Help talk:Categories

Peripherals/Devices

Hi, I'm getting set to create categories for PDP-10 and PDP-11 peripherals/devices (I've been doing a lot of organization on the CPU/system/etc end of things, and have that in pretty good shape now). Which word would be better to use, if you have an opinion - 'peripherals' or 'devices'? We current do already have a Category:Peripherals, so maybe go with that? Jnc (talk) 16:05, 19 February 2018 (CET)

I tend to go with 'peripherals' in this case. Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

OK; I'll get started on that. And also, I think we should have a category for all DEC stuff - just plain 'DEC', or 'Digital Equipment Corporation'?

DEC is consistent with the other labels. Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

I'll have to ponder the DEC category name. It feels a bit 'thin', just plain 'DEC'. I don't mind the acronym 'DEC' as part of the name of sub-categories (it prevents them getting ridiculously long); but for the main category, it feels too informal. Jnc (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2018 (CET)

Other cats

BTW, I added some thoughts about cats to Help:Introduction to Categories#Current organization - does that seem like a good system? Jnc (talk) 19:44, 19 February 2018 (CET)

There's one problem with the taxonomy. Not all PDP-10 (or 11 or 8) operating systems are DEC operating system. At least not in the sense "operating systems made by DEC". Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

I'm happy to subdivide it (them, actually) into two other categories; any snappy ideas for the name(s)? I suppose we could have 'DEC Operating Systems' and 'Non-DEC Operating Systems'; each of which is further divided into, e.g., 'DEC PDP-11 Operating Systems' and 'Non-DEC PDP-11 Operating Systems'. Jnc (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2018 (CET)

That'll potentially be a lot of category pages to create! Can't a page be in both the DEC Operating Systems category, and the PDP-10 Operating Systems category? Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

Sorry, I'm not sure I'm seeing your concept; a concrete example would help. What pages (and sub-categories) would go in 'DEC Operating Systems' category, and what in the 'PDP-10 Operating Systems'? ITS would clearly be in the latter, but would it be in any others? What super-category would the 'PDP-10 Operating Systems' category be in? Jnc (talk)

TOPS-10 would be in both 'DEC OSes' and 'PDP-10 OSes'. OS/8 would be in both 'DEC OSes' and 'PDP-8 OSes'. ITS would be in just 'PDP-10 OSes'. Unix V7 would be in just 'PDP-11 OSes'. 'DEC OSes', 'PDP-8 OSes', 'PDP-10 OSes', and 'PDP-11 OSes' would all be in 'Operating Systems'.

This way, there would be N+M categories (for N manufacturers and M architectures), rather than NxM. Larsbrinkhoff (talk)

Ah, got it.

The only potential downside to that approach is that there's no easy way to find non-DEC OS's, other than going through all the per-machine OS categories - for which having a 'OS's for DEC machines' super-cat would be mildly helpful, as opposed to just putting them in 'OS's'.

Ah, how about a single 'non-DEC OS's for DEC machines' category? (Although it would need a snappier name than that - can't come up with one quickly.) So TOPS-10 would be in 'DEC OS's' and 'PDP-10 OS's', Unix V6 would be in 'non-DEC OS's' and 'PDP-11 OS's', etc.

That's only one more category, and it would help find the non-DEC OS's easily; and no PDP OS article would have more than two category tags. (I'm going to put off for now the issue of OS's like MUMPS, which started out as a private venture, and which eventully wound up as a DEC product! :-)

BTW, actually my orginal proposal was not N*M; it was Sum(2*Mi), instead of Sum(Mi), where Mi is the number of architecture for manufacturer i, out of N. But still, you're right, it would have been a lot! Twice as many as the other way... Jnc (talk) 15:04, 20 February 2018 (CET)

Now that I see the 'Non-DEC Operating Systems' Category, it does look quite strange.. on the surface of it it would cover everything that's not DEC or for DEC, i.e. most operating systems (and then a visitor would wonder why it's named that way, too.) But then it's definitely for DEC, just not made by DEC. It gets a bit confusing. Tor (talk) 09:20, 23 February 2018 (CET)

I agree, actually! Despite thinking about it for several days, I just couldn't come up with a short, snappy name that, on its face, described what the category was about! 'Non-DEC Operating Systems for DEC Machines' is a bit ponderous! If anyone can come up with a better one, I'd be happy to change it (which is why I put off going around tagging articles). I asked Lars if he had a suggestion... In the interim, that's why I put the description in the Help: page (and the cat header), to warn people it's not what the name, strictly-speaking, implies. Jnc (talk) 14:06, 23 February 2018 (CET)