>Compare it to the weaknesses of the current category system. 98% of editors >don't know what they are doing. >Categories and subcategories are applied >inconsistently all the time. Nobody has an overview of the entire tree >>structure, or even a major branch of it.
And would this be any less truer of tags? >Something that is a subcategory of American novelists today may stop being one >tomorrow, just by dint of a single >edit, and no one would be the wiser >(unless they keep hundreds of categories on their watchlist). The category >>tree (or weave, as categories can have several parents) changes daily, with >categories created, renamed, >recategorised, and deleted. There are incessant >arguments about how to name, categorise and diffuse categories, >and about >perceived iniquities.[citation needed] In all the years I’ve been on Wikipedia I think I’ve only once been involved in any dispute over a category’s existence where I didn’t agree (and still don’t) with the outcome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_9#Category:Vogue_editors (I suppose it’s only coincidental here that the category in question was mostly populated by articles about women). Indeed, I find it interesting that WP:LEW includes only one example from the category namespace, with everything else very well represented. >Using a defined set of basic tags in combination with something like CatScan – >ported across to the Foundation >server if you like, and given a friendly >front-end with shortcuts to the most common searches – would do away >with >that. Without really solving the underlying problem, IMO, and making it harder to fix when it recurs.
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