No Category

CategoryNone was a Category added to a small number of the over 15000 pages on the wiki having NoCategory tags. What was said of it during its short existence in October, November 2014:

You can attach it when there is no category to it.
When there is a category to it which seems wrong but you are not sure, attach it also. Do not remove other categories if you are not sure what to do best.
Do not add categories within the text, only at the bottom after 4 dashes ----
Dissolve category tags within the text by inserting 6'. But add those tags under that page if they apply.
Leave alone pages that speak of leaving pages alone and not categorise them. You don't need to adopt this opinion, just leave those pages alone and intentionally uncategorised. --ManorainjanHolzapfel

This category is in the category about wiki maintenance because it helps to improve the ability to find pages.

In the MediaWiki software this functionality is embedded for good reasons

Nobody needs to do that work, it happens automatically which is reasonable, because every simple script can do it and why should a human be bothered with this kind of work. It takes ExtremeHumility to do this kind of WikiGnoming?.
Experience shows that it is unavoidable that frequently creators of pages forget to assign categories to it. So, how else would one find uncategorised pages in a systematic and time saving manner?

Now, this category is in maintenance because it is not a tag that helps wiki consumers, pure readers. It is there to help maintenance workers to add value by checking out the pages listed in this category and make up their mind which would be a meaningful category for the page. But that requires real knowledge about the topic of that page in many cases. So no single person can add this kind of value to all pages. But every reader or even contributer to a formerly uncategorised page can at least add this much value to add CategoryNone to it, so that it comes within the reach of WikiCitizens who are willing to do maintenance work. That way people educated about specific topics don't need to go down to this extreme low level work to find uncategorised pages first. Experience shows, that most people thinking of themselves as educated shun all kind of routine work. Therefore this category is the silver tablet to offer them to do "higher" work. --ManorainjanHolzapfel

Reflection

Thank you for creating this page. The evolution around CategoryNone has been very strange. For me the point about a category is that the pages bearing it have something in common, a theme which is useful to a reader. I have done a lot of work over many years to contribute to that. CategoryNone was not like this, the pages had nothing in common except that (mostly) they did not already have a category. So it was not there for the reader. It was claimed to be there as a maintenance tool, but that is not what a category is. What is more useful to a WikiGnome is the evidence of when a page was last edited, so the entering of a page into CategoryNone represented a permanent loss of a clue to how to gnome the page in the present. Newer systems such as WikiMedia have more of a backtrack on editing, so the past there is not so fragile. We were told that we are a dinosaur and available to be redefined. We are a community who work around consensus and have ways of dealing with people who don't value us. There is a strange thing about tolerance of the intolerant, who claims tolerance for intolerance. How dare you not let me do as I like? I heard a sermon once, one of few of which I remember anything. The preacher said that the root of the word 'conscience' meant something agreed on together, the 'con' part implying acting in concert, where nowadays we talk about the 'individual conscience'. The sound of one hand clapping. WikiWiki is in my opinion a continuing experiment. -- JohnFletcher

Today as a result of collective work, RecentChanges can now resume its normal life and presentation. Many participants who read wiki will also appreciate this.

See CategoriesDiscussion UncategorizedPages WikiIsNotWikipedia

NovemberFourteen

CategoryWikiMaintenance