Last modified: 2012-12-30 20:58:46 UTC
There is some contention on en.wikipedia that certain pages, while in development outside mainspace, should not be categorised in mainspace categories. It is confusing, and people keep finding the articles through the categories, while they are absolutely not suitable for 'real' publication. The common methods to change that is: * 'colon-isation' (changing [[category:foo]] to [[:category:foo]]) * outright removal of the categories from the page * putting the categories into comments (wrapping them in <!-- and -->) Whichever method is used, in all cases editors have to make an edit to the page 'belonging' to the editor who started the draft, in a way 'vandalising' that page to disable the categories, 'biting' the editor who created the draft. I propose here to consider to add a keyword, I suggest '__NOCATEGORIES__' which results in ALL categories being turned into wikilinks on a page where that keyword is included (the articles are then hence not categorised there). This can then be delivered via the standard template that is used on e.g. userspace drafts. In that way, no-one needs to perform the edit to 'remove' the categories, as it is delivered through a standard template.
Adding __NOCATEGORIES__ to a draft article in userspace still has the problem that 'outside' editors may need to edit the draft. I suggest an alternative implementation: that pages in user space not be displayed in any categories other than those tagged with {{Wikipedia category|user=yes}}. This tag is similar to the one used for hidden categories. I see no reason why the article draft might not display its categories as normal; only the category page would not display them without the user tag. It might be more work, or be inefficient, but a user category tag would ideally apply to all subcategories, otherwise some puzzled users would complain that they have created "Category:Users who like categories" but their page doesn't appear in it.
(In reply to comment #1) I agree with Gadfium that there may be some user confusion in some cases but that could be resolved via methods such as explanatory notes, approp edit summaries etc. __NOCATEGORIES__ is an welcome addition to the stable of magic words. On Wikipedia it would be an ideal addition to the Article for creation and {{user sandbox}} templates.
@Gadfium - generally userspace drafts carry already a 'this is a userspace draft'-template, which would be the perfect place to put it in. In any way, tagging an article is less bitey than maiming the categories that an editor painstakingly has added to the article. I presume that adding __NOCATEGORY__ to the code is easier than your solution, although I think that also that would be a welcome extension (and maybe the two should work 'together').
