Consumer Action Taskforce:Categorization
This article describes how categories are chosen for different types of pages. This is useful for users who want to help maintain the wiki by clearing out uncategorized pages (list), uncategorized categories (list) and wanted categories (list).
Users who frequently create new pages also need this information.
Articles
Incident articles
An incident can apply to a specific product, service, website, piece of software, a whole product line or a company (and/or all of its products).
- An incident that applies to a specific product, service, website or piece of software should belong to that category. For example, the Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program article belongs to
[[Category:Pixel 4a]]. - An incident that applies to a whole product line should belong to that product line's category. For example, Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 Battery Performance Program belongs to
[[Category:Fitbit Sense]]and[[Category:Fitbit Versa 3]]. - An incident that applies to all of a company's products, or that should be known by anyone considering paying for one of their products, should belong to the company's category. For example, Disney wrongful-death lawsuit belongs to
[[Category:Disney]].
Incidents should also be categorized according to the categories in Category:Incidents. These categories are a work in progress, and this section will be updated once a system has been established.
Company articles
Company articles belong to their respective category. For example, the Sony article belongs to [[Category:Sony]].
Product, product line, service, website and software articles
Product line, service, website and software articles belong to their respective category. For example, the Google Pixel article belongs to [[Category:Google Pixel]].
Categories
Company categories
Rules
Company categories are categorized by industry. To avoid confusion, they are categorized based on how the corresponding article is categorized on Wikipedia.
When transferring the categories from the corresponding Wikipedia article, the following apply:
- Categories must describe the company in a way that relates to the products and services it provides.
- Categories do not contain information about the year or country of establishment. These are not important for the purposes of this wiki.
- Categories that belong to the "Companies by industry" category on Wikipedia belong to the Companies category on this wiki.
Example
As an example, consider the Wikipedia page for Sony, one of the companies with the most categories on Wikipedia:
The following categories do not describe Sony in a way that relates to its products and services:
- TOPIX 100
- 1950s initial public offerings
- Belgian Royal Warrant holders
- Companies in the Nikkei 225
- Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
- Companies listed on the Tokyo Stick Exchange
- Conglomerate companies based in Tokyo
- Mitsui
Examples of categories on other pages that do not relate to the company's products and services include:
- Privately held companies
- Family-owned companies
- Multinational companies
Here are a few categories with years or countries of establishment removed:
- Computer companies of Japan →
[[Category:Computer companies]] - Electronics companies established in 1946 →
[[Category:Electronics companies]]
Click "[Expand]" on the right to view the final list of categories at the bottom of the Category:Sony page.
Product categories
A product's category page belongs to the product line's category page. For example, Category:Pixel 4a belongs to [[Category:Google Pixel]].
Some products, such as Google Glass, do not belong to a line of products. These products should be categorized as if they themselves are product lines, i.e. they should follow the rules in the following two sections.
Product line, service, website and software categories
Articles can be about a combination of products, product lines, services, websites and software. The distinction between some of these terms is vague, so this wiki chooses to take liberties from Wikipedia's system.
Rules
A category page should belong to the manufacturer, service provider and/or developer's category page. For example, Category:Google Pixel should belong to Category:Google.
Categories are also categorized by type. To avoid confusion, they are categorized based on the categories on Wikipedia.
When transferring the categories from Wikipedia, the following apply:
- Categories must describe the type of product, service, website or software.
- Categories do not contain extra information unrelated to the type. This extra information should be omitted.
- Categories that belong to the "<thing> by type" category on Wikipedia belong to the "<thing>" category on this wiki.
- When categorizing product lines, categories are sourced from the following pages on Wikipedia if they exist:
- Any product article.
- That product's corresponding category.
- The product line's article.
- That product line's corresponding category.
Example
As an example, consider the Google Pixel product line. Categories can be sourced from the following articles on Wikipedia:
- Pixel 4a
- Category:Pixel 4a (does not exist; skip)
- Google Pixel
- Category:Google Pixel
The categories on Wikipedia follow. These categories should be modified according to the rules outlined above.
The following categories do not describe a type of product:
- Google hardware
- Computer-related introductions in 2013
Here are a few categories with extra information removed:
- Discontinued smartphones →
[[Category:Smartphones]] - Mobile phones introduced in 2020 →
[[Category:Mobile phones]]
Click "[Expand]" on the right to view the final list of categories at the bottom of the Category:Google Pixel page.
Rationale
Introduction
This section explains the rationale for the current design of the company and product category hierarchy. It approaches the problem of a reader trying to find all incidents associated with a product they're considering purchasing.
In order to learn about the consumer protection flaws of a product, the reader will search for the product on this wiki to see if there are any flaws related to that product specifically. This will land the user at the product's article.
Duplication of information
There is some information that cannot be represented on the product's article because it affects multiple products. Information that affects multiple products cannot be repeated across those product pages because this information duplication would greatly increase the work associated with improving and amending the information.
In order to avoid repeating the information, it can be extracted into a separate article that covers all affected products. This article must be linked to from the product article, as shown by the blue arrow in the diagram nearby.
As an example, consider information about an issue affecting all Pixel devices. This information can't be repeated across all Pixel product pages for the reasons mentioned above. It needs to be extracted into a separate article. This is a product line article. The product article must link to the product line article so that the user can easily navigate to it.
Some issues apply to all of Google's products, not just its Pixel devices. This information can't be repeated across all the product line articles, so it needs to be extracted into a separate article. This is a company article. The product line article must link to the company article.
The importance of product line articles
In order to reduce the amount of articles, a contributor may consider moving the product line information to the company article. However, when the user, considering buying the product, looks at the company article, they have to wade through information about product lines that they are not interested in. Thus, product line articles are critical for ensuring that readers only read about incidents that affect the products they are considering buying.
Conclusion
To recap the user's process: The wiki contains a product article, a product line article and a company article. The user lands on the product article page because they searched for it. This article does not contain all incidents affecting the product, so they navigate to the product line article. After that, they navigate to the company article. None of these articles contain incidents that do not affect their product.