong only exist in Legends, so only Category:Yuuzhan Vong/Legends would exist. Wookieepedia already has several categories that only contain one (or even no) members, as well. As far as bots go, I will reach out to some bot operators, to see if whatever wizardry the bots use would be able to sort articles. They might be able to see whether an article is Canon, Legends, or non-canon, and place it in the appropriate category. Even if they can't, I still think that it is worth it to go through with this split, per NBDani. We should make a policy that all categories created from now on comply with this, and start fixing existing categories. If we make it a WookieeProject, or something like that, and get everybody involved, then it won't be as hard. We certainly shouldn't give up before we even start, just because something seems daunting. In fact, trying to create an online encyclopedia detailing everything in the Star Wars universe, and keeping up as new things are released, is a daunting task indeed! But we do it anyway. Let me know what you guys think. Jarhead002 (talk) 00:37, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- This frankly sounds like a bad idea. There has to be some way to easily distinguish between pages from different continuities without resorting to this, and I'm pretty confident some of the editors with good programming skills could come up with something. SilverSunbird (talk) 00:39, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- can you give a reason you think it's bad? I don't see any problems with doing it. VergenceScatter (talk) 00:53, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I'm a little bit confused at what you're saying. The problem is that pages from all the different continuities are smashed in the same category. The way to fix this is to un-smash them and put them in different categories. Can you please clarify what makes this proposal a "bad idea" and what exactly you are proposing? Jarhead002 (talk) 00:55, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- Other people have already brought up the fact that we're likely to have a whole lot of single-category pages if we go through with this. It also sounds needlessly messy. I have to say, I don't know why so many people are opposed to lists when those might be a better solution here. Besides, we already have "Canon articles" and "Legends articles" megacategories. This proposal is going to make it harder for people to find relevant articles. SilverSunbird (talk) 00:57, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- The single item categories are an issue, but I think the benefits outweighs the negatives. I also don't really understand how it will make it harder to search for things. Having more specific categories makes it far easier to search for articles from a specific continuity. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think splitting categories down so far is beneficial. What would be better, IMO, is some sort of function similar to the unfortunately gone category split thing which would allow readers to just highlight which articles in a given category are canon and which are Legends, without unnecessarily subdividing the category into canon and Legends categories. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:06, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- A function like that would be ideal but since we don't have one available I don't think that should preclude us from finding a way to separate the articles. Also, I personally think it's always best to split categories as much as possible. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:10, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I'm just going to point out that's why I suggested we basically create one. And I think it's beneficial to have pages from both continuities in categories on in-universe subjects because it allows for interested readers to more easily find related topics in the other continuity. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- But none of us have the ability to modify the core wiki code in order ti create such a feature. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:24, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- It might be possible to do something like that without going that deep. At the very least, such a possibility should be investigated. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- But none of us have the ability to modify the core wiki code in order ti create such a feature. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:24, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I'm just going to point out that's why I suggested we basically create one. And I think it's beneficial to have pages from both continuities in categories on in-universe subjects because it allows for interested readers to more easily find related topics in the other continuity. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- The problem with lists, is that we don't want lists that are 5,000 or more articles long. And we won't have that many single-article pages, and the ones that we would have would serve as a placeholder, so that users don't get confused and put a legends article about something into the canon category, because there isn't a Legends category, for example. The megacategories also don't help anyone. If you want a specific article, you just search for it. It doesn't help anybody to have a list of all Canon or Legends pages. I can't list a single time that I have ever used them, and I expect it is the same for most others. This proposal would make it so much easier to find relevant articles, not harder. People have to search through less pages in the category to find what they want, because it would by continuity-specific. Large categories are the problem, not the solution. I also agree with VergenceScatter, let's use the tools available to us instead of trying to change how the code of the site works. Jarhead002 (talk) 01:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I don't know where you got the idea that I was suggesting insanely long lists (I'm not). Single article categories are already a problem that you are essentially proposing to grossly exacerbate. I also refer you to my statement immediately above your response, as I think that having mixed-continuity categories is beneficial for helping readers/editors find related articles. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with all of SilverSunbird's comments above. And indeed, it'd be helpful to have mixed-continuity categories, they've helped me a lot while editing or finding related articles, as SilverSunbird pointed out above.— Samonic
(Talk) 12:11, 21 March 2022 (UTC) - Same sentiment as Samonic, I never had a problem with mixed-continuity categories and it actually helped with editing more times than not --Goodmind (talk) 01:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with all of SilverSunbird's comments above. And indeed, it'd be helpful to have mixed-continuity categories, they've helped me a lot while editing or finding related articles, as SilverSunbird pointed out above.— Samonic
- I don't know where you got the idea that I was suggesting insanely long lists (I'm not). Single article categories are already a problem that you are essentially proposing to grossly exacerbate. I also refer you to my statement immediately above your response, as I think that having mixed-continuity categories is beneficial for helping readers/editors find related articles. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- A function like that would be ideal but since we don't have one available I don't think that should preclude us from finding a way to separate the articles. Also, I personally think it's always best to split categories as much as possible. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:10, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think splitting categories down so far is beneficial. What would be better, IMO, is some sort of function similar to the unfortunately gone category split thing which would allow readers to just highlight which articles in a given category are canon and which are Legends, without unnecessarily subdividing the category into canon and Legends categories. SilverSunbird (talk) 01:06, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- The single item categories are an issue, but I think the benefits outweighs the negatives. I also don't really understand how it will make it harder to search for things. Having more specific categories makes it far easier to search for articles from a specific continuity. VergenceScatter (talk) 01:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- Other people have already brought up the fact that we're likely to have a whole lot of single-category pages if we go through with this. It also sounds needlessly messy. I have to say, I don't know why so many people are opposed to lists when those might be a better solution here. Besides, we already have "Canon articles" and "Legends articles" megacategories. This proposal is going to make it harder for people to find relevant articles. SilverSunbird (talk) 00:57, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
Like I said on Discord: if the goal is to help readers (and editors) to just differentiate between Canon and Legends articles in a category, it would probably be easier to come up with a decent way to do that instead of going through the painstaking task of splitting up our 15,000-ish big article category tree. Like people have pointed out above, a tool called DPL already allows category intersection, but the main problem is that DPL has no visual interface and therefore requires knowledge of DPL, something the average reader doesn't have. However, Green tentacle said he would take a look at creating a JS/whatever powered GUI for DPL and—without any programming background myself—it certainly sounds easier to create one piece of JS than rework our entire category tree. To clarify, what this JS piece would do is create two buttons on each category page, one to display a list of Legends only, and another one for Canon only. I feel like this would solve at least 90% of the current problem.
Now, as a bot operator, I feel like there are quite a few components to this change:
- Changing
[[Category:Foo]]to[[Category:Foo/Legends]]on every Legends page. This is probably the easiest part. - Creating the new Legends category pages. Right off the bat, I can't think of any easy way to duplicate existing category pages. To my knowledge, Pywikibot (the bot software used by most) does not have such a script.
- Adding a Canon/Legends tab thing to IU category pages. This isn't trivial either, because I can't think of any way to separate IU categories from OOU categories with a bot. One way to solve this would be to create a template that resembles Top, that automatically checks for a /Legends counterpart and displays a tab system, and then add that Top template to all category pages, just like the real Top template.
- Change any links on Canon categories to Canon targets, and vice versa. This sounds painstakingly hard to accomplish with a bot.
- Change any parent categories on Legends categories to be Legends as well. This isn't impossible once the category pages are created, really, but that also relies on item 2 on this list being solved.
TL;DR: bots can assist with some parts of this proposed change, but it's far from trivial. This would be an enormous undertaking with lots of manual work, and if it can be solved with a simple category intersection tool, then I'd lean towards that instead. 1358 (Talk) 08:01, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- I really like that idea. It looks like splitting the categories would have to be done mostly manually, with only limited help from bots. If it is easy to create such an intersection tool, then we should definitely look into that. If there are options on each category page to see only Canon, only Legends, or see both, then that would solve the problem. Can you notify me as soon as Green Tentacle has looked more into that? Jarhead002 (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
- Green Tentacle has done a fantastic job with the category intersection tool, which can now be tested by activating the gadget in the Gadgets section of your preferences. The code hasn't been submitted for Fandom review yet, so you'll need to "Enter test mode" by going to Special:JSPages for it to work, but once the code has been refined, that step will no longer be needed. Currently, what the gadget does is add Canon and Legends buttons to all category pages, and also enables category intersection between two categories of your choice, available via Wookieepedia:Category intersection. The caveat is that this tool requires JavaScript and therefore doesn't really seem to work on mobile. However, I envision this feature will mostly be used by editors and other power-users (we can eventually enable this tool site-wide, without the need to enable a gadget manually, if Fandom clears it). 1358 (Talk) 08:35, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
- Great job Green Tentacle! For an improvement when on a category page, I think there needs to be an option to return to the initial category page after choosing either the canon only or Legends only options. —Tomotron
(Star Forge) 11:09, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
- Added links to both categories. Green Tentacle (Talk) 12:35, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
- Great job Green Tentacle! For an improvement when on a category page, I think there needs to be an option to return to the initial category page after choosing either the canon only or Legends only options. —Tomotron
- Green Tentacle has done a fantastic job with the category intersection tool, which can now be tested by activating the gadget in the Gadgets section of your preferences. The code hasn't been submitted for Fandom review yet, so you'll need to "Enter test mode" by going to Special:JSPages for it to work, but once the code has been refined, that step will no longer be needed. Currently, what the gadget does is add Canon and Legends buttons to all category pages, and also enables category intersection between two categories of your choice, available via Wookieepedia:Category intersection. The caveat is that this tool requires JavaScript and therefore doesn't really seem to work on mobile. However, I envision this feature will mostly be used by editors and other power-users (we can eventually enable this tool site-wide, without the need to enable a gadget manually, if Fandom clears it). 1358 (Talk) 08:35, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
