Talk:Rules/Categories: Difference between revisions

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And any major feature would be deserving of its own category (Tabbed browsing, View Source, Location Bar would all get categories, but  "open links in new tab" would be subordinate to Tabbed browsing). As you can see, this actually reduces the number of entries on the main Firefox page (current: Feature X and Tip C, proposed: Category: Feature X) and is much easier to maintain.--[[User:Np|Np]] 19:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
And any major feature would be deserving of its own category (Tabbed browsing, View Source, Location Bar would all get categories, but  "open links in new tab" would be subordinate to Tabbed browsing). As you can see, this actually reduces the number of entries on the main Firefox page (current: Feature X and Tip C, proposed: Category: Feature X) and is much easier to maintain.--[[User:Np|Np]] 19:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)


:Isn't what you're proposing essentially the same as what we've already been doing (as with [[:Category:Bookmarks]])? The main difference would seem to be that most of the existing categories are named after functions or user actions (searching, customizing, migrating, installing) rather than features per se. Tabbed browsing was proposed as a category earlier (see [[Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox]]); as I recall, the only reason it wasn't made into a category was that it didn't have enough articles. To me, [[Location Bar]] would make sense to me as a category, on the same level as the Bookmarks category, using the six articles linked in the "See also" section minus [[Search Bar]] and with [[about:config]] thrown in as well. I'm not so sure about [[:Category: View Source]] as a category, though. To me, it would be similar to having a "Links" category, which could include all the links-related preferences plus [[Links to local pages don't work]], which... now that I think about it, might not be a bad category after all. ;) Anyone else? --[[User:Wintogreen|wintogreen]] 08:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
:Isn't what you're proposing essentially the same as what we've already been doing (as with [[:Category:Bookmarks]])? The main difference would seem to be that most of the existing categories are named after functions or user actions (searching, customizing, migrating, installing) rather than features per se. Tabbed browsing was proposed as a category earlier (see [[Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox]]); as I recall, the only reason it wasn't made into a category was that it didn't have enough articles. [[Location Bar]] would make sense to me as a category, on the same level as the Bookmarks category, using the six articles linked in the "See also" section minus [[Search Bar]] and with [[about:config]] thrown in as well. I'm not so sure about [[:Category: View Source]] as a category, though. To me, it would be similar to having a "Links" category, which could include all the links-related preferences plus [[Links to local pages don't work]], which... now that I think about it, might not be a bad category after all. ;) Anyone else? --[[User:Wintogreen|wintogreen]] 08:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Revision as of 09:24, 3 December 2005

This page presents the current version of the category hierarchy used in the Knowledge Base. Feel free to edit or contribute to the tree, but please add comments below explaining your changes or suggestions. (Note that some categories are displayed in red; these are categories which have not yet been "brought to life", either because they have not received general acceptance or because there are currently too few articles to justify their creation.)

Category hierarchy

Category tree

Category:Top level
 |
 +--Category:Introduction (to mozilla apps; for Intro_:_... pages. Need a better name, perhaps "General"?)
 +--Category:General concepts (pages like CSS or User agent go here)
 |
 | End-user support
 +--Category:Firefox   [See here for a big list of all Fx articles]
 |   +--Category:Installation and update (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Startup and performance (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Issues (Firefox)
 |   |   +--Category:Page display
 |   +--Category:Keyboard and mouse (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Searches (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Extensions (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Visual customizations (Firefox)
 |   +--Category:Bookmarks            (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Page display         (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Plugins              (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Privacy and security (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Migration (browser)  (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Profiles             (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Configuration        (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +-- more!
 |
 +--Category:Thunderbird  [See here for a big list of all TB articles]
 |   +--Category:Installation and update (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Startup and performance (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Issues (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Mail transfer issues (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Message display issues (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Migration issues (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Keyboard and mouse (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Mail (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:E-mail account setup (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Sending and receiving mail (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Composing messages (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Organizing and finding messages (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Displaying and printing messages (Thunderbird)
 |   |   +--Category:Address Book (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Extensions (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Visual customizations (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Newsgroups (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:RSS (Thunderbird)
 |   +--Category:Migration (mail)     (shared with all mail apps)
 |   +--Category:Privacy and security (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Profiles             (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Configuration        (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +-- more!
 |   
 +--Category:Mozilla Suite
 |   +--Category:Installation and update (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Startup and performance (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Issues (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Mail (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Searches (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Extensions (Mozilla Suite)
 |   +--Category:Visual customizations (Mozilla Suite)
 | ...
 |   +--Category:Bookmarks            (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Page display         (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Plugins              (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Migration (browser)  (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Migration (mail)     (shared with all mail apps)
 |   +--Category:Privacy and security (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Profiles             (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Configuration        (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +-- more!
 |
 | Camino, Composer, Sunbird etc.
 |   +--Category:Installation and update (AppName)
 |   +--Category:Startup and performance (AppName)
 |   +--Category:Issues (AppName)
 | ...
 |   +--Category:Bookmarks            (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Page display         (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Plugins              (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Migration (browser)  (shared with all browser apps)
 |   +--Category:Migration (mail)     (shared with all mail 
 |   +--Category:Privacy and security (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Profiles             (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +--Category:Configuration        (shared with all Moz apps)
 |   +-- more!
 |
 | Development
 +--Category:Development (most of this probably wants to live on Devmo)
 |   +--Category:Development tools (DOM Inspector, Venkman etc.)
 |   +--Category:Example code
 |   |   +--Category:XUL example code
 |   |   +--Category:JavaScript example code
 |   |   +--Category:XML in JavaScript
 |   |   +--Category:XPCOM example code
 |   +--Category:JavaScript
 |   +--...
 |
 +--...
 |
 | Knowledge base organization
 +--Category:MozillaZine Knowledge Base organization (mimics [1]; for Rules etc.)
     +--Category:Articles to clean up

Archived previous talk

See Talk:Rules/Categories/March 2005.

Most important points (feel free to correct this if I got it wrong):

  • Some categories pages may have a manually maintained list of pages in their editable area.
  • Generally don't put an article both in a category and its subcategory. (This effectively makes Category:Firefox the home for uncategorized articles).
  • If an article is categorized in Issues, it should be categorized in another, semantic, category as well.
  • "basics" category was a controversial idea. If it gets implemented, make it a "view", like Issues. Make it clear. The point is: we don't want to repeat the mistake of FAQs/Tips pages again.
  • Get rid of Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla Suite pages; link to correspondent categories instead using {{Firefox}}.

--asqueella 16:07, 7 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Thunderbird categories hierarchy

This (above) is the best I can do for now. I wanted the TB structure to roughly mirror the FF structure, but to be honest I couldn’t quite grasp the FF structure. The difference between Category:Basics and Category:Configuration isn’t intuitively clear to me; it looks too much like the ambiguous FAQs vs. Tips distinction. And if it’s not intuitively clear to me (someone who’s quite familiar with the kb and the products involved), then I doubt it will be for average end-users. As a result, the structure that I’ve made for TB instead basically mirrors the organization of the current Thuderbird : Issues/FAQs/Tips pages. Anyway, feel free to change the Thunderbird structure above as you think best. Sorry, btw, for not linkifying the categories as in the Firefox part. Wintogreen 19:25, 7 Mar 2005 (PST)

Do you think the category name should be "Profiles", not "Profile" or is that a typo? --asqueella
It was deliberate. For TB, at least, the Profiles secion includes migration and other cases where you're dealing with more than one profile, so the plural sounds better to me. Wintogreen
For the sake of consistency, I changed correspondent Firefox category name to "Profiles". asqueella
looks like we settled on a shared Profiles category. --asqueella 16:23, 7 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Any other comments about the proposed Thunderbird categories? They look quite different from the proposed Firefox categories. Is that OK? Should people start using them? Wintogreen 08:46, 26 Mar 2005 (PST)

I think it's ok to have different structure for Thunderbird, after all, there are more TB docs than Fx, and they are better categorized. I had problems categorizing Fx pages, because I'm not really familiar with everything we have here. Someone must be able to do a better job there.
I have linkified TB links to watch the implementation progress :)
Note, I created the upto template, which I think should be used on sub-categories. E.g.: {{up to|Category:Example code}} adds an "Up to Category:Example code" and puts the [[Category:Example code]] tag on the page. asqueella
Thanks for linkifying the TB categories, and for the feedback. --wintogreen

I've updated the TB categories above. Migrating is now separate from Profiles. Customizations is now gone, broken into simply Visual customizations and Extensions. I added Configuration (minus the "Advanced" part). I'm glad that the Fx and TB categories look so similar now. That will make it easier to produce the Suite categories, surely. --Wintogreen 07:52, 10 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Categorizing Firefox articles

To aid with categorization of Firefox articles I created a list of articles (gathered from Firefox:FAQs/Tips/Issues) at Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox. Feel free to edit that page. --asqueella

I moved most of the sections created there back to tree here. --asqueella 16:23, 7 Apr 2005 (PDT)

I don't think I'd go with a shared category "Migration" for all apps. A shared "Profiles" category works well because almost all of the articles are in fact shared. But for TB, there are already 8 (or more) articles related to migration; most of these will apply to the Suite none will apply to Firefox. Doesn't seem like it would be especially helpful to throw them all into one shared category. (Oh, and as for "Configuration", I agree with dropping the "Advanced" part.) --wintogreen

Category:Profiles

I was just going to add an article to the Profiles category when I realised that we are currently planning to have complementary Profiles categories for each Mozilla app. Given that many of the profile-related articles so far are multi-app in nature (Profile folder, Profile Manager, Profile backup, Roaming profile) perhaps we should unify these complementary categories into one single top-level one as we have done with Category:plugins. --Mozcerize

Sounds like a good idea. I've been thinking that TB would be better with Profiles separate from Migration-related articles anyway, since there are quite a few of the latter. --Wintogreen 21:00, 5 Apr 2005 (PDT)
I like that too --asqueella
I updated the draft tree to reflect that change, couldn't think of a good name for the category that will include the rest of articles from former "Profiles (Thunderbird)". --asqueella
I've also not been able to think of one. But really, unless I'm misunderstanding what should and should not go in the Profiles category, I think there are only two TB articles that will be homeless: Moving your mail storage location (Thunderbird) and Recovering deleted mail accounts. Can't these two just drop into the main TB "Mail" category? I think they would be found easily enough by people who need them. --wintogreen
While we're at it, it seems to me that we could drop the "(application)" part from a few other categories. E.g.: Migration, the category for user.js/prefs.js/about:config, currently titled "Advanced configuration" (I think I dislike the name), Page display, Security and Privacy (?), Bookmarks.
The point here is: drop the "(application)" part (1) for categories where most of articles are shared (profiles) or where the concept doesn't apply to other app (plugins/bookmarks are browser-only); (2) when there are relatively few articles in a category and their titles clearly specify what apps they apply to (e.g. migration)--asqueella 16:23, 7 Apr 2005 (PDT)
With an eye to the future rather than how things stand now, I'd include the app names in the categories. I say this after having looked at a TB nightly build for the first time in months and finding a lot of changes in it (incl. an overhaul of the interface for setting up smtp servers). When 1.1 comes out, some of the currently shared articles might not be shared anymore. Plus, having the app name in the category, even if it's a little ugly, will always be 100% clear to end-users. --wintogreen
okay --asqueella

Category:Plugins

I suggest that this should be a shared category, like Category:Profiles. This is because plugins also apply to the Mozilla Suite. They could potentially apply to other Moz apps too. --Mozcerize 09:56, 18 May 2005 (PDT)

Sounds like a good idea. --Wintogreen 06:56, 19 May 2005 (PDT)
It was implied, that's why the category didn't have "(Firefox)" after its name. --asqueella 13:36, 19 May 2005 (PDT)
Ah, I thought that subcategories of Category:Firefox which didn't have (Firefox) in the name were ones which could only make sense within Firefox. No big deal ;-) Should Keyboard and Mouse Tips also have (Firefox) in the name, or are we going to bundle together tips for different Moz apps in the same category? --Mozcerize 00:55, 20 May 2005 (PDT)
Maybe it would make sense to have separate categories, but almost all articles in Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox#Keyboard_and_mouse_tips do not have "(Firefox)" in their name. --asqueella 05:15, 20 May 2005 (PDT)
As I noted earlier at the end of the previous section ("Category:Profiles"), I think it's better to keep the app names in these kinds of categories. It'll mean more work initially, but I think it'll be better in the long run. --Wintogreen 05:24, 20 May 2005 (PDT)

Unique category names/multiple categories

Is there a requirement that category names be unique? Like, we can't have Firefox -> Issues and also Mozilla Suite Issues?

Yes, they have to be unique. So unfortunately we can't have two categories called Issues, one inside the Firefox category and one inside the Mozilla Suite category. --Mozcerize

Also, if an issue applies to both Firefox and Mozilla Suite, is the thinking we'd put two categories on that article? --Np 08:02, 13 September 2005 (PDT)

Yes. --Mozcerize 08:41, 14 September 2005 (PDT)
Don't forget that Issues is a view, so an article in Issues should also be placed in another, semantic, category where possible. (For example, lost bookmarks will also belong in the Bookmarks category.) --Mozcerize

Some new categories

Having looked at some of our current articles, I have added two new categories: Category:Installation and upgrade (Firefox), Category:Startup and performance (Firefox) and the corresponding categories for Thunderbird. Does everyone agree? --Mozcerize 08:13, 18 September 2005 (PDT)

So why do you think Startup and performance is a good idea? It has a single article, and startup/performance are not closely related (except when talking about startup performance, of course) --asqueella 04:00, 20 September 2005 (PDT)
See my comment below. --Mozcerize 04:11, 20 September 2005 (PDT)

As for linking startup with performance, I envisage it containing info on crashes, failures to start etc, rather than info on tweaking for speed etc. Feel free to suggest other ideas. --Mozcerize

Good to go?

Seeing as how there's been little talk about this since May, I'd say it's good to go.--Np 12:01, 16 September 2005 (PDT)

My feeling is that the lack of recent action has been mainly due to the somewhat time-consuming and tedious nature of implementing the changes :-P Conceptualization is always more fun than implementation!
But you're right, it needs to be done. Let's get Asqueella and Wintergreen's agreement too. Then let's summarize any problematic areas that we haven't fully resolved. Then let's actually do it! :-O --Mozcerize 09:25, 17 September 2005 (PDT)
As you can guess, I'm okay with these changes ;-)
Sorry for not contributing here lately; I think I will be able to help with moving things around. --asqueella 14:20, 17 September 2005 (PDT)

Categories in practice

Please can we encourage people to put category and template declarations at the top of an article (rather than at the bottom, or hidden away in between paragraphs), so they are easy to find when editing? Thanks! --Mozcerize 09:01, 18 September 2005 (PDT)

Ugh! I've just discovered that if you place a template declaration at the top of a page, any blank line which follows it is ignored (which is desirable). However, if you put a category declaration at the top (irrespective if there are template declarations there as well) then asubsequent blank line is not ignored, resulting in the first paragraph of real content being displayed lower than it should be.
In summary: don't allow blank lines around category declarations at the top of the page. They must sit right on top of the first line of real content. --Mozcerize 02:37, 19 September 2005 (PDT)
Why put them at the top? The common practice is to put them at the bottom of the page. --asqueella 04:04, 19 September 2005 (PDT)
I think it's easier that way. When they are at the top, you can see at a glance what the metadata is for the article when you go to edit it. It's not an important issue though! --Mozcerize
Also, with the appliesto templates doing some of the job of category declarations, the convention that some people use that template declarations go at the top but category declarations go at the bottom is actually unhelpful and confusing when you need to add an appliesto and a separate category declaration. --Mozcerize 05:01, 19 September 2005 (PDT)
I'm really used to placing categories to the bottom. What do you think about putting them to the bottom by default, but next to the appliesto template, if one is used? I know it sucks, but really, the categorization information isn't the most important thing for most editors. --asqueella
Ok, a fair compromise! --Mozcerize 08:46, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Questions to be answered

We're off! I've done some of the easy reorganization. Lots of questions have now arised :-P

  • Category:Issues (Firefox): Are we going to replace this category with two different categories, one for website issues / page display issues, and one for browser issues? (Compare with Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox.) Or are we going to make these into subcategories of Issues (Firefox)? Or are we going to bundle everything into Issues (Firefox)?
    • I was thinking about subcategories, just like with Thunderbird. --asqueella
  • Category:Keyboard and mouse tips (Firefox): I prefer the title Category:Keyboard and mouse (Firefox) because the articles aren't always tips. They can be issues, discussions of extensions, lists of shortcuts, etc.
  • Category:Searches: Do we need to append "(Firefox)"? (I know nothing about these articles or this category.)
    • I don't remember for sure, but I think it was going to contain articles about the Search Bar, Location Bar searches, etc. I didn't include the suffix, because those articles all (except Search Bar) apply to suite/fx. I don't mind having a suffix here. In fact, looks like my examples of appliesto tempate (see Talk:Rules/Templates) create the variants with suffixes. --asqueella
  • Category:Security and privacy: I prefer the title Category:Privacy and security. It sounds more natural, it corresponds to how other websites describe this genre, and it's in alphabetical order! Do we need to append "(Firefox)" or are all privacy and security issues going to go under one roof? I can imagine that lots of articles are going to relate to profiles and hence would be shared between Fx and TB. On the other hand, things like encrypted mail would belong just to TB (and perhaps the Mozilla Suite?).
  • Category:Migrating: I believe we decided to share this category. I think it should be called Category:Migration.
  • Category:Visual customizations (Firefox): Ugh! I know we've discussed this, but this name is awful. How about Category:Appearance or Category:Appearance changes? Or Category:User interface modifications? This category is beginning to suck. ;-)
    • I still think Visual customizations is the least sucking name. --asqueella
      • Ok, I suppose it's the name which describes the category most clearly. --Mozcerize
  • Category:Configuration: I think we need to append "(Firefox)".
  • Category:Tabbed browsing (Firefox): I still agree with the idea of this category, but do we need the "(Firefox)"? Will the Mozilla Suite have its own tabbed browsing category?
    • We would have two articles in this category now, one of which is Firefox : Issues : Alt Enter Doesn't Work, cross-categorized under keyboard&mouse. I doubt we actually need this category now. We certainly can't decide if this should be Firefox-specific or shared category without seeing more existing articles. --asqueella
      • OK, I thought we'd acquired more tabbed browsing articles since then. I shall stick the current articles at the top level for Firefox. --Mozcerize

Enough questions for now! --Mozcerize 10:18, 18 September 2005 (PDT)


Note that the Firefox part of the tree draft above wan't updated for a while. In fact, iirc, I haven't got good ideas as to what concrete categories to include for Firefox, so I started the /Firefox page. That page has real categories, not this draft... I think.

Indeed --Mozcerize

Also, fwiw, I'm ok with the wording changes I didn't comment on above. --asqueella 15:00, 18 September 2005 (PDT)

Ok. --Mozcerize

For now, I don't think we should have a Misc. category. Let's start by shoving all misc articles in the top level for Fx, and we'll worry about subcategorizing them later. --Mozcerize 02:20, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Category: Webpage issues

I don't think we need the additional Webpage issues category, as a subcategory of Issues (Firefox). We can just use the existing Page display category for that, and either make it a subcategory of Issues (Firefox), or add [[Category:Issues (Firefox)]] to all of Page display articles. Thoughts? --asqueella 07:11, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

I'm fine with that. In which case, let's scrap the complementary category Category:Application issues (Firefox) and stick everything in Issues (Firefox)--Mozcerize 07:19, 19 September 2005 (PDT)
Everything or just those pages that are not in Page display already? I'd go with the latter. --asqueella
The latter --Mozcerize

List of all articles in one page?

I think that the pages we made to assist in categorizing categories, namely Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox and Talk:Rules/Categories/Thunderbird, are useful for general population. However, if they need to be maintained by hand, they will not be in sync with the actual articles and categories. We need something that does this automatically.

Indeed; if it's not automatic then it's no better than the old Tips/FAQs pages! The category pages themselves give a list of the articles they contain, but I agree that a "site map"-style page listing all articles by category would be very nice. --Mozcerize

A quick google search found this one: [2]. I don't like the output it produces, but at least it demonstrates that this can be implemented. Anyone's up to tweaking/coding the extension and getting kerz to install it? --asqueella 08:13, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Categories with little content

I don't think creating a category when there's one or two pages that can be put there is a good idea (Installation and upgrade / Startup and performance). Let's just leave the articles in Category:Firefox, that is, uncategorized. --asqueella 09:14, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Indeed; that's why I left them! They can be created if and when enough relevant articles are created. --Mozcerize 14:41, 19 September 2005 (PDT)

Migration category to be shared?

We currently have a bunch of articles about migration in mail apps (see Category:Migrating (Mozilla Suite)), and two Firefox articles.

Should we go with a single "Migration" category for all those articles, or should separate categories be created for each app?

I think we should have Category:Migration with all migration-related articles, and also put the two Firefox articles in Category:Firefox, so that they can be browsed to using categories easily. --asqueella 09:24, 19 September 2005 (PDT) (see also above)

Sounds fine. I think that we are adopting the right approach: it's important that things get filed under a high-level category (e.g. Migration) to begin with, and then factored into subcategories as and when enough related articles accumulate. --Mozcerize 14:44, 19 September 2005 (PDT)
wintogreen said above: "I don't think I'd go with a shared category "Migration" for all apps. A shared "Profiles" category works well because almost all of the articles are in fact shared. But for TB, there are already 8 (or more) articles related to migration; most of these will apply to the Suite none will apply to Firefox. Doesn't seem like it would be especially helpful to throw them all into one shared category."
lol, and I remember reading that too, but then something further down the page made me think that he'd changed his mind! I must have imagined it. Personally, I also think that separate Migration categories are better, but I was happy to compromise as I though both you and Wintergreen wanted shared ones! So let's go with separate ones after all. There probably aren't enough Migration articles for Firefox, so we'll stick them in the top Firefox level. (I stand by my last comment above, just replace the word "Migration" with "Firefox" ;-) --Mozcerize 01:54, 20 September 2005 (PDT)
So if we make the migration category for mail-related stuff only, how do we name it? --asqueella 02:38, 20 September 2005 (PDT)
Good question. We could go with Category:Migration (Thunderbird), Category:Migration (Firefox) etc, but the migration processes will usually be the same for all mail apps (TB and Suite) and for all browser apps (Fx, Suite, Netscape), and of course they may contain articles about migrating between TB and Suite, or between Fx and Suite (rather than between Moz apps and non--Moz apps). I haven't thought too deeply about the consequences yet, but how about going with Category:Migration (mail) and Category:Migration (browser)? This is a departure from our usual naming scheme, but it is one place where I think this could really be useful. --Mozcerize 02:47, 20 September 2005 (PDT)
Sounds fine, but let's only create the (mail) category right now, as the other would have only two articles --asqueella 03:55, 20 September 2005 (PDT)
Indeed. Where I have proposed categories which currently don't have enough articles, my intentions is that they should not be created until there is a demand. such proposals are long-term proposals, which identify where there is likely to be a need in the future (so we may as well get a feel for what our long-term category tree may look like) but not necessarily a need now. --Mozcerize 04:11, 20 September 2005 (PDT)

Releasing categories to the wild!

So all the internal articles at Issues with Firefox have had category info added, and this article is now obsolete. So we should discuss phase 2: removing that article and getting users to understand categories. Let's make a list of things that need to be done.

  • Put more info into Rules/Categories teaching users how to add category info to articles which they edit or create;
    • What do you think is missing from that page? --asqueella
      • A very brief introduction to why we've moved to categories and what we gain from them, and a quick demonstration as to how to place an article into a category, perhaps also mentioning the appliesto templates. (A rationale already exists on that page under "Various", but it should be tidied up and placed at the top of the page.) --Mozcerize
  • Delete Issues with Firefox, or redirect it to Category:Issues (Firefox);
    • We can't redirect to categories, so we'll actually have to use a lame "This page has moved" trick. --asqueella
      • Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that. Well never mind, using that trick will have to do. It's only there to deal with external links onto that old Issues article. --Mozcerize
  • Decide what (if any) info we will put into the editable area of the category. Perhaps a selection of the most popular articles in that category.
  • Wrap external links from the Issues with Firefox page into internal articles, or advertise the external links in the editable area of the category. (I prefer the former);
    • Yeah, wrap them, and put into a category, like "Needs migration" --asqueella
  • Put a big notice on the front page that categories are go, and that all editors should read Rules/Categories to learn how to add category information to articles.
    • I don't think we need that. --asqueella
      • Well, I think we need a way of informing new and existing editors that they need to place any article they create into a category. Otherwise we'll just end up with a bunch of orphaned articles that will never be seen by anybody because there are no links to them anywhere! We should inform existing editors why and how the pages that they were familiar with---Issues/FAQ/tips---have gone. --Mozcerize
        • There are a few regular editors, no more than 20, and thousands of readers. The readers don't care much about categories, and editors will probably know about the changes from recent pages. Anyways, we can just update the link that is there currently (in-house style) to point to a page explaining the changes. No need for a "big notice". --asqueella
          • Ok, perhaps my use of language was a bit over the top :-P I was thinking of exactly that---a link like that we currently have for in-house style, perhaps also in bold (ooh!) --Mozcerize

Maybe we should wait until all FAQ/tips articles have been done, before doing the stuff above? Is it better to set a good example by having as many articles as possible categorized so that editors know that this really is the new way of doing things? --Mozcerize 04:11, 20 September 2005 (PDT)

I'd say, first make the Issues category look fine (i.e. deal with external links and editable area), then replace the Issues page with the category. --asqueella
Ok, so we'll run with the Issues page/category as a test-case. --Mozcerize 08:41, 20 September 2005 (PDT)

Thunderbird categories

Sorry I've been away lately. Good to see that categories are (finally!) being implemented, but I'm a bit puzzled about how the TB categories are being used so far. Seems rather haphazard to me. E.g., Renaming address books and Moving address books between profiles were put in the general "Thunderbird" category instead of the "Address Book" category. Similarly, Archiving your e-mail has been put into "Mail (Thunderbird)" instead of "Organizing and finding messages". Shouldn't the articles be categorized more or less following what I laid out here? If not, then what guidelines are people following? --wintogreen 06:13, 16 October 2005 (PDT)

For the address book ones, the problem is that people (ie: me) are going by the categories that actually exist under Thunderbird rather than what's listed on this page. For archiving, yeah, it should probably be under Organizing.--Np 11:21, 16 October 2005 (PDT)
By "actually exist under Thunderbird", do you mean the subcategories currently listed at Category:Thunderbird? If so, isn't the idea to simply create the categories shown above, as needed, so that the articles can go into the appropriate categories? --wintogreen 19:28, 16 October 2005 (PDT)
Hi wintogreen! Some of us (mainly Np---good work!) have been dealing with the Special:Uncategorizedpages articles and adding basic category info to them. This will make that special page a lot more useful, as it will now be much easier to spot new articles which need category info added. (The number of uncategorized articles has shrunk from almost a thousand to just over 200.) To do this, we just dumped a lot of Thunderbird stuff directly in Category:Thunderbird. This was due to (a) laziness and (b) the fact that, for myself at least, I don't know much about TB and thought it better to leave the finer-grained categorization to people like you who know TB very well. We don't have any problems with the suggested TB categories I think, but again they've been left for a TB expert to implement, so that they can use their judgment to ensure that the category hierarchy is appropriate.
This is kind of how I envisaged categories working anyway: editors should categorize articles to a depth which they feel comfortable with, and then other editors who are more knowledgeable can move them deeper. It's an iterative process.
Good to see you back, btw! --Mozcerize 01:29, 17 October 2005 (PDT)
Thanks, Mozcerize, for the explanation (and for the welcome back!). Apologies if I sounded like I was slamming Np's work -- not what I intended. It's just that I haven't kept up with the flurry of discussion and activity here lately and, not having worked with categories here or on any other wiki, I wasn't really sure what was going on implementation-wise. Well, I'll start dabbling with the TB categories and do what I can when I have time. If you notice that I'm doing something wrong with the implementation, PLEASE drop a note in my Talk page. Thanks! --wintogreen 02:33, 17 October 2005 (PDT)
No apology needed---I didn't interpret your comments like that! The categorization you've done so far looks great.
Completely off-topic: has the KB style dramatically changed over the last couple of days? Suddenly everything's gone a bit 1998, and there's no Recent Changes in the navbar, and the non-watched topics are displayed on Recent Changes in the same bold font as the watched ones, so you can't tell them apart any more :-/ --Mozcerize 12:39, 17 October 2005 (PDT)
Yeah, with the new kb skin, all links are now bold. Hard on the eyes if you ask me. I wish Recent Changes would come back. Oh, and I see what you mean about the decrease in uncategorized pages. Definitely looking good! --wintogreen 16:35, 17 October 2005 (PDT)

Category:Page display

This is currently strange category. It contains many articles which are issues, so I think it makes sense for it to be a subcategory of Issues (Fx/TB/Suite), not least because it helps navigation in these Issues categories. However it also contains several articles which are not issues, but are just related to page display (e.g. Animated images). Is there a case for making Page display a subcategory of both Issues and Firefox and Mozilla Suite? --Mozcerize 02:50, 21 September 2005 (PDT)

It initially was like that: [3] --asqueella 02:59, 21 September 2005 (PDT)
Hmm, yes. Not sure what happened there :-/ Looks like I pasted the changes into the wrong category or something, given that Thunderbird is listed there too! Reverted it to how it was. --Mozcerize

Where will the tips go?

How should the articles in the "Tips" page for each product be categorized? Some have already just gone under Category:Firefox. --hao2lian

They all need to be categorized like any other article. Indeed, we've already done most of them. It's not a problem if articles get lumped into Category:Firefox. They can be factored into more specific categories later, as and when enough articles are created to justify a new subcategory. Also, I see categorization as an iterative process: no doubt some editors will just shove their article into Category:Firefox even if a more specific category exists, and it will be left to the more experienced editors to put it in the right place.
We've got to the stage now where the best way to keep a track of the few pages left that are uncategorized is via Special:Uncategorizedpages. Tips, FAQs and Issues pages can now be deprecated. All that's left to do is make sure everyone is happy with the procedure of wiping these pages and adding a follow-through link to Category:Firefox etc. However, we first intend to come up with a model of what the editable part of the category pages should look like. Perhaps it will contain links to some of the most popular articles in the category, to make it look and feel a bit more like those original tips pages. Perhaps it will be pretty bare, and left to the user to peruse the full alphabetical list of articles. Suggestions welcome. --Mozcerize 06:38, 2 October 2005 (PDT)

Categorizing Marketing articles

Most of the articles left in Special:Uncategorizedpages are related to marketing, such as the pages called "Wordsmiths/*", "Topic/*", "FANS/*" and "Article/*". What is the story with marketing on this wiki? Is it still based here or has it moved somewhere else? Anyhow, if we are to make the Special:Uncategorizedpages page useful, we need to chuck all of these articles in a category (perhaps called Category:Marketing). That way, editors can use the Special:Uncategorizedpages page to easily keep a track of any new articles that get created but uncategorized. This is impossible at the moment, because there is simply too much marketing stuff in the way to be able to find the other articles.

I suggest that we create the Marketing category, and then ask an admin to run a script which puts all articles from Special:Uncategorizedpages into that category. Then, I will hand-pick the few articles which don't belong to that category and remove them. (I don't much fancy the task of categorizing all 250 Marketing articles manually!)

--Mozcerize 02:15, 4 October 2005 (PDT)

It was deleted, but restored upon request. But it sounds like they don't need it anymore so we can probably just delete it again.--Np 07:06, 4 October 2005 (PDT)
No telling when our kb czar will be around again to do some mass deleting, so I'm going to start categorizing the marketing articles. The scriptless, primitive way. At least that will get them out of sight for the time being. --wintogreen 03:53, 22 October 2005 (PDT)
Well, that wasn't too bad. I put 157 articles into Category:Marketing. Someone might want to run through those to make sure I didn't include any non-marketing articles. That leaves 37 in the Uncategorized list. 3 of those (each with a title ending in a question mark) are actually categorized, but they refuse to disappear from the list. So that leaves 34 still to be categorized. --wintogreen 05:20, 22 October 2005 (PDT)

Problems using categories with redirects

While categorizing TB pages today and yesterday, I tested using categories with redirects. E.g., I made Newly created account does not appear in folder pane as a redirect for Global Inbox and assigned the redirect page to a category. It seemed to work fine. I saved the redirect and it showed up in the category. But later, I tried to add a second category to this same redirect, and the result was that even through both categories showed up when I previewed the edit, both categories were stripped from the redirect when I saved the page; now I can't get any categories to save in the redirect page again, no matter what I do. Same thing with Reappearing messages, which is a redirect for Compacting folders. Check the redirect page histories and you'll see that the first versions still show functioning categories. Very weird. I hope someone can figure out how to fix this. --wintogreen 22:08, 17 October 2005 (PDT)

I believe Asqueella also experimented with redirecting to category pages, and came up against similar problems. I don't think he found any way to fix this apart from manually adding a link to the category page. --Mozcerize 05:21, 18 October 2005 (PDT)
So, you can't redirect to a category or categorize a redirect. Sure enough: [4] and [5]. --wintogreen 05:48, 18 October 2005 (PDT)

Update to the Rules/Categories page

I did some work to help get that page ready for release to the masses, since then we can link to it on the main Rules page (instead of linking to this messy Talk page). Please have a look, make changes where you feel necessary, etc. Now that we're implementing categories, we might as well have a real page to inform people about how to do it! --wintogreen 05:15, 19 October 2005 (PDT)

Looks fine, thanks for doing it! --asqueella 07:55, 21 October 2005 (PDT)

Which features are worthy of categorization?

I don't think people will be looking at the Issues category because they're looking for help with a specific feature, but it was decided that every issue should be in the Issues category and its own semantic category. Fine, I can live with that. But the semantic categories have to be feature-specific and visible on the main category page of the app to which they belong. If I have a problem with the location bar, I'm looking for Firefox -> Location Bar -> List of problems. I'm not looking to get Firefox -> Issues -> List of issues which I have to traverse to find location bar-specific issues. Sure, Firefox -> Location Bar -> List of problems would still work if Location Bar was a regular page, but this just adds to maintenance because every location bar article would have to be cross-linked with the master. Also, if it was not a category, non-issue articles relating to the feature might have to go to the main application category so that they're categorized in any way, which would just add to the clutter instead of reducing it. Others disagree. Discuss. I figure this paragraph is a little rambly, so let me make an example. Here's how it works currently

Category: Firefox -> Category: Issues (Firefox) -> Issue A
Category: Preferences -> Preference B related to feature X
Category: Firefox -> Feature X
Category: Firefox -> Tip C related to Feature X
(Feature X includes manually made links to Issue A, Preference B, and Tip C and vice versa)

How I want it to work:

Category: Firefox -> Category: Issues (Firefox) -> Issue A
Category: Preferences -> Preference B related to Feature X
Category: Firefox -> Category: Feature X -> Issue A related to Feature X
                                         -> Preference B related to Feature X
                                         -> Tip C related to Feature X
(Feature X includes automatically made links to Issue A, Preference B, and Tip C and vice versa)

And any major feature would be deserving of its own category (Tabbed browsing, View Source, Location Bar would all get categories, but "open links in new tab" would be subordinate to Tabbed browsing). As you can see, this actually reduces the number of entries on the main Firefox page (current: Feature X and Tip C, proposed: Category: Feature X) and is much easier to maintain.--Np 19:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Isn't what you're proposing essentially the same as what we've already been doing (as with Category:Bookmarks)? The main difference would seem to be that most of the existing categories are named after functions or user actions (searching, customizing, migrating, installing) rather than features per se. Tabbed browsing was proposed as a category earlier (see Talk:Rules/Categories/Firefox); as I recall, the only reason it wasn't made into a category was that it didn't have enough articles. Location Bar would make sense to me as a category, on the same level as the Bookmarks category, using the six articles linked in the "See also" section minus Search Bar and with about:config thrown in as well. I'm not so sure about Category: View Source as a category, though. To me, it would be similar to having a "Links" category, which could include all the links-related preferences plus Links to local pages don't work, which... now that I think about it, might not be a bad category after all. ;) Anyone else? --wintogreen 08:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)