Cdid you know that our category pages come up in Google searches?

Question

I was looking for the project page made to support a WW ll category I had made a few years ago & found that the category page came up instead. 

"Devonport Memorial Drive" 4th in a list of "About 488,000 results(0.30 seconds)" 

While it is gratifying to see a category / project so high in a Google hit list, I wonder if having an editable category page so easily found is a good idea? 

Answer 1

Most of the content on WikiTree is editable by members, and they all show in some fashion on Google search results. What would be the concern?

Comments

OK, I searched for "Kohuratahi War Memorial Cenotaph" and both space & category pages appeared, one following the other.

There was a problem with heavy editing of one of the Scottish Clans categories last year from someone who appeared to have joined WT in order to add blogger style content to that particular category page, the situation was quickly taken in hand by an observant ranger and the hacker quietly blocked.

There's no problem with members editing a category, I just thought that the pages were behind-the-scenes workhorse pages while space pages provided the public face of a project.

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Above is my comment, was not logged in at the time

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The way WikiTree was built (or any other wiki style site really), all of the namespaces are generally treated as public facing. Each of the namespaces (Person profiles, categories, help, templates, space pages, etc.) work both independently, and as support for other pages. Since they can be independent pages, they have been made available to be indexed by web crawlers.

As an example, we have shipping categories. These categories contain some data and links to profiles that may be of interest to an web searcher, but the category may not have a supporting help, project or space page. Should we hide the category from searches?

There was a problem with heavy editing of one of the Scottish Clans categories last year from someone who appeared to have joined WT in order to add blogger style content to that particular category page, the situation was quickly taken in hand by an observant ranger and the hacker quietly blocked.

This is inevitable. Many wiki sites suffer this same type of vandalism, which is why WikiTree has specialized members and projects created to monitor and protect the site. 

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The point is - why spend time building a space page if the category page will do the same job?

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The point is - why spend time building a space page if the category page will do the same job?

Space pages and Category pages are two completely different animals (so to speak). They are not built for the same purposes, do not have the same options, and are not used the same.

While you can add large amounts of text to a category page, this in turn defeats the purpose of having the category page in the first place (to group profiles and find them easily).

You can also add a large table to a Space page containing profiles, but that doesn't afford you the same luxury as using a category.

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Category pages are supposed to contain only the barest minimum detail, serving as the collection point for the profiles categrised.

Space pages were supposed to carry all the interesting info and photographs in support of the category.

They can be both edited in the same way, with the same data; images, links etc. (I've created dozens of each).

For some reason, the situation has changed recently. So, if both space page and category page now appear together in an internet search, it is no longer always necessary to create a space page in support of a category.  Makes life easier.

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Category pages are supposed to contain only the barest minimum detail, serving as the collection point for the profiles categrised.

Space pages were supposed to carry all the interesting info and photographs in support of the category.

This is correct.

 For some reason, the situation has changed recently. So, if both space page and category page now appear together in an internet search, it is no longer always necessary to create a space page in support of a category.

Can you expand on this comment? The guidelines we have for categories are still the same as mentioned in your first quote above, and have not changed. The presence of both pages in search results does not change WikiTree's current guidelines.

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I can't say what has changed, except that I have NOT noticed a category page appear as the result of a general internet search before, now they do.

space page - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:The_Whangamomona%2C_Kohuratahi_and_Tahora_War_Memorial_Cenotaph

category - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Whangamomona%2C_Kohuratahi_and_Tahora_War_Memorial_Cenotaph

I didn't need to create both.

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I don't believe anything has changed, as I have been using Google search for finding categories for a few years.

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Google individually tailors search results as well, so Wikitree pages may be appearing more often or higher up in your search results because you visit Wikitree frequently.

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Thanks, I get that.