Forum:Intersections

in my recent meddling with categories, i've been pretty drawn to the idea of functionally replacing certain categories with intersections, while still maintaining navigation to said categories/intersections so users don't have to manually type the intersection name.

my ideal situation is... one that most likely can't be done because i misunderstood at first and thought the "options and variations" were actual usable options, not proposed options. namely the "transclude an intersection into a category" and the "pages in the Intersection: namespace behave like categories" parts.

so i'm trying to find methods that, well, exist.

having, for example, Category:Shadowfrost spells redirect to Intersection:Shadowfrost spells is almost definitely not an option since the category policy forbids redirected categories.

making Intersection:Shadowfrost spells a member of Category:Frost spells and Category:Shadow spells works okay? even if it behaves as a regular page (as seen from Category:Shadow spells), instead of like a subcategory as i originally thought. however, it winds up listing itself (which looks silly), and the need to actually create an intersection page kinda diminishes the "automation/ease of maintenance" aspect.

linking to an intersection from a category's description (maybe like this) isn't too bad, i think. it has the upside that it doesn't require an intersection page to be created... but it's also easy to miss the intersection link because one's eyes (aka my eyes) skip over the description and go straight to the category's contents.

and that's all i got so far.

there's also the issue that, if a category is replaced with an intersection, linkage from the content pages is removed. e.g. currently, you can go directly from Ebonbolt's category box to Category:Shadowfrost spells. i don't know of any way to preserve that linkage... but i would still love to find some way to automate the population of certain categories.

(also i've realized a "Shadowfrost spells" type intersection doesn't work because it winds up grabbing Chaos spells too, but it still illustrates the idea. and there are of course other categories i'd like to intersection-ize, like Category:Blue socketable gems -> "blue gems" and "socketable gems") —Eithris (talk) 04:02, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I generally like intersections, but I can't say I'm too knowledgeable on the topic! PeterWind (talk) 16:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Same Xporc (talk) 10:57, 10 February 2020 (UTC)