Battlestar Wiki talk:Categories

Thoughts

Problems

There are currently 103 categories on the Battlestar Wiki.

• In general, TOS content is namespaced while RDM content is not.
• Categories are not systematic.
• Unfortunately, there is no way to view the "intersection" of, for example, Category:TOS and Category:Characters, so it will be necessary to have several namespaced categories for each continuity.

Solutions?

• Categories should be organized in a top-down manner, into three "domains":
  • Real World - includes cast, crew, producers, etc.
  • Battlestar Wiki - includes project pages, requested pages, maintainence, RFAs, silly pages, etc.
  • In-continuity - includes TOS, 1980, TSC, SDS, Video Game, RDM.

• Second-level categorization in continuity would be broken down according to culture:

• TOS
  • Colonials (TOS)
  • Cylons (TOS)
  • Borellian Nomen (TOS)

• 1980
  • Colonials (1980)
  • Earthlings (1980)

• RDM
  • Colonials (RDM)
  • Cylons (RDM)

• Third-level categorization in continuity would following a scheme similar to the breakdown of the Twelve Colonies series, along relevant topics:

• RDM
  • Colonials (RDM)
    • The Twelve Colonies
      • Caprica
        • People from Caprica
        • Publications from Caprica
        • Locations on Caprica
    • The Fleet
      • Locations on Galactica
      • Locations on Colonial One
      • Locations on Cloud Nine
    • Colonial History
    • Colonial Religion
      • The Sacred Scrolls
      • The Lords of Kobol
    • Colonial Government
      • Quorum Delegates
    • Colonial Technology
      • Colonial Weapons
      • Colonial Craft

• Note that this practice of single-inheritance only applies to categorie and subcategories. Individual articles may take categories from any point in the hierarchy, thus Tom Zarek could be People from Sagittaron, Quorum Delegates, etc.

Just some thoughts to get started. --Peter Farago 13:41, 28 December 2005 (EST)

Seems logical enough. Organizational matters such as the categories are not my strong suit, but matching existing content to a new structure like this would be. So, for Cylons (RDM), how would we'd break down matters? Would it be similar to the following?

• Cylons (RDM)
  • Cylon War
  • Cylon Technology
    • Cylon Models
    • Cylon Weapons
    • Cylon Spacecraft

--Spencerian 14:25, 28 December 2005 (EST)

Looks good to me, except "Cylon War" would probably be an article, not a category, filed under both Cylon History and Colonial History. Do you think that an article should belong to just its specific subcategory, or all the categories leading up from each terminal node? (ie. is Viper 7242 just in Category:Vipers, which is a child of Military Craft, which is a child of Colonial Craft, which is a child of Colonial Technology, or does it belong to all four?) I'd be in favor of the latter, so that the contents of each subcategory are a strict subset of its parent. --Peter Farago 15:25, 28 December 2005 (EST)

Another issue is that strict single-inheritance might not be very useful. For example, "Colonial Technology" would want to be a subcategory of both Technology and The Colonials, allowing the user the freedom to browse by either heading. --Peter Farago 19:22, 28 December 2005 (EST)

I'd be curious to try to slice and dice the characters, categorizing them in such a way that you could browse by:

• Colonial Military
  • Pilots
  • ECOs
  • Command Officers

With the potential of trying to obsolete the "Character List" template. Especially if some way could be found to distinguish the important/recurring characters from the extras (as rank isn't a very good indication of how important a character will end up being). Also, I'm interested in starting to clean up unused (or barely used) categories in the existing system. --Steelviper 17:11, 16 January 2006 (EST)

Maybe the solution lies in Categories, Steelviper. I like your breakdown of characters: I think we need to add "NCOs" in there, too (For Callie, Socinus, Tyrol, etc.). And, what if we had two character categories thus: Main and Recurring. People, like Mason or any press corp member, who only show up in one episode would get no category. People, like Socinus or Kat would get Recurring status. People like Kara, Lee, Tyrol, Six, Laura, Bill, Saul, etc. would get Main status. There would be some who'd need some debate, I think. Geata, Dee and Billy are some that come to mind as being border-line between Recurring and Main. --Day 19:16, 16 January 2006 (EST)

I wasn't trying to shortchange the enlisted folks, just stopped my example short. For the Main and Recurring, were you thinking they'd be part of the rest of the character classification hierarchy (Main Characters->Colonial Military->Pilots returning a list like Lee Adama, Kara Thrace, etc) or just separate Main and Recurring categories that would fall outside of that? So Kara Thrace would be a Pilot and Main character (two categories). I imagine the latter, since subdividing above the military level would split the military such that the only way to list all pilots would be to get Main->Military->Pilots (Union) Recurring->Military->Pilots (Union) Extras->Military->Pilots. The separate Main and Recurring categories seem more straightforward, but less elegant. --Steelviper 21:49, 16 January 2006 (EST)

It's possible for an article to belong to both a subcategory and the parent category, so for example, Galen Tyrol could be part of

• Category:Characters (RDM)
• Category:Characters (RDM) (Colonial Military)
• Category:Characters (RDM) (Colonial Military) (Galactica Personel)
• Category:Characters (RDM) (Colonial Military) (NCOs)
• Category:Characters (RDM) (Colonial Military) (Galactica Personel) (NCOs)
• Category:Characters (RDM) (Colonial Military) (NCOs) (Galactica Personel)

But I don't need to explain what that's ridiculous. --Peter Farago 21:54, 16 January 2006 (EST)

Whew, Peter. Yeah. I was thinking that Main Characters (RDM) and Recurring Characters (RDM) would be subsets of would go under Characters (RDM), but not be divided by anything else... So Kara would belong to Main Characters (RDM), Viper Pilots (RDM), Galactica Personell (RDM), Colonial Military Personell (RDM), Officers (RDM) and Characters (RDM). I don't think I missed any. Is that as rediculous as Peter's assertion? I wish there was a way to get the intersections of categories... *sish* --Day 01:39, 17 January 2006 (EST)

Suggestions

Can there be a "used to work on Star Trek" category/template? Someone can come up with a better name, but I've always seen Battlestar Galactica as the "response" by RDM to the decline of Star Trek and why it happened (see his essay on Naturalistic science fiction, and sort of the "unofficial successor" to it, so I'm always interested in who used to be on Trek. I don't think having two of these, one for cast and one for crew, would be worth it because there aren't that many, but we need something that ties together Michelle Forbes, Dean Stockwell, Rick Worthy, Sam Witwer, Ron Moore, Weddle & Thompson, Alan Kroeker, and Michael Taylor. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 14:16, 26 April 2006 (CDT)

Revisit ?

Should we revisit this issue before Season 3? --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 23:26, 6 August 2006 (CDT)

I see no problems with the current ones...--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:27, 6 August 2006 (CDT)

Re-imagined Series definition: in military parlance, directive to continue the attack; otherwise used to refer to journalists (TRS: "Maelstrom")