Category talk:Pier 41
Cats should climb trees, not swallow tail[edit]
All right; I didn't understand the nature of the misunderstanding. Yes, it's a bit confusing, but the file for a category doeesn't have the names of its child cats, also known as subcategories. It has, rather, the names of its parents.
In this respect it's the same as the file for an article. An article or picture file, not being a category, doesn't have child categories of its own. It only has parent cats, which it lists at the bottom in the [[Category:Whosits]] line. This category, in turn, has parents, which it lists in its [[Category:Whatsits]] line. No category lists either its articles or its child cats, rather each article points at its categories, and these cats climb the great tree of categories by pointing at their parent cats.
A category whose [[Category:]] line lists itself, is claiming to be its own parent. This is "swallowing its own tail" and not an aid to finding the cat or its pictures. Instead, to be found in the great banyan tree of categories, it must point at its parent categories. Thus, this [[Category:Pier 41]] is now pointing correctly at its parent, [[Category:Red Hook, Brooklyn]] which in turn links to Brooklyn and the rest of the great category tree. To have this category appear in additional parental categories, you would edit this category's file to point at them. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)