We have a simple chart showing descendants, why not one for categories?

Question

One of the first things we often do when looking at new family is to look at an ancestor chart or a descendant chart.  Instantly we see many relationships that might be difficult to describe in writing, but easy to see on the chart.

Descendants of Rex Sample  shows us a simple descendant chart.

Father Sample had a personal category. Category: Sample-2

Sub categories are just like children, why not have a Category descendant chart?

For Sample-2, we would see that there are sub-categories,

*Clean up Biography

*Find Children

*My Brickwalls.  

If they had subcategories they would show as well.

This simple chart would make it much easier for everyone to understand the categories they use, just as the family descendant chart helps us understand the family structure.

 

Comments

Hi Phil - I added this here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/To-Do#Other

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Eowyn,

Thank you.  

Can we move it to the top of the list? 

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Phil,

I think it's a fantastic idea and I can't wait to see the results when completed! I also wish we could do a search for a category. But I do that with my search engine.

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J.

You can do a search for categories.  It is not great, but it works OK.  Bottom of every page, select search, then you have to go down all the way on the second page and there is an option search for a category.  Many managers do not realize it is necessary to move all the way down on the second page.

Phil

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Ah, thank you Phil! I didn't know that!

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Sounding in a little late - just to say I like your idea Philip.

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I'm afraid this wouldn't be an easy change to make. I'm removing from the to-do list. Sorry.

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I appreciate the amazing improvements made by WikiTree tech in the time I've been here. I noticed the to do list has

Change Watchlist to sort by LNAB instead of CLN (G2G post)

I wish we could choose to sort by either instead of only one or the other - but if only one choice is possible, I agree with LNAB.

Thanks for all you do to improve WikiTree!!

Answer 1

Alas, Philip, I don't believe that - in a database structure sense - categories are at all like profiles.

Actually, I do belive that you have hit upon a truly wonderful idea, though - it would greatly improve the all-around functionality of categories if their database tables were structured more like profiles!

Please understand that I am not privy to the WikiTree database architecture, nor should I be - that is prorpietary, and rightfully so.  Based uon my experience with database architecture, however, I understand the types of fields that are required to implement the relationships between different tables and provide the data manipulation capabilities.

Based upon the way categories cannot ever be deleted, but simply vanish when both empty of content and unlinked from any other pages, my impression is that the database table in which they are stored either does not have or does not make use of an index.  If the relationships between categories and profiles that link to them were implemented by means of an index field, then it would be possible to change the name of a category.  Wouldn't that be a wonderful feature to have?  There are so many times that a name was not created correctly and it is a monstrous task to fix it by creating a new category with the new name, moving all the content from the old category page, and finally going into every profile that links to it and changing the link that calls the category name.

That is but one example of the improved user interface that is possible; your question is another example; I can think of a few more off the top of my head.  If, as I believe is a no-brainer, everyone says "oooh, that would be great to be able to do" a decision to do it is not automatic.  There is the question of cost, which must be weighed against benefit:

How much will it cost in both effort and resources (storage space and any additional processing overhead)? ... it will take programming effort to implement, so it is not our decision to make of whether or when or to what extent  additional capabilities are implemented.

Comments

Gaile,

Thank you.

I do not pretend to know the data base structure.

However, the system "knows" all of the subcategories, they are displayed for each category.  This report would simply look at one category, display all subcategories, then display all sub-sub-categories - all informaton that we know is contained in the current system as we can look at any category page and see it.

That does not seem to require an indexed system, just a new display of existing data.

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Philip,

I believe the system "knows" the subcategories in exactly the same way that it "knows" the profiles that link to it - only by their links.  The way we make a subcategory is not by designating it as such, but by putting the link to the parent category on its page - exactly the same as we do to "put" profiles in a category.

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Gaile,

If I follow you right, an additional benefit of such a change would be that categories could be merged. If so, that would greatly improve the clean-up of all sorts of category-related messes we have now (mostly locations) and save a tremendous amount of work. Would that not affect the cost-benefit analysis?

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Absolutely, Helmut - still another extremely high value benefit!

Please, though - I feel the need to reiterate that I do not know the actual database architecture here.  I am merely speculating, based on my knowledge of this sort of system.

Answer 2

Somewhat moot to add an answer after Chris has already inidcated it is being removed from the to-do-list. Nonetheless...

I think it really boils down simply to scale.

I think we can accept as fact that even though it does happen, couples having more than 20 children is exceedingly rare. With historically high rates of infant and child mortality, as well as many young adults dying from accidents, crime, disease, and war before having children, many potential branches get trimmed very short. As such I think it would be fair to accept an overall average of 8 children per family having children of their own.

Now let's compare this to some actual numbers for one category hierarchy.

1. Military: 24 sub-categories

2. Military History: 41 sub categories.

3. Wars 1900-1944: 123 sub-categories

4. World War I: 35 sub-categories

Unlike people who have a finite number of children in their life, many categories continue to collect as many sub-categories as people can imagine.

 

As a different example lets take the 8 children per family who have children of their own as suggested above. in 4 generations of descendants there are over 8^4 4100 descendants.

Now let's compare USA > 50 states > over 3100 counties (or equivalent) > over 39,000 municipalities > grossly underestimating number of cemeteries at 2 per municipality  ~78,000

Comments

Rob,

If the problem is one of scale - a chart that show only three generations would be of great value.  That should limit things enough.

Phil