Forum:New category tool

A new Wikia category management tool (Help:CategorySelect) was installed at The Vault for a trial basis. Instead of having the list of categories as wiki tags within the article, you now have an "add category" button next to the category list, and a category list box in edit mode. Just wanted to know what you guys think.

Personally, I think it might be good for new users (for people new to wikis it might be more intuitive to click "add category" and type the category name than to edit the page, find the list of categories and add ), but for me it slows me down and requires using mouse where I could only use keyboard, so it slows me down. I'd like there to be a preferences option to enable/disable it.

So, what do you guys think? Should we have it as default when there's an option in preferences to disable it, should we have it disabled by default, or should we get rid of it altogether? Ausir 23:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

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To nitpick, I have issues with the basic UI of it. First, the fact that it behaves differently between Edit and View mode is unnecessarily confusing and just bad UI. Second, in both Edit and View mode, the "Press Enter when done" floating box is annoying and poorly placed, and in View mode causes some weird height resizing issues (at least in Firefox) -- not to mention it's redundant to the Save/Cancel buttons. Third, the one thing it could do (but doesn't) that would make it all worth while is if it provided an auto-complete drop-down of existing categories as you typed -- in fact I sort of expected this when I saw it and thought maybe I was doing something wrong when it didn't because, after all, why make a fancy UI for categorization and NOT include that feature? All of these issues together make me think it would actually be MORE confusing to new wikians than the old fashioned embedded text way of doing it. Just because it's "graphical" doesn't make it easy to use :)

So, all of those points make me think that the old fashioned way is simpler and easier, even for new wiki users. Further, the old fashioned way represents a fundamental paradigm of editing wikis, using templates, etc., and honestly, a new wiki user is going to have to learn those concepts sooner or later. Hiding it away just for the categorization part doesn't make a lot of sense to me in that light. So, my vote would be to disable it outright, unless and until they improve the UI for it and add an auto-completion drop-down with existing categories. Nezroy 23:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm... I just read the help link that User:Kirkburn added and it shows that it should provide auto-complete suggestions. So I went and tried it again and, sure enough, it does, though it's kinda slow which I assume is why I didn't notice it the first time I tried it out. Also, it seems to provide differing suggestions between Edit and View mode (typing "box" in View suggests only "Box art", while in Edit it suggests a bunch of stuff with "box" in it). The auto-complete is a pretty handy feature, which is tempting me to change my vote. However the unnecessary differences between View and Edit mode still make me think it'll be more confusing to new users than not. Nezroy 00:45, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't like it. A box on the bottom which simply adds them into the article, like the links that are there now, but updates with new categories and such would be nice (autocomplete too), but I like having them listed as text in the article. --Odie5533 01:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I like the view mode functionality, but I'd make the edit mode functionality optional. Ausir 02:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Frankly, if it were optional I'd turn it off. I find the view mode addition too obtrusive (an edit button to the right would be enough, like it is done for section headings). It also seems to invite categorization of user pages as it isn't restricted to the article namespace.

That said, I can see the benefit in having the categories seperate in edit mode to prevent inexperienced users writing past the category tags, even if it is slower for the experienced users.

On a sidenote, I'd appreciate it if they could finish one new feature first before implementing another. The whole video upload tool is still not working right. -- Porter21 (talk) 08:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll change my vote to "deactivated by default", seeing as the feature does not seem to help inexperienced users either, instead resulting in nonsense categories because they think it's some kind of second edit box (see this reverted edit and the deletion log). -- Porter21 (talk) 17:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Heya, regarding the video tool, what issues do you have? Note, we have multiple development teams, but we don't release updates too often, otherwise it's just too confusing on us and users. Kirkburn (talk) 00:31, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, each time a video is updated its category is reverted back to the default ("Videos"). Updating also results in redlinks in both upload log and Special:RecentChanges. -- Porter21 (talk) 08:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems like the recent update automatically activates this tool for new users. Oh the joy. -- Porter21 (talk) 16:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Somewhat related, the new wysiwyg editor makes it easy to inadvertently screw up pages. --70.142.41.253 11:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)