Wiki Categorization

Ferenc Veres lion at netngine.hu
Sun Aug 3 00:23:40 CEST 2008


Hi all,

-----Original Message-----
From: "Brian C" <brianwc at OCF.Berkeley.EDU>

> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category_talk:Categories

Good job! 

> 1. A category in which almost everything could be placed is not helpful.

I agree, I also mentioned this problem earlier.

Note, that you sill mark Documentation as a top level category later, that is also too general name. What is not documentation here? :)

Also, if you want to keep Openmoko for the company, make an Openmoko Inc. category instead. 

Otherwise page authors will "misuse" these.

> 2. Users should be able to browse the category pages as a useful way of navigating the wiki.

I think we could use the category page's edit function for this. We could put a little info on the most important categories. (Small enough to keep focus on the automatic content listing below category text.)

This is an example of how it can be done technically (and also a good example of how it should not be used.)

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Hardware

Of course not all categories will need an "intro".

Important: Also note that users don't even notice that pages are in categories. It took me several weeks to notice that! It's a "grayed out" small box on the bottom. I think we should do something about this too. Any ideas?

> 3. In general, a wiki page should be placed in the most specific subcategory in which it appropriately fits.

I agree regarding your example, but I disagree in general. I explained my ideas here:

http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-July/000059.html

This implies, that e.g. an FR, HW, GPS issue is included in all these three. An ASU, SW, GPS problem could be another example.

How could you choose the "most appropriate"?

> There is already a site-wide index that lists every page in the wiki,
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Openmoko_Wiki_Official_Index_Page

Hey, I think that is a hand-maintained page, and thus impossible to keep up-to-date. I noted these pages earlier, I added some of them to 

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Wiki_Issues

under Categoies, proposed for deletion and using the automatic categories instead. (The big global index could be kept as exception, but I still think, it will always be outdated.) In current situation, I think it's interesting to browse that page, but I hope, better categories could remove the need for it.

I am happy to see we will use categories, thank you!

Ferenc







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