Talk:Fragment processing

Stub categories are not categories?

This article was in the category "Computer graphics stubs," when it was tagged as uncategorized.

It is now in two categories: Computer graphics stubs and Computer graphics. Is this correct? Stub categories are not categories?

--KMLP (talk) 02:58, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Stub categories are temporary maintenance categories, which are meant to be removed from articles once they've been expanded beyond stub length. So even if an article has 100 stub templates on it, then yes, it is still "uncategorized" if it doesn't have at least one permanent content category on it too. Bearcat (talk) 03:05, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

You know, instead of adding an "uncategorized" tag, adding the category from the stub helps readers of the encyclopedia, and it also places the article where interested and knowledgeable editors can see that it needs work.

Adding the "uncategorized" tag just puts the article into a jumble category with multiple unrelated articles, helping neither the reader nor the editor of related articles. Have you tried HotCats? You can start typing the category name, and the browser will fill in the rest, and you can easily see that the category exists, add it to the article, benefits readers and editors. --KMLP (talk) 03:13, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

At the time of that edit, there was a backlog of approximately 30,000 articles which were both uncategorized and untagged. If you think I was under some kind of obligation to directly categorize each and every one of those 30,000 articles one by one, rather than doing batch runs in AWB to tag them as being uncategorized, then you're more than welcome to trade lives with me for a few months so that you can be the one being saddled with such an onerous expectation while I stand over you yelling "FASTER! FASTER!". Otherwise, the only obligation I had was to clear that backlog as quickly as possible regardless of whether that meant categorization or tagging.

Sorry if that all sounds a bit snarky, but Wikipedia really, truly doesn't come with any expectation that any individual editor is ever obliged to directly perform the necessary maintenance themselves rather than tagging it for somebody else's attention. I'm already probably the single biggest user of HotCat on this entire site, for what it's worth — but it's not the most helpful tool for clearing a massive backlog of articles by yourself. Even doing massive tagging runs of 500 to 1,000 articles per day, it still took until the end of September to get the backlog wiped out — and if I were taking the time to personally categorize each one, instead of tagging it so that absolutely anybody with HotCat could take a shot at it, it still wouldn't be even close to being wiped out. And on top of that, approximately 150 to 200 new uncategorized articles are created each and every day, so it's a job that never, ever, ever really ends. Bearcat (talk) 03:28, 10 October 2010 (UTC)