(→‎Alternative proposal: Still working on a reply)
(→‎Alternative proposal: Still working on a reply)
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: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. --[[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Singkong2005|t]] - [[Special:Contributions/Singkong2005|c]]</small></sup> 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)
: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. --[[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Singkong2005|t]] - [[Special:Contributions/Singkong2005|c]]</small></sup> 23:51, 5 July 2006 (PDT)


:Still working on a reply. --[[User:ATSysop|ATSysop]] 01:34, 7 July 2006 (PDT)
:Still working on a reply. --[[User:Lonny|Lonny]] 01:34, 7 July 2006 (PDT)


===Maintaining category structure===
===Maintaining category structure===

Revision as of 08:36, 7 July 2006

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:

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)

Alternative proposal

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).
Categories such as Category:Monograph and a category for collaborations will be useful. (This is similar to to Wikipedia's WikiProjects category - 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)
Still working on a reply. --Lonny 01:34, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

Maintaining category structure

Here are some links that make it easy to ensure that the category structure is complete:

And one link to find pages that haven't been linked to yet:

  • Special:Lonelypages (orphaned pages, not linked from other pages. Aim to keep empty or near empty).

--Singkong2005 t - c 08:58, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Lonely pages not all that lonely

Note that Special:Lonelypages does not consider being categorized as a link. Too bad there is not a page for Uncategorized, Lonely pages. Therefore we should not look to keep Special:Lonelypages empty because some pages will only be linked to by categorization, e.g. Hand stitching, which is part of the How to category. --Lonny 16:51, 6 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 comments 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)


Categories & articles

Another issue I've been giving thought to. Lonny, I noticed at Category talk:Appropriate technology, you wrote:

I redirected appropriate technology to here at Category:Appropriate Technology... Obviously there are some problems with the way we are using categories... One problem with the redirect to the category is that subcategories do not appear at the bottom of the category page after a redirect (although this does not affect category:appropriate technology as there are no subcategories).

Another small issue is that it will affect the layout of links on the "What links here" page, making it slightly more confusing.

Most likely the software doesn't handle the current usage well because it wasn't intended to. Cross-namespace redirects (e.g. appropriate technology to Category:Appropriate technology) are discouraged on Wikipedia, and I suspect on other Wikimedia projects as well.

I'm now leaning towards separating the articles from the categories, so that the category pages are solely for the purpose of categorising, perhaps with a brief intro. Other material would go in the article namespace, e.g. the material in Category:Appropriate technology would be moved to Appropriate technology, and replaced with nothing, or a brief intro.

I think that users should be able to view all pertinent information and links (especially to articles and subcategories) in one place. The redirect problem has been fixed in new versions of MediaWiki, see Appropedia:Village_pump#Redirect_Problem Village Pump for more. Now we just need to update. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Mediawiki update is complete. Redirects are working (as is cite.php, and hopefully some other cool features). --Lonny 23:35, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

I haven't figured out whether projects should get their own namespace - one argument for this is that it becomes more obvious that it's a project from looking at the name. One drawback is that linking to the projects pages becomes slightly less intuitive.

I agree, linking should be intuitive. Projects should not get their own namespace. I think that we can take care of everything with categories. After we talk some more about the categories, the About appropedia page should be updated. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

I notice that Knots: has been used as a namespace. That probably should be changed. Maybe they should go into the article namespace? (e.g. Bowline knot. This would be in Category:Knots which would be a subcat of Category:How to.

The Knots: fake namespace thing should definitely be changed to exactly as you say. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Knots are now taken care of. --ATSysop 01:21, 7 July 2006 (PDT)

An alternative is to use How to: is used as a namespace. I think that goes against the common wiki approach (in Wikimedia projects and Wikia) which is to use namespaces only for completely different types of pages: (Special:, Help:, Template:, or project-related i.e. Wikipedia: or Appropedia:), or for completely separate projects (such as the Cookbook: prefix in Wikibooks).

Let me know your thoughts. --Singkong2005 t - c 09:35, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

Counter to what I hoped for at the beginning of this wiki, I think that we can avoid namespaces and opt for categories. Those categories that I would have like to be namespaces can now be just listed under the or something like that. More about this on our category conversations above. Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions. --Lonny 16:18, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
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