Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-5825217-20131020030042

In the "Clarify and Clean the 'Cryptids' Category" thread I made a very long post which I will paste here (with edits) to ask for a cleanup of all of the categories, not just Cryptids.

Without further ado:

Death - Get rid of this or split it into something more specific. As LOLSKELETONS wrote in the "Clarify" thread, it's simply "too all-encompassing for horror." A lot of pastas involve death and a lot of people think it's okay to include this tag for any story with death in it. The pasta should be about the death.

Beings - Let's get something straight here. A being is a sentient paranormal entity as far as I'm aware. There's not too much misuse of this category, so it should stay.

OC - I'm pretty sure this means Original Content, which is kind of strange, since most of the stories on here are not pastes of other people's work or fanfictions. I'd keep it just so original stories can be tagged as opposed to work copied from somewhere else (e.g. Bram Stoker's Dracula).

Monsters - One of those weird ones. It's very broad, but not in the sense that Death is. because there isn't really a way to split this one up. Unless you want to have fifty different categories like "small pale hominid with long fingers" and "big thing with too many legs that eats people in the woods." Should be about any weird entity that doesn't fit the definition of a being and is rather horrific to behold.

Demon/Devil - I'm fine with this one. People seem to understand what a demon/devil is in the context of this wiki.

Mental Illness - This is sometimes misused and applied to momentary hallucinations. Instead of having just this one category, it should be split into different kinds of mental illness. Psychopathy, Delusions, that sort of thing. Momentary hallucinations or ones that only happen because of some sort of outside source should be split into a Hallucinations category (sort of like Raidra said, although I advocate an entirely new category instead of just a redefinition of the classification criteria).

Dreams/Sleep - Again, one that I can't really think of a good reason to get rid of. This should be applied to a pasta that revolves around events that occur in dreams or while sleeping.

Video Games - I think it's pretty obvious which pastas go here. There's no danger of misclassification and there isn't really a great way to split it up (except into very popular games that have many pastas, like Pokemon).

First Person/Third Person Narrative - Like pancake666 said, most pastas are in these categories. They shouldn't even BE categories. Get rid of them.

Places - Much, much too broad. Should be split into specific types of places. In addition, it's sort of overused because people just think it means their story has a setting. (No shit.)

Blog Posts / Chat Logs - I'm fine with these because they're subdivisions of Computers and Internet and are relevant, reasonable subcategories.

Dismemberment - If Death isn't going anywhere I suggest getting rid of this one, because if you get dismembered you're very likely dead (unless your nickname is Stitch). It's not really a necessary category.

Items/Objects - This is fine, because some stories revolve around a suspicious object. If one were to subdivide this into more specific categories I don't think it would work. There are only so many stories you can tag with "Old Carpet" or "Lamp."

Books - This one is fine too. No explanation needed. Should be about a book though.

CC-BY Files / CC-BY-SA Files - I have no idea what these are and I will not comment. I was just looking in the possible categories and found them.

Shock Ending - So many pastas are tagged with this that it's ridiculous. It needs to go away, because most of them are not shock endings. As Raidra said, the average shock ending pasta "would be ... a story which opened with a description of puddles, having the end reveal that it had been raining earlier...." That's not a shock ending. Goodbye, Shock Ending.

Users - This isn't really a pasta category, but I think there are some tagged with this. Isn't this for people's talk pages?

NSFW - Obviously, we're keeping this one. You can't have NSFW content without warning people it's NSFW. "Hey, Ted." "Oh, hey, boss." "What's that you've got there?" "Why, it's just a brutally violent video of someone being slowly impaled by meathooks."

Lovecraftian - This category should be safe, because most people don't know what it means, and those who do actually know. (WE LOVE YOU HP LOVECRAFT!)

Ghosts, Theory - We're safe here. A ghost is...well, that's obvious. A theory is a tentative explanation of something, and a theory pasta should be entirely about a theory and explaining it.

History - This needs to be defined more accurately. What exactly defines a History pasta? To my mind, it's something featuring a weird twist to actual history.

Diary/Journal - I'll keep this if it gets defined properly. A pasta that features a journal entry but does not consist of them shouldn't be called a diary/journal pasta.

Pokemon / Zelda - I will make an exception from very specific subcategories here to say that these two categories are quite popular and should be kept.

Spongebob - We have like...forty-odd pastas on this. It doesn't need a subcategory. We have a lot of Mario pastas too, does that mean we need a Mario section?

Reality - I'll keep this if it's defined properly. A Reality pasta should challenge reality as we know it. It shouldn't be based off of real life but not present a challenge. Okay, what if the writer actually grew up on a farm and their pasta is about a farm? It's not reality unless they present a challenge to it, like "actually, the cattle keep us" or something. (In that sense, one could argue that Theory and Reality could be merged, but then you have Theory pastas about TV shows and games.)

People - Most pastas feature people. Don't tag your pasta as "People" unless it's based off of person-to-person interaction. Having one main character trapped in a facility full of Earthbound's Foppies does not count as "People."

US - I'm assuming this means 'Murica. This one should be obvious, unless people think it means they should tag a pasta with US because it takes place there. Many do. But I think a lot of people just ignore this. Get rid of it.

'''Ritual, Music, Television. Poetry, Military''' - These can all be kept, as they define themselves.

Nazi - Get rid of this. It can go under Military.

Anyway, that's my list. Sorry for the tl;dr.

Any unlisted categories or disagreements may be posted in replies. 