Category talk:Goblin
Articles vs. Categories - This category (and a number of others) contains a large amount of information that really should be in a proper article page on the topic. Looking to Wikipedia's (and other high-quality wikis') example, articles and categories should be distinct and separate - information goes in the article(s), while link groupings go on the category page(s). Is this acceptable as Mistipedia policy and can we implement the changes need to follow this? (Sorry if this was too pushy on my part!) --ChrisNichols 06:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Myself and others are mostly, to different degrees I am sure, new to this. It is an overwelmingly large and daunting task, so I don't doubt that much of the little that has been done perhaps resembles stabs in the dark.
Still, we have done some experimenting, with more and with less categories. We have reached some tentative conclusions, in particular that no NPCs and no domains should be categories, but that organisations, societies, clusters and monster types, for example, should be categories grouping together articles. I am personally in favour of this for the immediately foreseeable future (but not necessarily our ultimate goal) as at a glance one can see everything that falls within one of these groups, recognise relations that should be added via additional categories, and then sit down and actually start writing quality material.
The goblin page in particular is not yet any where near the last stage. What is there is simply the accumulation of a handful of traversal operations that deposited material there and in other categories at the same time. If one is trying to make sense of goblin beasts one might as well drop in what is relevant to goblins at the same time. Or even more generally, if one is flipping through Gaz V, and one finds a point that touches a handful of categories, one drops it in them and then moves on.
Far more advanced results do, however, exist. Mount Nirka, the South Dnar River and Nova Vaasa, for example, are not complete, but are well on their way.
But more to the point perhaps, ultimately why shouldn't Vampire be a category with all the individual instances of the creature listed at the bottom? No article about vampires is ever going to touch upon each and every one. A list is clearly no substitute for quality text, but is it a distraction from quality text? And if it is, what are the implications of that for the current stage of the project? I would at a minimum argue that our current use of categories is extremely valuable scaffolding that is essential for the construction but can come down bit by bit as the construction progresses.
Thoughts?Cure 12:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
