There's no such thing as an empty category.

bugz-wikimedia wrote:

(In reply to comment #1)

There's no such thing as an empty category.

I think this is basically true, but it might be confusing to some people, and the interface does not present this consistently.

One can navigate to the page Category:EmptyNothingHereReally and it will say "This category currently contains no pages or media." Of course in some sense the category doesn't even exist, but the message does suggest a certain existence of the category.

One could even create a page Category:EmptyNothingHereReally, and then there would be a page describing the category that didn't exist, making it more confusing.

I think the phrasing "only lists non-empty categories" is correct, and unambiguous, but I am not positive it is less confusing than the current message.

Perhaps a better message than:
The following categories exist in the wiki.

Is:
The following categories in the wiki contain pages or media:

bugz-wikimedia wrote:

Patch to implement the language change

Hopefully the change is more appealing if the patch is already there.

Attached:

skizzerz wrote:

implemented in r31410

Wording changed to "The following categories contain pages or media." to be consistent with the "This category currently contains no pages or media" message. The "exist" part is not necessarily true, as nonexistent categories can still have pages/media in them, and it also implies that all existing categories are not empty, which is also false (categories like Candidates for Speedy Deletion should ideally be empty, even though they exist)

I suppose you can revert it if you think that the old (inaccurate) wording is better, but please look at these comments before doing so to see that the reword was truly better and more accurate.

Thank you both for supporting my idea here. :)