MusicBrainz Wiki talk:Categories

Discussion about Categories

There are two issues here. The first thing is general: What Categories do we need, are they good the way they are... The second relates to the BigMess of pages that deal with 'moderating issues'. Those probably need to be rearranged before we can give them meaningful Categories. --DonRedman

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General Listing and Discussion of Categories

• -- Personal pages. These are important, because they backlink to all the pages a person has edited. So please create a personal page and sign your edits with your WikiName.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that are official biographies of the PeopleBehindMusicBrainz
  • -- This Category groups all pages about MusicBrainz developers.

• -- For pages about MusicBrainz features and implementation. This one is getting huge. Maybe we should split it.
  • -- This Category is for pages that make proposals which are not only about style (which is covered by) but also new ideas for further developments and other stuff.

• -- For discussion threads. Pages will often be in this and some other category.
• -- For additional info pages that someday may go into the database.
• -- For pages describing, proposing, or discussing the style guidelines.
  • -- For the official pages describing the accepted style guidelines.
  • -- Pages that deal with proposed StyleGuideline's.
  • -- Pages that deal with the StyleCouncil.
  • -- Pages that deal with SeriesStyleGuidelines.

• -- For pages describing, proposing, or discussing the editing process & guidelines.
  • -- For documentation of different edit (moderation) types.
  • -- This Category is for pages that explain the various stati an Edit may have during its lifetime.

• -- This Category is for pages that deal with a the Advanced Relationships subsection of the MusicBrainzDocumentation on this wiki.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that contain a ProposedAdvancedRelationshipType. It is used to automatically generate a list of these pages on ProposedAdvancedRelationshipType
  • -- This Category groups all pages about AdvancedRelationshipAttributes.
  • -- This Category groups all pages about AdvancedRelationshipClasses.
  • -- This Category groups all pages about AdvancedRelationshipTypes.

• -- For MusicBrainz documentation being developed on the Wiki.
  • -- For explanations of terminology like DiscID, SortName, etc.
  • -- This Category groups all WikiDocsPages. See WikiDocs for details.
  • -- This category contains pages dealing with FrequentlyAskedQuestions.
  • -- This is a list of HowTo's automatically created from BackLinks to this page. For a more structured overview and instructions on how to add new pages, see HowTo
  • -- Pages providing documentation about Labels.

• -- For pages with descriptions of other related software, resources, or external links.
  • -- This Category is for pages that deal with the applications which use the MusicBrainz data, but are not maintained by the MusicBrainz developers. See the Products page if you want to learn about the MusicBrainz products.

• -- For metadiscussion about this Wiki.
• -- For pages relating to our tagger affiliate program
• -- This Category groups all MusicBrainz Products.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that deal with the MusicBrainz Server.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that deal with the MusicBrainz Database.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that provide download links for MusicBrainz Products.
  • -- This Category groups all pages about PicardTagger

• and of course, which includes all of the above, plus any which aren't yet listed here.
  • -- This Category is for pages that describe places used by the MusicBrainz community to discuss.
    • -- This Category groups all pages that deal with the mailing lists available on the server.

• • -- Indexpages just collect pages that deal with a specific topic without that topic being discussed on the page itself. Please keep in mind that a WikiIsAFlatHierarchy. That means that pages can be listed on several indices. Indexpages form nothing like a directory tree but are mere clusters for topics.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that define a ModeratorLanguage. There is a description of how these pages work on ModeratorLanguage#HowTo
  • -- Pages that have a philosophical viewpoint.
  • -- This Category groups all pages that are used on the MusicBrainz Server for Transcluded TextFragments
  • -- This Category groups all pages that deal with lists of stuff to do.
  • -- This Category groups all pages kept for historical purposes (Discussion, Proposal, ...).

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The Big Mess

There are many pages in the Wiki that deal with "moderating issues". But moderating is BadTerminology and "Issues" is a bad WikiName, hence we end up with a BigMess. DonRedman didn't know how to name these pages or what category to assign to them. TarragonAllen proposed that we create an EditingGuidelines page to organize them, and Dupuy createdto categorize them. However, there are still pages in the the BigMess for which those suggestions aren't right, because sometimes they blur into development, style or FrequentlyAskedQuestions.

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Note

There are still pages likein the Wiki. They were part of a (rather ugly but well meant) hack by Dupuy. I deleted the whole set of pages because it breaks the. Categories are very straightforward and easy to understand if there are no hacks around them. People do not even need an explanation on how to create categories, they just look at how a category page works. That is enough. If they write a page they can just add a category at the bottom, whether it already exists or not. This simplicity is quite important to the Wiki, because like this the categories are easily kept up to date.

So now this page links to all categories although it is truly of. I think we can live with that. --DonRedman

• I can live with the simpler category pages, but despite what DonRedman says, it's not enough to "just add a category at the bottom, whether it already exists or not" since the category page must exist in order to search for pages in that category. Furthermore, unless the category page is inand linked from this page, it's not that likely to be used for searching by anyone. @alex
  • I've also found an even uglier hack for preventing backlinks; you can use a URL link like [http:?CandidateForDeletion Candidate­ForDeletion] ([http:?CandidateForDeletion CandidateForDeletion]) and no backlink will be generated. While far more hideous than the other scheme, it doesn't require any special knowledge by those who want to use categories in the normal way. @alex

Ad-hoc/Pseudo Categories

This is a list of all the pages on the wiki that list other pages on the wiki, but aren't Categories.

Discussion

I've got to wonder if it's possible to produce a flat (or better yet hierachical) list of categories (as above) automatically. It would certainly be easier to keep up-to-date than a hand-edited list... perhaps a script that watches for edits on Category.*, pulls the description, and updates/adds the list? Please AnswerMe. -- MartinRudat 08:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)