Category talk:Languages by continent

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Keep Is this category needed? I see the following reasons in favour of this category:

fewer subcategories in Category:Languages

consistency with other categorization schemes, e.g. Category:Languages by category

no mixing of the continent categories (Category:Languages of Africa, etc.) with unrelated categories such as Category:Languages textbook pages or Category:Soundbite requests

consistency with wikipedia's categories

I see only one reason against this category:

consistency with the Subjects hierarchy

However, the last point is particular weak because the Subjects hierarchy was designed to be more reader-friendly, i.e., deviations between the category hierarchy and the subjects hierarchy are no accident and no reason to change either. (If needed I will elaborate this point.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this category should be kept, despite my belief that consistency with Wikipedia's categories is a particularly weak argument as well. However I don't see the need or point in keeping "Languages textbook pages" because they should all be in some other subcategory already. --darklama 14:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree that Wikibooks is not Wikipedia. I also support Darklama's point on Category:Languages textbook pages. Wikibooks:CCO Resources (even before my efforts to improve it, thus leaving an edit by myself on it) stated that a book's title page and title category would be filed in the same subcategory. With the current system in Category:Languages, a new book creator has to tag their title page "Languages of Africa" but then be aware that there is an exception and they need to tag their title category "Languages textbook pages" instead. I had been remedying this in, for instance, Category:Languages of Oceania. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

We are not just talking about Category:Languages textbook pages but also about Category:Computing textbook pages, Category:Engineering textbook pages, and Category:Science textbook pages. I haven't invented this system of categorizing book categories, I only tried to respect it when I worked on Category:Languages. If we want to abandon it: fine, but I think we should discuss this decision first since it affects almost every book. The way Adrignola tries to separate book categories from other categories in their parent category X by using [[Category:X|*{{PAGENAME}}]] shows that there is a need to separate these categories. Using categories like "Category:X textbook pages" is IMHO a better way to separate book categories from other categories than the way used by Adrignola. Either way, this issue should be discussed and documented.--Martin Kraus (talk) 15:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the "X textbook pages" categories have been deleted over time as better ways to categories those books have been found too. There aren't that many left. I think such categories were created earlier on in Wikibooks' history. I wouldn't even be surprised if they were originally created back when Wikibooks was known as textbooks.wikipedia.org. There shouldn't be a need to separate book categories from other categories or to use "*" either IMO. There shouldn't be a lot of book categories that can't be subdivided into smaller topics (like african languages, european languages, etc). --darklama 16:32, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we should move this discussion to another place, I suggest Wikibooks talk:Categories#Categorization of book categories. --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why the categories can't be reader friendly as well. That's not for or against this category, just my philosophy in general. I'd like it so that if someone puts a page in a category, its parent category matches the corresponding subject's parent. However, Category:Languages does appear to be an exception due to the additional categories you mention. I will leave Category:Languages by continent alone since someone who wants to file a book under Languages by Africa will have a category of the same name to put it in and the category Languages by continent is simply an intermediary that never shows up in the subject hierarchy. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)