User blog comment:Dopp/Technical Update: June 28, 2011/@comment-1656630-20110701163329/@comment-1656630-20110701234201

Hi everyone,

Thanks for these points and feedback. I discussed the change further with other staff members, and they clarified that it's not just about removing the forced editing screen -- it's also, really, about recognizing that categories with articles are pages with content. A redlink means that a page has no content -- that clicking on it will take you somewhere that doesn't exist. Categories that have articles associated with them do have content worth viewing, though, so they do exist. If they haven't been incorporated into the master organizational structure of the wiki yet, that's a separate issue, and it's what maintenance tools like Special:WantedCategories are for. But you deal with the same maintenance issues when new pages are added to the wiki, too.

While we believe this change will be an improvement for the experience of readers and other users, we also recognize that Categories, as a system, are unintuitive and not always as useful as they could be. We'll be keeping an eye on the impact of this change, and will continue to look for ways to make our wiki organization systems better for everyone.