On the whole, I think that as a category scheme it is a lot more coherent than, say, the DeweyDecimalSystem or the LibraryOfCongressClassificationScheme?. But of course others may differ. Feel free to devise your own category scheme and place it on the CategorySchemes page! -- Larry Sanger |
On the whole, I think that as a category scheme it is a lot more coherent than, say, the Dewey Decimal System or the LibraryOfCongressClassificationScheme?. But of course others may differ. Feel free to devise your own category scheme and place it on the CategorySchemes page! -- Larry Sanger |
The DeweyDecimalSystem is really more appropriate for a library of books, not |
The Dewey Decimal System is really more appropriate for a library of books, not |
:Right, sometimes I think it's simpler to do rather than to say. :-) --LMS |
But we could, in addition (in an alternative "official category scheme" have the names of things themselves listed--of course, the most general of them. So, rather than Astronomy, we'd have space or [the universe]? or something like that. Rather than Philosophy, we would have being, goodness, knowledge, and a number of other basic topics studied by philosophy. Etc.
One interesting consideration about this idea is that, as in the case of philosophy, very many (perhaps all) disciplines cannot really be regarded as the study of just one thing--i.e., probably, for no discipline there is no one general category, C, such that the subject studied by that discipline is accurate and exhaustively described as 'the study of C'. Therefore, Wikipedia arranged by topic would have to include many more entry points than the present HomePage does, in order to be (more or less directly) connected to the same material that the top-level discipline articles connect to.
This consideration was inspired in part by an article Nupedia's Zoology editor wrote about Zoology. I replied that it seemed to be a really wonderful article about animals, and that we ought to rename the article "Animal." She agreed. A different article, about the study of animals, will be written about Zoology. This then raised the question as to what the top-level article should be for Nupedia: "Animal" or "Zoology"?
Of course, the issue arises here on Wikipedia as well.
On the other hand, the point about Animal vs. Zoology I think is good: "zoology" includes not just the object of study, but the people who study it, the history of the study, failed ideas, untested hypothesises; while "animal" is just the object of study. -- Simon J Kissane
As an example I've put Wikipedia pages into NuPedia's category scheme on the [Category Schemes]? page. A short history of this, then. The Nupedia category scheme is really intended to be a way to organize review groups, not necessarily subject areas (i.e., it's intended to organize people, not content); but, as it turns out, it is also not a bad way to organize subject areas as well.
I devised the category scheme very roughly according to the way universities divide up academic departments. I tried, above all, to be exhaustive; if there is some area of human knowledge that cannot be placed in this category scheme, I'd like to know. The supercategories ("FoundationalDisciplines," " NaturalSciences," etc.) are all reasonably coherent concepts, and in most cases it's clear enough that a category definitely belongs in one supercategory rather than another.
On the whole, I think that as a category scheme it is a lot more coherent than, say, the Dewey Decimal System or the LibraryOfCongressClassificationScheme?. But of course others may differ. Feel free to devise your own category scheme and place it on the CategorySchemes page! -- Larry Sanger
Science includes the principles behind things, but technology includes their uses. A lot of topics will straddle the two, but for a top-level classification I don't think there's a problem. I do agree, though, that there are way to many top-level nodes. Off the top of my head, I would propose a different system:
Understanding the way the world works - PhiloSophy, MathematicsAndStatistics, NaturalSciences Understanding what's actually in it - BiologicalSciences? (?), HiStory, GeoGraphy? Making stuff for practical use - TechnologY Making stuff for its own ends - ArtsAndEntertainment?
I think that apart from quite rational CategorySchemes we should encourage many apparently non-sensical categorizations and make them available through a variant of the CategorySchemes and/or of the PatentNonsense page, like this one:
--OprgaG
All that said, it is possible than putting it at the top of the hierarchy was a bit extreme, and I'm not moving it back till some pl. scientists joins the wiki and moves it back.
Also, I think there should be a link to Planetary Sciences from [Earth sciences]? -- AstroNomer
Hello ! Are new contributions to be posted at the top or bottom of the page? I'd like to propose a TopicMaps approach for the general structure. That is basically a subject-centered non-hierarchical concept, so we won't have to bother much what is top and what is down. And it's very close to the wiki growth concept. The distinction pointed below between concepts, themes, classes or categories(also called universals) and individual objects like you and me and Van Gogh's "Les Tournesols" could lead to something different of the usual encyclopaedias structure.
BernardVatant (will try to give some attention to the French section)