Last modified: 2014-08-14 15:35:26 UTC
Consider a typical category page, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Science or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_needing_attention . Currently, the user sees various subcategories, such as "Dance articles needing attention," followed by a number in parentheses, indicating the number of subcategories in this category. Let the set D of "descendant categories" of a category X be the least set such that a) X is in D, b) If a category Y is in D, all subcategories of Y are in D. Let the set of "leaf articles" of X be the (nondisjoint) union of all articles belonging to a descendant category of X. I propose that the number in parentheses be the number of leaf articles of X, instead of the number of subcategories of X. Rationale: a) This number is more useful: when I see "Dance articles needing attention" or "Philosophy of Science," what I really want to know at a glance are how many dance articles need attention, or how many articles there are about the philosophy of science. Rarely am I as interested in how many subcategories have been created of these topics. b) This number is less confusing: A user who sees "Youth science (0)" may be inclined to think there are no articles on Wikipedia about youth science. This point is closely related to a), and both sprout from the number of leaf articles being a more "natural" number to associate to a category than the number of subcategories.
Still valid in 1.24, e.g. "Articles to be expanded (94 C, 3 P)" where 3P only refers to articles on the first sublevel of that category but does not include the number of articles in subcategories (second and third sublevels). Wondering if there is general support and agreement for this change though, plus how this would affect performance.
