Category talk:Fanlore Categories

I think that kind of decision should have some discussion first. --Doro (talk) 13:35, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree, I'm not sure this category is particularly necessary -- Kingstoken (talk) 14:05, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Night Rain, can you please explain what you mean by "root-level category" and why this is necessary? Also, please please consider other users of this wiki and don't make major changes to wiki structure without at least starting a Talk page discussion first. This is the kind of change that would really benefit from different perspectives and shouldn't be made by one editor unilaterally. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 18:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

It's a category, not a "major change." It's inconspicuous and no one is going to encounter it unless they're rummaging around the category system. Which is exactly the point. Having a bunch of disconnected topical categories is unhelpful. Every wiki I've ever been on adds a top-level container category to the categorization system to make finding articles easier for both contributors and readers. On Wikipedia, they have Category:Articles. (Wikipedia actually has a higher-level category called Contents, which branches out into maintenance pages.) "Fandom" seemed like a suitable name for this wiki, given its focus.

Frankly, I find it distressing to have to simple, uncontroversial, constructive edits put under a microscope and subjected to debate. Especially in light of the fact that ableist insults were allowed to sit in an article for months totally unremarked on (I haven't even begun to look at the troll's other edits, since cleaning up Autism and Fandom has eaten up my spoons for the rest of the week). Night Rain (talk) 19:20, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

The vast majority of Fanlore is "Fandom" topics. There are 9 categories in the sidebar, and more than half of them are entirely "Fandom" things, and a large portion of the rest are comprised of fandom pages. (Not all people are fans, but many are.) I don't think it's useful to have a category that's more than half the wiki, and don't understand what else this would be. --Elf (talk) 19:36, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Rename this category if you think of something more suitable. "Fandom" is what I could come up with on my own. It's hurtful to be told to "please consider other users of this wiki” as if I’ve committed a grievous wrong in trying to make the category system easier to navigate so readers and contributors can quickly find articles. I shouldn't have to explain this, let alone defend it. It's Wiki 101. And the fact that multiple editors have a lot to say about this category but no one has anything to say about ableist trolling being inserted into articles...well, that tells me everything I need to know about this wiki's priorities and culture. Goodbye. Night Rain (talk) 20:01, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry I had such an intense reaction here. I've had previous negative experiences on wikis (mainly Wikipedia) where the culture can be extremely adversarial. Where one can be forced to defend even uncontroversial contributions and less well-meaning editors can obstruct additions they don't like by being persistent or uncivil enough. So I've been primed by experience to approach wiki-disputes from an adversarial place. But it seems like I badly misjudged this discussion. It seems like this is a wiki without the typical wiki culture. It's friendlier and more discussion-oriented -- things I never knew a wiki could actually be. So I'm sorry for kicking up a storm. Night Rain (talk) 18:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Actually, I get the reason for this category. At the Forever Knight Wiki, we have a top-level category called Category:Forever Knight. It serves as the main directory for all FK-related articles—which obviously comprise practically all articles. However, it means that people can thereby navigate the wiki better. --Greer Watson (talk) 03:02, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's intended to create a simple, convenient way to navigate from any article on the wiki to any other article through categories alone. Particularly handy for binge reading on mobile devices (something Fanlore is really good for) because I can hit a category at the bottom of an article, navigate back up to the top-tier category, and then rummage around for whatever else I want to find, all without having to manually type search queries using a fussy virtual keyboard. It's not a feature that everyone is going to use, but it's really useful to those who do use it. Night Rain (talk) 12:26, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Rename?

This category has been sitting here for a year. Do we delete it or no? If no, I think its purpose and use need to be made clear. From this talk page, it looks like its purpose is to compensate for a deficiency in mediawiki software: I checked the special pages and didn't see an easy way to get a list of top-level categories. The categories for sorting pages outside of the main namespace do have this top-level category: Category:Fanlore Admin. I think there's precedent for having this category, and it makes sense to me for navigation reasons. However, I recommend that we change the name of this category to something less ambiguous. I don't think this category should have any pages in it, and it would be easier to manage if it were named something like Category:Fanlore Categories.--aethel (talk) 17:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I do think we need a top-level category such as this for overall navigation of the site. However, I also see how "Fandom" is an ambiguous descriptor. Renaming to Category:Fanlore Categories makes sense. --Greer Watson (talk) 17:37, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

(BTW I found the special page: Special:UncategorizedCategories These are the categories with no parent. But I still like Category:Fanlore Categories.)--aethel (talk) 17:41, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Seems like Special:UncategorizedCategories might be best used for locating categories that need parent categories, as a kinda special cleanup page. Maybe We can keep this supercategory as the root category for all categories. It also seems that having a category named "Fandom" for our root category can cause a weird namespace collision issue. This is because we also have Category:Fandoms by Source Text - someone could easily add a new page for a fandom and put it into this category instead of [:Category:Fandoms by Source Text]]. So maybe renaming this to Category:Fanlore Categories might be the way to go. FireBatVillain (talk) 08:59, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Yep. The other benefit of renaming to Fanlore Categories is that we can put Category:Fanlore Admin under here. I always have trouble navigating to that category tree because it's not linked in obvious places.--aethel (talk) 15:32, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

+1 I dunno if people want more votes on this still but I agree with Aethel and FBV's reasoning here. I like the proposed name "Fanlore Categories", and I think we should write up a description for how this category is meant to be used on the main page (as well as having it here on the talk page). -- Quaelegit (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I renamed the category! Based on the conversations here, the original reason the gardener template was added seems to have been addressed, so I removed the template from the main category page.--aethel (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)