Board Thread:Dark Assembly/@comment-653063-20150303041226/@comment-653063-20150303182931

In which I talk about: Category structure, as a whole.

So that first post was a lot shorter once I actually posted it than it was when I was writing it. That's... good.

I went to http://disgaea.wikia.com/wiki/Special:CategoryTree?target=Browse - I'd seen the CategoryTree page before, but wasn't sure how to work it. Turns out, you put a category name in the box at the top, and the page will return all the categories that are below it. This is ridiculously handy. And in conjunction with http://disgaea.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Categories?limit=250 and http://disgaea.wikia.com/wiki/Special:MostLinkedCategories?limit=500 - ridiculously terrifying.

So I'm gonna make up a term: "Echelon". Tier already means something very specific on this site, so I'm not going to confuse peeps by talking about 'tiers' of Categories. The 'Category:Browse' is Echelon 0 (zero), there is nothing 'higher' than Browse, nor should there be. Browse is the equivalent of 'C:/'. Browse contains two categories: 'Content' and 'Organization'. I agree that these are the only 2 catgs it should hold, and will call them Echelon 0.5 (and after this, I won't use '.5'; everything else is a whole number).

The Organization catg looks ok. Let's look at Cat:Content, Echelon 0.5. This is the Echelon 1 stuff. Some of it makes a lot of sense: there's Characters, Classes, Images, Maps, etc. Some of it... makes less sense.

There's Echelon 1 'Characters', which contains
 * Disgaea 2 Characters (Echelon 2)
 * [×] Disgaea 2 DLC Characters‎ (9 P) (Echelon 3)
 * Disgaea 3 Characters
 * [×] Disgaea 3 DLC Characters‎ (21 P)
 * Disgaea 4 Characters
 * [×] Disgaea 4 DLC Characters‎ (19 P)
 * Disgaea D2 Characters‎ (1 C, 15 P)
 * [×] Disgaea D2 DLC Characters‎ (5 P)

but there's also Echelon 1 'DLC Characters'. DLC Chars contains:
 * [×] Disgaea 2 DLC Characters‎ (9 P)
 * [×] Disgaea 3 DLC Characters‎ (21 P)
 * [×] Disgaea 4 DLC Characters‎ (19 P)
 * [×] Disgaea D2 DLC Characters‎ (5 P)

I want to mention, I do not have a problem with a given category being subcatted under multiple categories (which may put it at differing Echelons). I do have a problem with the part where I'm not positive that 'DLC Characters' needs to exist. A Category needs to have organizational meaning/value/purpose, it should do something not sufficiently accomplished by another category. In this case, either Echelon 1 'DLC Characters' needs to be outright deleted (since it's subcatgs are a already linked under other, sufficiently accurate catgs) or Echelon 1 'DLC Characters' needs to be "remove-cat:Content add-cat:Characters".

I spell all this out, not just to talk about this instance, but to start talking about the value of any given Echelon. What should be at Echelon 1 level? Why does it make sense to have Characters, Classes, Gameplay, Images, Lists, Maps at Echelon 1, but perhaps Abilities should go under Gameplay? Is 'Game Help' sufficiently Echelon-1-y, or should it go under something? What's up with Terms? Why is there Echelon 1 'Disgaea 2' and 'Disgaea 3', but
 * Games (Echelon 1)
 * Disgaea 4 (Echelon 2)

And Category:Disgaea: Hour of Darkness‎ comes under Category:Disgaea, which isn't even in Content at all! Theoretically, 'Disgaea 2', 'Disgaea 3', and 'Category:Disgaea: Hour of Darkness'‎ should all go under 'Games'.... or else, all individual games should be Echelon 1s, like D2 and D3 already are. I'm not sure which option I like better. I'm leaning towards 'under Echelon 1 Games', because it keeps down the quantity of Catgs that are Echelon 1s, and because there is some value in having 'the games be categorized as Games.' But there is some - but not quite as much - value in

When is it a good idea to spell something out, like "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness", but yet "Category:Disgaea 2" contains all the actual game data, and "Category:Disgaea_2:_Cursed_Memories" does not? There's all sorts of questions to be asked. Is "Disgaea 1" an acceptable term? It's not in use anywhere on this site. Does something that is tagged "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - Whatever" not apply to the remakes? If something is tagged "Disgaea Whatever", does that mean it applies to D:HOD, or to the Disgaea franchise as a whole? If 'Disgaea 1' is not good to be used, why is "Disgaea 2" etc ok? Admittedly, I prefer shorter terms, so I rather like 'Disgaea 2,' 'Disgaea 1'....

So yeah. There's quite a bit of room for standarization to be laid down. Once that gets done, I'll figure out how to take the List of Currently Used Categories (the one with like 225 entries, not the one with the huge amount of red links at the bottom) and delete out the categories that are already under Browse, so we can take what isn't and either correctly subcat it or move out what's in it and delete it. It's a very long-term project, something to do in bits and pieces. But it would help if the site had a 'category style guide' or something.

Soooo... thoughts?