The Cat Cat, was Re: fictional categories

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:43:58 +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:

> I agree with the statement that it should not be in that category.
> Essentially, because schrodinger's cat is not a cat. Felix the Cat is
> a fictional cat. Simba the lion is a fictional cat, in a broader
> sense. Schrodinger's cat is a concept in physics that has nothing to
> do with cats or fiction. There is no notable fiction in which
> Schrodinger's cat features heavily, for example.

This discussion led me to go check out the "cat cat[egory]", and find
that, inexplicably, Felix the Cat was omitted.  I remedied that.


--
== Dan ==
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[Surreptitiousness]

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:43:58 +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>  
>> I agree with the statement that it should not be in that category.
>> Essentially, because schrodinger's cat is not a cat. Felix the Cat is
>> a fictional cat. Simba the lion is a fictional cat, in a broader
>> sense. Schrodinger's cat is a concept in physics that has nothing to
>> do with cats or fiction. There is no notable fiction in which
>> Schrodinger's cat features heavily, for example.
>>    
>
> This discussion led me to go check out the "cat cat[egory]", and find
> that, inexplicably, Felix the Cat was omitted.  I remedied that.
>
>
>  

Felix the Cat is in Category:Felix the Cat which is a sub-cat of the
"cat cat", so all sorts of rules apply there.


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[Magnus Manske-2]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Surreptitiousness
<surreptitious.wikipedian@...> wrote:

> Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>> On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:43:58 +1100, Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I agree with the statement that it should not be in that category.
>>> Essentially, because schrodinger's cat is not a cat. Felix the Cat is
>>> a fictional cat. Simba the lion is a fictional cat, in a broader
>>> sense. Schrodinger's cat is a concept in physics that has nothing to
>>> do with cats or fiction. There is no notable fiction in which
>>> Schrodinger's cat features heavily, for example.
>>>
>>
>> This discussion led me to go check out the "cat cat[egory]", and find
>> that, inexplicably, Felix the Cat was omitted.  I remedied that.
>>
>>
>>
> Felix the Cat is in Category:Felix the Cat which is a sub-cat of the
> "cat cat", so all sorts of rules apply there.

I am glad that has cat-alyzed a con-cat-enation of actions. Could have
ended in a cat-as-troph(e/y) otherwise, if we couldn't see through the
cat-aract of it all.

Is lolcat in the list of fictional cats? Or has it its own lolcategory?

OK, I'll cat this short

Magnus

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[Steve Bennett-8]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Magnus Manske
<magnusmanske@...> wrote:

> Is lolcat in the list of fictional cats?

To take a concrete example, is "ceiling cat" a fictional cat?
Interesting question. Clearly the cat in question existed. But the
whole mythos of "ceiling cat is watching you" seems fictional somehow.

Anyway the previous comment about Felix the Cat being itself a
category reminded me how much I dislike categories. You never know
whether category membership is taxonomic (the subject of this page
*is* a fictional cat) or thematic (the subject of this page is
*related* to fictional cats). Same goes for subcategories.

Steve

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[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Magnus Manske
> <magnusmanske@...> wrote:
>
>> Is lolcat in the list of fictional cats?
>
> To take a concrete example, is "ceiling cat" a fictional cat?
> Interesting question. Clearly the cat in question existed. But the
> whole mythos of "ceiling cat is watching you" seems fictional somehow.
>
> Anyway the previous comment about Felix the Cat being itself a
> category reminded me how much I dislike categories. You never know
> whether category membership is taxonomic (the subject of this page
> *is* a fictional cat) or thematic (the subject of this page is
> *related* to fictional cats). Same goes for subcategories.

Ideally, you would label categories as being of one type or the other,
but people seem to object to that for some reason. The closest we came
was the templates developed for some version of Category intersection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_intersection

Oh, here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_types

Category types. Marked as failed, but someone could try and revive it again.

Carcharoth

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[Steve Summit]

Steve Bennett wrote:
>> Anyway the previous comment about Felix the Cat being itself a
>> category reminded me how much I dislike categories. You never know
>> whether category membership is taxonomic (the subject of this page
>> *is* a fictional cat) or thematic (the subject of this page is
>> *related* to fictional cats). Same goes for subcategories.

This is *the* fundamental problem with categories, and is why
they'll never (in their current form) be useful for anything
rigorous or systematic, are really only useful for dabbling and
browsing.

Carcharoth wrote:
> Ideally, you would label categories as being of one type or the other,

Hear, hear.

> but people seem to object to that for some reason...
> Oh, here we go:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_types
>
> Category types. Marked as failed, but someone could try and revive it again.

Huh.  A quick skim of the talk page suggests a fair amount of
strong support, and a fair amount of what I would characterize as
weak objection, basically along the lines of "categories are fine
for dabbling and browsing, and I don't want to think about trying
to do anything more with them, or letting anyone else try to do
anything more with them."  Too bad.

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[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Steve Summit <scs@...> wrote:

<snip>

>> Category types. Marked as failed, but someone could try and revive it again.
>
> Huh.  A quick skim of the talk page suggests a fair amount of
> strong support, and a fair amount of what I would characterize as
> weak objection, basically along the lines of "categories are fine
> for dabbling and browsing, and I don't want to think about trying
> to do anything more with them, or letting anyone else try to do
> anything more with them."  Too bad.

I've often thought that trawling through rejected proposals would
actually throw up some ideas that now look quite attractive, or are
technically feasible, or where consensus may have changed. The other
rationale for actually making "rejected proposals" and other
backwaters of the wiki more organised and accessible (currently, you
have to search and hope you find anything similar to your idea), is
that it avoids reinventions of the same ideas, and repeating the same
arguments.

But you have to be careful not to spend too much time looking back,
and enough time moving forward. It is similar to the point Charles is
making about deleted revisions in another thread. The difference there
is that deleted revisions can be actively harmful, but rejected
proposals are rarely that toxic (apart from for the person who
unwittingly revives the one that causes the wiki to implode).

Carcharoth

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[David Carson-5]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp@...> wrote:
> To take a concrete example, is "ceiling cat" a fictional cat?
> Interesting question. Clearly the cat in question existed. But the
> whole mythos of "ceiling cat is watching you" seems fictional somehow.

Surely Ceiling Cat is a fictional character which has been portrayed
on film by a real cat.

Cheers,
David...

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[Steve Bennett-8]

Heh, this just turned up on reddit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cats_with_fraudulent_diplomas

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