Mr. Bambu
Suffer-Not-Injustice Bambu
VS Battles
Joke Battles
Super Moderator
Administrator
Calculation Group
Silver Supporter
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My Issues
Making this off the cuff (and in doing so, preserving Promestein's will), moreso to prompt a conversation than anything. This thread is made to address the (in my estimation) fairly bloated category situation on our wiki. It is my belief that we should maintain a slim list of categories directly related to our purposes- this includes tiers, verses, abilities, I'm sure you can understand the sort of category I'm getting at. I don't have a problem with certain unnecessary categories: things like "Science-Fiction Characters", "Primary Protagonists", etc are limited enough to not be a problem and still remain useful for certain fringe purposes.
My problem comes in with, as said before, bloat. Today, a category was created by a regular user of the wiki called "Chickens", and it was added to any character that was a chicken or had chicken-like themes (so, for example, humans who wore chicken costumes, chicken-shaped creatures who were not actually chickens, you get the idea). This was stated as the purpose of this category in its text.
Bloat in this situation is a scenario in which we have a massive variety of pointless categories. These categories aren't formally recognized, despite existing, because recognizing them requires manpower and a willingness to maintain standards. As such, they will invariably end up being incomplete categories as new pages are added that do not have the category- both because they aren't known of (due to not being formally recognized) and not being an obvious category one should add.
Even if they were formally recognized, they would still be a problem, because it will lead to such a massive amount of categories that users are expected to remember to add to pages that it becomes impossible to keep track of them all. Leaving them as optional is sub-optimal as well, because this still leads to a large number of incomplete categories receiving no formal attention to complete them.
A Theoretical Example
A factually correct category does not make it necessary. To show this, and some other issues I envision with the category situation, I will offer a made-up example: given the current selection of categories, it is not unlikely to see a category for Right-Handed Characters, Left-Handed Characters, Ambidextrous Characters, and perhaps even an Unknown Handedness category of some kind.
Most of the profiles on this wiki would fall within one of these categories. And, of course, a properly maintained category would contain all appropriate pages that fit under its title. Thus, essentially all of our pages would have to be sorted into one of these four. We avoid Unknown where we can, so it would not be acceptable to simply list everyone as unknown when for many pages, it's a very simple act to look at their hands and determine which is their dominant. But this simple act would need to be repeated tens of thousands of times in order to properly use such a category.
People new to the wiki are unlikely to consider such a category as one they would even need to pay attention to. Page creators struggle to keep up with our longstanding policies already, and rapidly expanding category selections made by random users- they are unlikely to go back and watch the anime or read the novel to figure out the handedness. In addition, countless pages already made prior to the category's creation would lack it altogether- even the most dedicated editor on the wiki would barely make a dent, and it's not the sort of thing a bot could easily work out. And so it begins.
Years down the line, we have Content Moderators attempting to maintain categories. They actively attempt to contact users who have missed categories, the users reply asking what to put there, the content moderators run through a list of categories and archetypes of categories, requiring the user to go back again and again to revisit a text or movie or anime or what have you in order to discern increasingly obscure details- such as handedness. A book may go its entire length without mentioning that its protagonist is left-handed, because the author is left-handed and that seemed more natural to them. "Handedness could be relevant to a versus match, though"- maybe. But it's such an absurd expectation to document that on every single character, and such a niche possibility, that it's silly to even consider having it.
This is an example more useful to VS Battles than documenting every character associated with chicken-based imagery. I hope that the above rambling has displayed why it's foolishness to consider this.
A Sillier Example: Can Anybody Make Categories?
I create a category named "Verses Enjoyed by People With a Below Average IQ". A new Harvard study was released that documented people's reactions to media and charted them based on their IQ. This means that my category is not subjective- I have ample enough proof that these verses are indeed statistically likely to be enjoyed by people of a low IQ.
This would not violate any of our rules at the moment (I will address this in a bit, just below- promise, the rambling will end). As much as I'd like to declare every verse I don't like as a Verse Enjoyed by People With a Below Average IQ, this is stupid for obvious reasons. I don't think creating a new category should be able to be done by anyone on a whim.
The Status Quo
Therefore, I would like to write a rule about categories. In doing so I hope to prompt discussion. Before I do so, I'd like to show you what we currently list as our rulings (relevant to this discussion) on Categories:
The rest can be read here, which I will not quote because practically the entire page is relevant.
My Solution
What I propose is an addition to the Standard Format for Categories page stating that new categories created should be related to VS Battles directly, and require a CRT to be approved for their creation.
I'm not good at writing things people easily understand, but I will offer a general idea.
I invite discussion below.
Making this off the cuff (and in doing so, preserving Promestein's will), moreso to prompt a conversation than anything. This thread is made to address the (in my estimation) fairly bloated category situation on our wiki. It is my belief that we should maintain a slim list of categories directly related to our purposes- this includes tiers, verses, abilities, I'm sure you can understand the sort of category I'm getting at. I don't have a problem with certain unnecessary categories: things like "Science-Fiction Characters", "Primary Protagonists", etc are limited enough to not be a problem and still remain useful for certain fringe purposes.
My problem comes in with, as said before, bloat. Today, a category was created by a regular user of the wiki called "Chickens", and it was added to any character that was a chicken or had chicken-like themes (so, for example, humans who wore chicken costumes, chicken-shaped creatures who were not actually chickens, you get the idea). This was stated as the purpose of this category in its text.
Bloat in this situation is a scenario in which we have a massive variety of pointless categories. These categories aren't formally recognized, despite existing, because recognizing them requires manpower and a willingness to maintain standards. As such, they will invariably end up being incomplete categories as new pages are added that do not have the category- both because they aren't known of (due to not being formally recognized) and not being an obvious category one should add.
Even if they were formally recognized, they would still be a problem, because it will lead to such a massive amount of categories that users are expected to remember to add to pages that it becomes impossible to keep track of them all. Leaving them as optional is sub-optimal as well, because this still leads to a large number of incomplete categories receiving no formal attention to complete them.
A Theoretical Example
A factually correct category does not make it necessary. To show this, and some other issues I envision with the category situation, I will offer a made-up example: given the current selection of categories, it is not unlikely to see a category for Right-Handed Characters, Left-Handed Characters, Ambidextrous Characters, and perhaps even an Unknown Handedness category of some kind.
Most of the profiles on this wiki would fall within one of these categories. And, of course, a properly maintained category would contain all appropriate pages that fit under its title. Thus, essentially all of our pages would have to be sorted into one of these four. We avoid Unknown where we can, so it would not be acceptable to simply list everyone as unknown when for many pages, it's a very simple act to look at their hands and determine which is their dominant. But this simple act would need to be repeated tens of thousands of times in order to properly use such a category.
People new to the wiki are unlikely to consider such a category as one they would even need to pay attention to. Page creators struggle to keep up with our longstanding policies already, and rapidly expanding category selections made by random users- they are unlikely to go back and watch the anime or read the novel to figure out the handedness. In addition, countless pages already made prior to the category's creation would lack it altogether- even the most dedicated editor on the wiki would barely make a dent, and it's not the sort of thing a bot could easily work out. And so it begins.
Years down the line, we have Content Moderators attempting to maintain categories. They actively attempt to contact users who have missed categories, the users reply asking what to put there, the content moderators run through a list of categories and archetypes of categories, requiring the user to go back again and again to revisit a text or movie or anime or what have you in order to discern increasingly obscure details- such as handedness. A book may go its entire length without mentioning that its protagonist is left-handed, because the author is left-handed and that seemed more natural to them. "Handedness could be relevant to a versus match, though"- maybe. But it's such an absurd expectation to document that on every single character, and such a niche possibility, that it's silly to even consider having it.
This is an example more useful to VS Battles than documenting every character associated with chicken-based imagery. I hope that the above rambling has displayed why it's foolishness to consider this.
A Sillier Example: Can Anybody Make Categories?
I create a category named "Verses Enjoyed by People With a Below Average IQ". A new Harvard study was released that documented people's reactions to media and charted them based on their IQ. This means that my category is not subjective- I have ample enough proof that these verses are indeed statistically likely to be enjoyed by people of a low IQ.
This would not violate any of our rules at the moment (I will address this in a bit, just below- promise, the rambling will end). As much as I'd like to declare every verse I don't like as a Verse Enjoyed by People With a Below Average IQ, this is stupid for obvious reasons. I don't think creating a new category should be able to be done by anyone on a whim.
The Status Quo
Therefore, I would like to write a rule about categories. In doing so I hope to prompt discussion. Before I do so, I'd like to show you what we currently list as our rulings (relevant to this discussion) on Categories:
This rule bans categories of "subjective interpretation"- I think this would probably ban our categories of "Good Characters" and "Evil Characters", etc. It notes that administrators are to be called upon to clarify these rules, when it seems as though any individual can invent a category and leave it to the administrators to have to defend it. This does not seem right. It can be found in the "Editing Rules" page.
The rest can be read here, which I will not quote because practically the entire page is relevant.
My Solution
What I propose is an addition to the Standard Format for Categories page stating that new categories created should be related to VS Battles directly, and require a CRT to be approved for their creation.
I'm not good at writing things people easily understand, but I will offer a general idea.
I invite discussion below.
