Appropedia:Village pump: Difference between revisions

Directory of articles

I was thinking, the List of topics is useful, but being able to find all documents through the directory structure would also be good.

How about all top level categories, such as Category:How to or Category:Alternative building, go into a category such as Category:Fundamental or [[:Category:Categories, like in Wikipedia - Wikipedia:Category:Fundamental and Wikipedia:Category:Categories.

However, if a page hasn't been categorised, you won't find it via directories. So, it's good if there's something that lists all articles. Is there an "allpages" and/or "recent pages" link for the wiki? Thanks, --Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 08:36, 1 July 2006 (PDT)

I found the allpages link, via the Special:Specialpages link, bottom left. --Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Directory of articles response

Absolutely. What do you think about some diffent metacategories, such as:

• Topic_fundamental - This is the main category for all other topic categories. For instance Alternative_building is a Topic_fundamental for the subcategories Bamboo, Earthships, Strawbale, Ferrocement and Earthen Construction ,and for the subsubcategories Adobe, Cobb, etc.
• Topic - This is the category for all topic categories. This category will eventually get very full, in which case we could retroactively make a Topic_L1, Topic_L2, etc. respectively for the subcategories, subsubcategories, etc. (or we could just do it now as well)

Alternative building - Category:Topic fundamental

• Strawbale - Categories:Topic|Alternative_building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
• Ferrocement - Categories:Topic|Alternative_building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
• Earthen construction - Categories:Topic|Alternative building (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L1|Alternative building)
  • Adobe - Categories:Topic|Earthen construction (or Categories:Topic|Topic_L2|Earthen construction)
  • ...

--Lonny 15:34, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

and then each topic would also have an array of subcategories that are part of other metacategories such as

• • Adobe - Categories:Topic|Earthen construction
    • Projects - Categories:Projects|Adobe - Adobe construction projects
    • Curricula - Categories:Curriculum|Adobe - Adobe realted curricula, lesson plans, worksheets, assignments, etc
    • How tos - Categories:How to|Adobe - How to make adobe buildings and adobe in diffent forms
    • Organizations - Categories:Organization|Adobe - Organizations focused on Adobe construction
    • Theses - Categories:Thesis|Adobe - Treatise, economic plans, and other works on Adobe
    • Tools - Categories:Tools|Adobe - Tools such as clay content calculator and loading tables
    • Programs - Categories:Program|Adobe - Adobe building intensives, schools and other programs
    • Collab - Categories:Collab|Adobe - Services offered and needed, events, book/link/article reviews and other collaborative working pages
    • Maybe photos - Category:Adobe on an image page in the Image namespace - Photos of adobe (I am worried that the page may get too big... so maybe a seperate category Adobe Photos, or just hand made galleries so that captions are supported)
    • Maybe users - Category:Adobe on a user page in the User namespace - Users with a defined interest and experience in Adobe (this could help build networks of people, and allowing for users to find user pages on which to make contacts, ask questions, etc.)

Therefore I am proposing the following metacategories:

• Category:Topic fundamental
• Category:Topic (maybe Topic L1, Topic L2, Topic L3, Topic etc.)
• Projects
• Category:Curricula
• How to (just created recently)
• Category:Organization
• Category:Thesis (a better name maybe - Treatise, dissertation, monograph)
• Category:Tools
• Category:Program (see Category:Parras for an example)
• Category:Collab (a better name would be great - Working pages, Collaborative pages, Working, any ideas. See Category:Supplies for an example)

and I am proposing encouraging putting categories on entries in the User and Image namespaces (note: images that are in a category appear as thumbnails in that category page). Quick note, if we decide to do this, we should decide on singular or plural names for the metacategories... i.e. Projects vs Project and Program vs Programs.

What do you think? --Lonny 15:34, 2 July 2006 (PDT)

I've been taking some time to think about this. I think it's best to keep it simple, and use the self-organising nature of the wiki as much as possible. I think the only thing that we need to add to the category structure is a top layer, i.e. Category:Fundamental or equivalent (I'd prefer shorter names where possible). I've created it and started putting the tag on appropriate subcategories, so click Category:Fundamental and see what you think. (It can always be deleted later if necessary).

See also Special:Categories which (I gather) lists all categories. That's a useful link for checking that the category structure doesn't have gaps.

Categories such as Category:Monograph and a category for collaborations will be useful. (This is similar to to Wikipedia's - and see also the Collaborations page in the Wikipedia namespace, which lists types of collaborations.)

I'm not clear on what role a Topic category would serve, and Topic_L1 etc doesn't sound intuitive. If we want a list of all pages, maintained automatically, we can use Special:Allpages (which I just discovered by clicking on the Specialpages link - bottom left, unless you're using a non-standard skin).

This is the Wikipedia approach to categories, as I understand it... I guess part of my reason for preferring this is that I'm a creature of habit, and the Wikipedia system makes sense to me (and has been the subject of a lot of refinement by a large community of editors). That doesn't means it's always best to do things the Wikipedia way, of course. --Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

Sub-categories/metacategories in topics

The metacategory schema would be a strong feature of the whole organizational structure described above. Can MediaWiki be made organize specific articles under metacategory headings, in the same fashion that they have been listed in this discussion forum? I don't know of a way to accomplish this other than by using pipes to define the terms by which articles are sorted in a category tag [[Category:metacategory|metacategoryname article title]]. Unfortunately, this will not create subheadings in the list of category contents. The challenge here is to have articles displayed in a category and also be sub-sorted based on what other categories they belong to.--Aaron 10:33, 5 July 2006 (PDT)

As we add category tags to articles and on other category pages, the wiki software automatically creates the directory structure - see my comment above. I'm not sure if I got your question though, so please ask again if I haven't answered properly. --Singkong2005 ^{t - c} 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)